Plains continues with another year of Pops

Students of Plains Middle School and High School were able to showcase their musical talents for members of the community at the Plains School gym last Tuesday as the school held its annual Pops Concert.

Students with a wide variety of musical backgrounds and experiences took the stage, from first-timers to seasoned veterans with several years performing at the concert under their belt. The concert featured 18 acts by student performers, sometimes backed up by non-student musicians, with more than 30 performers overall.

“I like to see the kids kind of stretching themselves a bit and getting up in front of an audience,” said Larry McDonald, principal of Plains High School.

McDonald opened the evening of music by telling the large crowd at the Plains gym how the concert is one of the more fun events the school holds each year. He told the people in attendance the concert was meant to be informal and he invited them to stand a\nd dance if they felt the urge at any point during the concert. McDonald also provided back-up on guitar for a few of the performers last Tuesday.

McDonald said the Pops Concert works well to give the students at Plains a chance to get the spotlight and to have an audience. He said it’s a chance to give recognition to some of the students who might not get it in other things like sports. He said the Pops Concert welcomes performers at all skill-levels and musical tastes and the crowd will listen to each with the same enthusiasm.

“No matter what the performer did, the audience clapped and hollered and made them feel good,” McDonald said. “I like that.”

McDonald noted throughout the concert that there were quite a few performers with multiple years performing. Some of them included his own family as his daughter Callie sang and played the guitar and his son Boston, a senior and in his seventh year in the concert, performed in several different acts. Meggie McDonald came home on visit from college in Missoula so she could play bass while her brother Boston played guitar and sang.

Another veteran of the Pops Concert was senior Leah Swedberg who sang two different songs last Tuesday. For her second song Swedberg was accompanied by her brother Moses on the piano. Earlier, Swedberg sang the song “Timothy,” by Jet, and played guitar. The song is about the author’s brother, who died before they could ever meet. Swedberg dedicated the song to Noah, who she said would have been her older brother.

Eighth-grader Nicole Kunzer made her Pops Concert debut alongside her older sister, sophomore Alexis Kunzer. The two sang “26 Cents” as a duet and Alexis later performed solo “When You Say Nothing At All.”

One of the more unusual performances was Liceth Proano, an exchange student from Ecuador, singing “Antologia” in Spanish. McDonald said the program had listed that the Pops Concert was in its 20th year, but that it was just a guess. “The format may change,” McDonald said. “But I assume that it will keep going.”

McDonald said he has been with the school for 14 years and the concert was already in-place when he arrived.

After speaking with a former student who remembers the first year the Pops Concert was held, McDonald said it is more likely a 17-year-old event.

McDonald said the Pops Concert has already changed over the years since he’s observed it, in more than one way. He said it was originally a high school event until one year when a group of sixth-grade girls were allowed to perform. Now he said it’s basically open to middle school through high school, but most of the performers tend to be older. McDonald said his preference would be that it kept a high school emphasis.

McDonald also said he prefers it when the music is performed alongside a live band but not all of the songs the students are interested in performing, especially hip-hop songs, are “playable” by a live band. He said the taste in music has changed some as well as it used to be heavier in country music and now seems to be more rock-oriented.

McDonald said the atmosphere of the Pops Concert has changed some. He said it was at one time “more festive” with ice cream and popcorn that people could buy as they listened to the performances. He said now it’s set up more in concert fashion where people sit and watch each act.

This year quite a few more male students participated as a group of seven senior boys performed a dance rendition to “Amish Paradise. The show included Boston McDonald dressed up as a cow and Richard Barnard dressed as a woman, with Justin Allison taking the lead vocals.

Larry McDonald said despite how the Pops Concert has evolved, it still attracts lots of performers and spectators.

“The concert has kind of changed,” McDonald said. “I don’t know where it will go from this. Over the 17 years it’s still a pretty popular event.”