Page 62 - The Cormorant Issue 14

Plagiarists in Demand at JSCSC!
By Wg Cdr Andy Cooksley
‘Plagiarist is not a dirty word, Blackadder’.1
Of course, plagiarist is a very dirty word in the hallowed corridors of the Joint Services Command and Staff Col- lege. I’d like to think, however,
that ACSC 14’s contribution to the long-term culture of the College has been to rehabili- tate the word in some small way, to the extent that a small bunch of self-confessed pla- giarists have become a popular part of the College’s life this year.
Now, given that the readers of
this august publication are a cut
above the intellectual average,
the accompanying photograph has
probably given away the fact that the
plagiarists in question are not a bunch
of academically dishonest students but the
musical elite of ACSC 14. After years of increas-
ingly blatant puns on the word ‘shag’, this year’s
course band decided to be up-front about the origin of our rep- ertoire and settled on the name ‘The Plagiarists’. Consisting of a fine mix of experienced musicians and those whose previous performances had been confined to the shower, the band has been successfully entertaining the course from the early days of Term 1 to the social culmination of the Purple Ball.
Had a certain dead Prussian been faced with running an ama- teur band, he might well have noted that ‘everything in music is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult’.2 As ‘from the first, one must deal with the remarkable trinity of violence [the ex- punk rock drummer]; the play of chance [ACSC programmers filling potential rehearsal slots with more lectures]; and rational policy [objections that a song is too hard/too cheesy/too country and western]’.3 Despite these challenges, by November, we had
pulled together enough tunes to add a musi- cal backdrop to the celebrations accom- panying the completion of the Strategy and Policy Essay, conclusively dem- onstrating that ‘music is the con- tinuation of academic study by
drinking beer’.4
By the end of Term One, we were confident enough to rush a few seasonal classics out for the course Christmas Lunch, and we managed to enliven the Term 2 Defence Policy and Strategic Programming phase with a starring role in the cel- ebration of “Visimal National
Day”. At about that point, I was asked to describe our repertoire; the best I could manage was ‘eclectic’ – although ‘confused’ might have been more accurate! With musical sources rang- ing from The Commitments (making the best use of our expert brass section) to Snow Patrol there was certainly plenty of variety. The addition of a few 70s and 80s staples kept the course dancing. (Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ struck a suitably subversive note in the Staff
College).
As the Course progressed we started to add our own musical stamp to many of the songs, which generally meant the addition of an extended and highly distorted guitar solo, or an equally extended and jazz-influenced sax break. Yes, you can use a saxophone in ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ if you try hard enough! If nothing else, these alterations gave members of the course to chance to demonstrate their appreciation of the importance of a manoeuvrist approach to dance floor operations. As a cer- tain dead Chinaman might have observed: ‘To write a hundred original and successful tunes is not the acme of skill. To shame-
lessly pirate someone else’s original work without writing a single note is the acme of skill’.5
The Plagiarists are:
Vocals – Maj John Wakelin Vocals – Maj Lisa Gill Vocals & Acoustic Guitar –
Maj Phil Keetley
Sax – Lt Cdr Aj Ajala
Sax – Lt Cdr Al Haigh
Electric Guitar – Lt Col Steve Archer Electric Guitar – Lt Cdr Tim Wright Keyboards – Col Tim Hodgetts Bass – Wg Cdr Andy Cooksley Drums – Lt Cdr Scotty Scott
Sound Engineer – Maj Phil Fox Sound and occasional vocals
Maj Kate Gibbs
4 Sorry again Karl – I will get round to pillaging someone else’s ideas soon. 5 Apologies to Sun Tzu.
1 Apologies to Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.
2 Apologies to Karl Von Clauswitz.
3 Further apologies to the Dead Prussian.
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