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Central Saanich teacher to listen to same song for 14 hours to raise money

Michael Preston of Brentwood School of Music sacrificing to help end global hunger
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TNT by AC/DC. Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. Europe’s Final Countdown. Rebecca Black’s Friday. Or the Macarena.

Michael Preston, who co-owns and operates the Brentwood School of Music, will listen to one of these songs for 14 hours straight on Dec. 21 as he aims to raise $5,000 for the World Food Programme.

“It’s a bit of a long-shot and it’s good to have a big goal,” he said.

Preston said he will trap himself in his studio from 10 a.m. to midnight on Dec. 21, adding that visitors are free to come and watch from the outside.

A donation of $20 will give members of the public a vote once the fundraising page is in place. Preston raised in excess of $2,000 by listening to Wham’s Last Christmas for 12 hours.

“(I) got off pretty easy,” he said Monday after releasing the list of songs. “We outlawed Christmas songs just to keep it secular,” he said.

RELATED: Central Saanich music teacher endures 12 hours of sour notes for sweet cause

Preston said the choice of songs has nothing to do with them being bad songs. Rather, these are songs he has to deal with all the time.

“I’m just not going say anything bad about Jack White and Seven Nation Army,” he said. “The same thing with TNT. It’s definitely a good song.”

Music teachers encourage students to dig deeper into the catalog of artists, he added.

“It’s really easy to hear the same five songs,” he said.

The chosen songs, on the other hands, are definitely not deep cuts. Rather, they represent a fun way to annoy Preston for a good cause.

“The biggest thing is about finding a way to remind ourselves about not just the Christmas spirit of giving, but how important it is all the time,” he said. “A lot of us are blessed to be on an island like this and maybe they are in better hands this time around than people in Yemen or Sudan or Syria. That was one of the big motivators — how desperate things are.”


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wolfgang.depner@peninsulanewsreview.com



Wolf Depner

About the Author: Wolf Depner

I joined the national team with Black Press Media in 2023 from the Peninsula News Review, where I had reported on Vancouver Island's Saanich Peninsula since 2019.
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