There ought to be diamonds

And now it seems a fair enough time to assess the score Julia Houston and Tom Levitt have been writing for their Marilyn Monroe bio-musical, Bombshell.  True, we’ve heard some of these songs in brief excerpts, but enough notes have passed before our ears to say P-U! There’s some truly horrific songwriting going on here. 

The first song held some promise: Let Me Be Your Star is a power ballad with an impressively catchy hook.  The musical style, however, is pure 1980′s, a decade neither Monroe or her would-be portrayer, Karen Cartwright, was alive for.  The lyric leads one to believe Marilyn’s career is at an early stage, but Tom’s music is out of sync with the 1940s.  Without an allusion to a specific time and place, the song becomes an anthem of Everygirl, which is O.K. only if that’s the point the authors wish to make about Marilyn.

My wife’s favorite of the Bombshell songs she’s heard is the joyful History Is Made At Night.  The first sixteen notes are all on the same pitch, but Tom smartly dresses this up with a backing choir doing Modernaires-type chords.  That’s a good idea: when your melody’s going nowhere, make sure you’re harmony’s going somewhere, at least.  And a hit Gene DePaul song from the period, Teach Me Tonight, also starts with the same note seven times, and is exactly the sort of song Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe might have made love to.  So, at first glance, History Is Made At Night seems like an apt invention for this spot.  At second glance, though, the original and its simulacrum seem far too similar.  Both use teaching as a metaphor for sex, but the Sammy Cahn lyric has a blithe jocularity to it, and a bunch of three-syllable rhymes.  Julia’s lyric makes very little of the metaphor.  It says next to nothing, and then says it again and again.

Compare:

Did I see producer Eileen Rand openly dabbing her eyes at Second-Hand White Baby Grand?  Wow: somebody thinks this is a good number.  Certainly, there’s a place for metaphor in musical theatre.  What I don’t buy, for a moment, is that Marilyn would express such a metaphor.  Julia’s lyric sounds more like one of the zillion Monroe biographers, making an arty pronouncement about her.

In a similar ilk is the way-too-serious DiMaggio cri de coeur, Lexington and Fifty-Second.  Does anybody believe the Yankee Clipper would really talk this way, or think this way?  Or know that address?  Chorus boy Sam Strickland surely could have said something about this to Tom, especially since his first words to him, before romance bloomed, assumed he was a fellow gay sports nut.  Yeah: gay sports nuts think other gay men are into sports all the time; that’s why they’re called nuts.

The dead giveaway that Tom and Julia know nothing about baseball is a kitschy and witless number called National Pastime.  The best thing it can do is make reference to the best comedy song Monroe ever sang, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.

Jolting’ Joe and the blonde bombshell share a quiet moment in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, about the romantic pursuit of anonymity.  I’m no expert on these icons, but the idea of Marilyn Monroe aspiring to be an ordinary person sounds so wrong to me, it’s laughable. A shame.  In a different context, with different characters, this might be a lovely song.

If Bombshell is content to play fast and loose with biographical facts, then maybe the intention is to serve up yet another campy portrait of an idol.  If so, there shouldn’t be three women vying for the lead role; all it takes is one good drag queen.  That might justify Darryl Zanuck, of all people, getting a snappy patter in his steam bath, surrounded by unclothed chorus boys.  Pure hokum, but a way to go now that we live in an age where Marilyn Monroe is no longer turning men on.

Julia and Tom’s main mistake was starting with a flimsy idea for a show, and then writing songs for various spots in Monroe’s life, rather than starting with an effective story outline and letting the plot’s emotional hills and valleys motivate book-driven songs.  Assuming they might need, at some point, something akin to Marilyn’s Heat Wave, they serve up clichés of Latin music in Twentieth Century Fox Mambo.  Is nobody bothered by the fact that this song is not a mambo?  “Mambo,” here, sounds like a nonsense word merely tacked on to the end of lines.  It’s Twentieth Century Fox that serves as the title of this song, and it might sound like a good pun to those who are unaware that sexy women weren’t called foxes during Marilyn’s life.

I have trouble keeping that song straight from the appropriately-titled Let’s Be Bad and I Never Met a Wolf Who Didn’t Love To Howl. I can’t help wincing at false rhymes, and gotcha/Sinatra has to be the nadir of Julia’s career.  (Also wrong: fiery/hire me.) But now I’m reminded of their awful angels-on-a-staircase number from Heaven On Earth.  It’s a song that’s rather similar to the same actor’s big number in Catch Me If You Can, utilizing all sorts of anecdotal examples from the earth’s long history, none of them surprising or amusing.

Compare:

The higher you get, the farther the fall

Now I’m kicking butt and taking names

‘Cause even St. Joan went down in flames

Napoleon Waterlooed and Genghis Khan sure hit a slump

I might say “You’re fired”

When you have expired,

Donald Trump

with

 It started back with Moses when he led around the Jews

And climbed way up that mountain to pick up God’s Daily News

He schlepped up Mt. Sinai – cried and begged on their behalf

He almost dropped those tablets when he saw that golden calf

Now we teach the Ten Commandments every Sunday in our schools

Cause the game ain’t worth winning if you’re breaking all the rules

I guess the constitution to some is too complex

They think our founding fathers fought so they can forge some checks

They see themselves as Robin Hood stealing from the rich

Paying back the things they take; well, payback is a bitch

Cause the world ain’t Sherwood Forest

You can’t give away those jewels

There’s only so long one can wait around, hoping a song like that will get funny.

Smash! (the song), for a chorus of Marilyns (huh?) uses a growl-y motif that plays up and down a diminished chord.  It’s catchy because we’ve heard this sort of thing a thousand times before: boilerplate sexy.  What seals the song’s fate as a forgettable throwaway is the utterly generic lyric.  Julia could come up with nothing interesting to say here about the oft-written-of subject of lust.  (Maybe she should have a hot affair, or something.)  So the whole ditty exudes déjà vu.

Then she stretches out a metaphor over too great a length of time in the plaintive ballad, Never Give All Your Heart, a sentiment attributed to “the Irishman,” “Mr. Yeats.”  This may be literally true, but boy, does it feel wrong.  So many have given that advice, it’s odd for anyone to attribute it, albeit correctly.  But if that song’s too smart for its own good, what is one to make of the Bollywood number, A Thousand and One Nights?  The title’s Arabic, the style is Indian, and both cultures have every right to be offended that they’re being confused for the other.

Post-death, Marilyn is able to belt out, in a style that didn’t exist pre-death, a finale called Don’t Forget…Me. Ellipses must be inserted because Tom’s tune separates the final word as would never happen in normal speech. Makes it sound as if Marilyn wants us to forget somebody else (assumedly, Jayne Mansfield. Done.) but not her. Julia and Tom should be cut a break here because the song was written on such short notice, but the whole drama of the song’s creation is an example of why composers in the theatre virtually never orchestrate their own songs: there often isn’t time. Had composition and orchestration been handled by different people, the final result wouldn’t sound like generic 1990s elevator music. (The end of a genre, it seems: when’s the last time you heard music in an elevator?)

Years from now, when people talk of Bombshell (and they will talk of Bombshell), it’s obvious there’ll be added emphasis on the first syllable.

Dogs like us

I’m going to try to describe a project I’ve been working on. I say try because the process of creating this pièce de théâtre has been so extraordinary, it practically defies description.

Picture a company of equals, very little in the way of hierarchy.  There are two directors, one will also choreograph, and I’m responsible for the music.  But, at almost any point in the rehearsals, any company member might offer up an idea, a suggestion for a song, or, most often, a Personal Story.  In the latter, people speak from the heart about particularly emotional experiences they’ve had that somehow relate to their characters’ situation in the play.  Consequentially, it’s a slow, intense and impressively collaborative exploration.

At times I think this is something that could only happen in a theatre school (which, indeed, is where we’re doing this) because it’s an educational experience for every participant.  We’re all learning a great deal about the Great Depression, the power structures that existed in 1936, and the politics that swirl around a union considering calling a strike. The Stories stir up everyone’s passions, leading to passionate performances.  But also, the group gets involved in individuals’ feelings.  When one player announced she’d found a new place to live, a genuine celebration broke out.

The play is Clifford Odets’ Waiting For Lefty and, while every word of the script will be there, we’re expanding our portrait of mid-thirties New York by adding songs and dances.  It’s too easy (and perhaps dismissive) to say we’re making it into a musical.  It’s a play with hot-blooded group scenes, tense dialogues, and a wide variety of Depression-era numbers.

Such individual components can be assembled in a variety of ways, like Scrabble tiles, and we on the creative team play around with various orders to maximize the drama and entertainment value.  A certain unmentionable TV show depicted writers reassembling index cards on a cork board, something that goes on all the time in fashioning revues, not so often in telling linear stories.  As I write this, we’re trying to find the right spot for a dance number from Pins and Needles, Doing the Reactionary.  It’s simultaneously defiant and silly. I’m sure we can use it, but I’m not quite sure what point in the play can bear such frivolity.  In essence, these are moods to be programmed.

At some point, while writing a musical, it’s helpful to step back and take a look at what types of songs you have in your score.  Too many ballads is a common problem.  Less recognized, but nearly as lethal: too many solos can destroy a show.  Mix in ensembles, duets, and other sizes.  I like to throw in a waltz somewhere.  And it’s questionable whether the public really wants to see a show without a love song.  A year ago, I was rehearsing Cabaret with some of these same people, and was very impressed with how its writers alternated diegetic and on-stage numbers. (I’m speaking of course of the original version; the movie and the radical revisal were far too timid to utilize many non-diegetic numbers.)

I’ll tell you how Waiting For Lefty is like a musical – and I mean a very good musical.  Every song is fully justified, inexorably connected to the truth the characters are facing.  No sugary icing masking a bitter cake, these.  That’s the aspect I’m personally most proud of.  The acting is stunning, too, and I’m moved at every rehearsal.

In a wild and wooly process like ours, everyone in the company must stay flexible.  At times, it seems like we’re rehearsing a completely different show on any given day.  And where will the spinning wheel stop?  Come see what we’ve wrought May 14 & 16.

Circle in the Square Theatre School presents: 
WAITING FOR LEFTY By Clifford Odets
Monday, May 14th 2012 at 2:00pm & 7:30pm
Wednesday, May 16th 2012 at 7:30pm
1633 Broadway - 50th Street between Broadway & 8th Ave.

FREE – no reservations or tickets, just walk in and grab a seat

Sugar daddies

I’ve been going to the Encores series a long time, and I can’t recall having a better time than I did at their current offering, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  Every minute made me deliriously happy.  Several of the Leo Robin-Jule Styne songs were so good, I had tears rolling down my face, just because they were so well written.  Encores has a notoriously short rehearsal schedule, yet, under the helm of John Rando, all the performers gave top-notch performances.  And the Randy Skinner dances were spectacular and entertaining.

Lorelei Lee is embodied (with an emphasis on the body) by Megan Hilty and her take on the character bears no resemblance to the old movie take of Marilyn Monroe.  I mention this because Hilty’s fame and fan-base has very little to do with her two Broadway appearances: replacement Glinda in Wicked and the Dolly Parton role in the Dolly Parton flop musical, 9 to 5. This Encores is selling out the incredibly large City Center because Miss Hilty appears on a television program in which she plays an actress vying to star in a musical biography of Marilyn Monroe.  Low-rated though the series is, it’s created significant interest in what Hilty will do with what’s seen as Marilyn Monroe iconic role.  But one of the first things you notice is what a very different beast the stage show is from the movie: Lorelei was originally Carol Channing, and it’s not a star vehicle. There’s vast amounts of time when the preferred blonde is not on stage.

So it’s a good thing the other comediennes are similarly engaging. Rachel York brings warmth and panache to her many numbers, including Sunshine, which blithely switches back and forth between English and first-semester French.  (It’s a song I often find myself humming, when the weather is nice.) Megan Sikora is a tap-dancing fiend, while Deborah Rush and Sandra Shipley knock their punch lines out of the park.  Did I mix a metaphor there?  It’s easy to mix up the men, because they’re interchangeable. (Aren’t we all?)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is lyricist Leo Robin’s only notable Broadway musical, and, more than any other element, the wit of his lyrics is what makes this a great evening.  The two hits from the score are multiple-verse comedy solos for Lorelei: Little Girl From Little Rock and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.  Encores winks, a bit, at the convention of the encore verse, but we welcome Hilty’s every return, confident that Robin can top himself.  Lyric joke after lyric joke lands, all in a fixed structure, as I described in a recent post.  Little Rock is a series of anecdotes from the blonde life, while Diamonds is a great example of title-as-thesis getting a long series of rhetorical supports.

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental
On your humble flat
Or help you at the automat.
Men grow cold as girls grow old,
And we all lose our charm in the end.
But square cut or pear shape
These rocks don’t lose their shape!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly platonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
And I think affairs that you must keep Masonic
Are the better bets
If little pets get big baguettes.
Time rolls on, and youth is gone,
And you can’t straighten up when you bend.
But stiff back or stiff knees,
You stand straight at Tiff’ny’s!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

There may come a time when a lass needs a lawyer,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
There may come a time when a hard-boiled employer
Thinks you’re awful nice,
But get that ice or else no dice.
He’s your guy when stocks are high,
But beware when they start to descend,
It’s then that those louses
Go back to their spouses!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

Romance is divine, and I’m not one to knock it,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
Romance is divine, yes, but where can you hock it?
When the flame is gone,
Just try and pawn a tired Don Juan.
Some men buy, and some just sigh
That to make you their bride they intend.
But buyers or sighers
They’re such goddamn liars!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

At Yale there’s a lad whose appeal I acknowledge,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
I might like his dad, but when I meet a college boy,
The thing to say
Is ‘ray, ‘ray, ‘ray for Cartier!
Some girls find some piece of mind
In a trust fund that banks recommend.
But if you are busty
Your trustee gets lusty!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

Stash those rocks in your strongbox
For on them you can always depend.
It’s not compensation,
It’s self-preservation!
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

“Showstopper” is not a euphemism.  Early in the second act, there is a number so fabulous thunderous applause delays the furtherance of the action.  It’s a diegetic song, involving two tap-dancers we’ve never met before.  The subject of the lyric is obviously Josephine Baker, who came from humble America to become the biggest star in France.  Robin changes the name to protect the guilty pleasure: Her name was Mame, to France she came.  Now Mamie is Mimi, the toast of the Rue de la Paix.  I’m particularly tickled by “the baby who’s now a bébé.”  But what knocks the audience out is the amazing dance ability of Phillip Attmore and Jared Grimes.

As the applause is going on and on and on, you’re wondering “How in he’ll are they going to follow that?” Out sashays Megan Hilty, commanding the stage alone through five and a half wondrous verses of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.  It could be argued that this is the greatest comedy song ever written, and I got very upset with a movie called Moulin Rouge a few years ago, because it sucked all the humor out of the song, and a new generation had no idea it was funny.  Hilty’s got the comedy chops, and understands that the show celebrates Lorelei’s power.  This is not just a show about some dumb blonde a procession of men fall for, it’s about a smart girl who understands how to use her assets.  So we’re always laughing with her, sharing in the celebration, never laughing at her.  The sexiness of Hilty’s Lorelei is an outrageous joke: she moves in ways that gets the audience to double over with laughter, rather than drool with lust. And her shape: If an adolescent boy was doodling a sexy woman, she’d look like Hilty does here.  Those lips, those hips, that butt, that bust: all are in motion, wiggling in ways that support the comedy.  Now that’s what I call acting!

You don’t seem to get it

A hue and cry was heard throughout the land, and the powers-that-be responded, making the clamored-for change.  Good news, indeed.

But a very small part of that relatable righteous hue was an incidental insult to a couple of musical theatre writers, and, coming from another musical theatre writer, it needs to be addressed. 

But first, the victory: An organization of modest size presents, annually, Drama Desk awards to theatre people.  For decades, there’s been a prize for best orchestrations, but, this year, they decided not to give the award.  Which led to a lot of outrage, from past recipients, from composers, from orchestrators.  Happily, they reversed themselves, and, after a few days, announced nominees.

Over the past year, I taught myself to orchestrate.  The December production of The Christmas Bride in Portland required a new orchestration.  Previously, I’d orchestrated my Popsicle Palace, but the premiere run, in Glendale, California, used it on a pre-recorded accompaniment track: a somewhat different task.  In becoming a composer who also orchestrates, I joined a very exclusive club.  Most composers haven’t learned this specialized craft.  I can think of only one Broadway composer who regularly orchestrated his own work, Kurt Weill, and he came out of the serious classical training tradition in Germany at the beginning of the century.  Leonard Bernstein could orchestrate; Andrew Lloyd Webber has received credit for orchestrating some of his works; Jason Robert Brown has served in both capacities.

Brown devoted a blog post to the Drama Desk’s egregious omission, and said a lot of nice things about orchestrators.  But one passage gave me pause:

I doubt that most non-musicians are aware of the extent to which the music directors and orchestrators shape the scores of shows. In the case of Bonnie and Clyde and Once, for example, the composers of those shows cannot (to the best of my knowledge) read or notate music. They do not have the language to communicate with an orchestra how to play their songs. They don’t have any vocabulary about building a cohesive musical universe on stage. There is a vast reservoir of technical and theatrical information that the music staff brings to bear on the songs those composers write in order to make a “score” out of them.

This may not have been his intention, but it certainly sounds, here, as if Brown is maintaining that, among his other duties, the orchestrator has something to do with the process of putting the non-notating composer’s notes on a page.  This is absolutely not something any orchestrator is supposed to be doing, and it certainly has no bearing on whether his work deserves a award.  In the two sentences beginning with “They” Brown tells outright lies, which certainly doesn’t bolster his argument, and insults the many non-notating composers who’ve managed to create wonderful scores for the theatre.

Boy, it’s a pain in the neck to keep typing “non-notating composer” so, I hope it’s OK if I call such people naifs.  In choosing a term from the art world, I’m not making a value judgment – as you’ll see, this gets to be a big issue.  A scribe, for our purposes, is one who notates music for a naif, who cannot.  I’ll also delineate arrangers and orchestrators.

Some of my favorite Broadway shows, and, I’ll bet, some of your favorite Broadway shows, were written by naifs.  Like the Beatles?  They were naifs.  From Irving Berlin to Willian Finn, naifs abound. My father’s favorite Broadway show, Take Me Along, was written by Bob Merrill on a toy xylophone. I kid you not. Merrill’s method was to figure out the notes he wanted on a child’s xylophone, which had letters (A-G#) on the keys. He’d write down the letters of the notes and hand it off to a scribe who turned it into either a lead sheet or a full piano score, I know not which. The next part of the process is to arrange the piece, and you don’t have to know how to notate to formulate good ideas about arrangements. Arrangers deal with the structure of the score. Once the score has been arranged, it’s handed off to the orchestrator, who decides which instruments will play the various notes in the score. Complicating this whole thing is that people’s roles often overlap. Composers arrange, or maybe the scribe can do it, and a lot of orchestrators know a great deal about arranging. But orchestration, and any award given for it, has to do with the craft of getting various sonic colors out of a musical ensemble, whether it’s orchestra-sized or not.

The top dog in the hierarchy is always the composer. If she doesn’t like what she hears – and she’ll likely hear everything at every stage of development – she can send the other members of the music staff back to the drawing board. Typically, when a naif is in a rock band, there’s a truly collaborative effort to develop a sound, which is why Brown’s statements about what naifs can’t do are so ridiculous.

They do not have the language to communicate with an orchestra how to play their songs. They don’t have any vocabulary about building a cohesive musical universe on stage.

One gets a sense that he’s jealous of Frank Wildhorn (who, many years ago, wrote such pop hits as Where Do Broken Hearts Go?) and the Oscar-winning (for Best Song) creators of the very well-received new Broadway musical, Once, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Or perhaps he’s mad that he had to study to learn the rudiments of music and the skill of orchestration, while naifs succeed sans education.

There’s a whole lot of things you probably ought to know in order to create a musical. But you don’t have to know the whole lot in order to become very successful. And that’s a wonderful thing about this business of musicals. It’s something we all should celebrate. Just like we should celebrate the fine work of this season’s orchestrators.

For goodness sake

In my last entry, I recalled suggesting an extremely strict structure to college students looking to create a score with nothing but comedy songs. That sort of precision isn’t de rigueur for every song, or every writer.  Yet when the masters of musical comedy writing make the audience laugh, a hard-and-fast form is most often adhered to, so it can’t be coincidence. 

A rhyme scheme, faithfully used, for example, gives the audience something to listen for.  You can fulfill expectations, or better yet exceed expectations. But, for heaven’s sake don’t deny expectations. That’s bound to be disappointing. Many great comedy songs have something that might be called a joke scheme. Take Cole Porter’s Brush Up Your Shakespeare. It’s clear that each verse will contain three couplets, all using a Shakespeare title in a silly rhyme. The audience quickly catches on to the game, and we listen, assured that Cole Porter will provide new jokes of this type at these regular intervals.

Just declaim a few lines from “Othella”
And they’ll think you’re a helluva fella.
If your blonde won’t respond when you flatter ‘er
Tell her what Tony told Cleopaterer,
If she fights when her clothes you are mussing,
What are clothes? “Much Ado About Nussing.”
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they’ll all kowtow.
…
With the wife of the British embessida
Try a crack out of “Troilus and Cressida,”
If she says she won’t buy it or tike it
Make her tike it, what’s more, “As You Like It.”
If she says your behavior is heinous
Kick her right in the “Coriolanus.”

Cole Porter’s strict adherence to the joke scheme has a host of ramifications.  One is that it cuts out his work for him: Go through the list of the Bard’s play titles and see what you can make of them.  (Two Gentlemen of Verona?  Nothing there.  Anthony and Cleopatra? Gold.) Secondly, things with good form are things of beauty.  There’s an aesthetic pleasure in the construction.  More importantly, the format focuses the audience’s attention.  We listen extra carefully to places in a song where we know the joke is coming.  During the repeated title, we might even play along, trying to think of what he’s going to do with Pericles or Romeo & Juliet (nothing, it turns out).  Porter outplays us, coming up with cleverer lines than us mere mortals – who else could have come up with the quip for Coriolanus?  Sticking to an unbending structure makes Brush Up Your Shakespeare the perfect joke-delivery system.

Or perhaps you think the whole thing is old-fashioned.  Unspontaneous. Arch.  Most artists want to be mad experimenters, wild and free.  Is form anathema to you?  Do those sonneteers, from centuries long over, filling out verse after verse in immaculately rhymed and metered fourteen line patterns seem like your polar opposite?  Do you long for a more organic-seeming, free-flowing expression?  It’s natural to feel this way.

I often marvel at the architecture of those new buildings hanging over the High Line at Twenty-Third Street. Seems wildly creative to fashion structures that don’t rise straight up, but rather up and out, like a tree.  A lot of us aspire to such innovation, but you know the cliché: In order to get to the level of proficiency required for such bulging weirdness, the architect had to demonstrate, over and over again, that he could design a building the normal way, with regular vertical lines.

Writing songs in 32-bar AABA format may seem terribly stifling, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.  And then tried it again, literally hundreds of times. Those who’ve ample experience with structured songwriting understand that this sort of precision, no matter how uncomfortable and inorganic it seems, leads to more effective songwriting.  We all want to move our audiences, and the masters succeed with careful fidelity to architectural principles.

In my notebook, I jotted down an idea for this blog about comparing two Broadway love songs with unusual structures.  It’s taken me all this time to get to it.  Two of our greatest living composers:  Charles Strouse in 1966; Stephen Sondheim in 1971.  After much study (Strouse at Eastman; Sondheim with Milton Babbitt) and much experience writing hit Broadway musicals, each decided to take a creative leap with the architecture of the principle love songs in musicals they were writing (Golden Boy and Follies).

In Golden Boy, a black prizefighter has started a relationship with his white manager’s white girlfriend.  The stakes are extremely high when they finally give voice to their feelings about each other.  The accompaniment starts with a long tremolo on a tense, suspended chord. Clearly, something major’s about to be said:

Lorna
Lorna and Joe
Somehow, it feels so right
Somehow, you feel what I feel too

These lines play up the notes of that fraught chord, ascending higher with each line.  It’s as if Joe’s getting bolder or bolder (and Lorna must react in an encouraging way).  This intro has no set rhythm, so it’s a little like recitative, but the effect is that words seem to be bursting forth from a heart that can no longer hold its peace.

Then comes the title, assumedly the inspiration of lyricist Lee Adams: I Want To Be With You.  The words carry a subtle extra meaning, as “be with you” has a sexual sense.  This ups the stakes, and makes the entire song seem dangerous.  (I’d bet this musical didn’t tour in the deep south.) Strouse sets this on six notes that repeat, frequently, as a motif. Sometimes with the same words; sometimes with others.  The phrase is so strong, not only can it bear repetition, but, repeated twice, it serves as the A section of the song.  This is extremely out of the ordinary for a show tune.  The B section, in tempo, echoes the intro, building up various suspended chords.  Then there’s a C section (I have a feeling some readers who are new mothers just uttered “ouch”) in which the voices ring out on long notes.  Adams provides syllables that don’t end in consonants see/how/me/now.  Little wonder so many musical theatre writers named him as their favorite lyricist when the Dramatist Guild Quarterly took a survey forty years ago.

In Follies, two former flames, now unhappily married to others, reunite for the first time in a quarter century.  The possibility of their hooking up means a lot to Sally; it’s not clear, at this point in the play, how much such a liaison would mean to Ben.

So, sans intro, Ben expresses the romantic notion that too many mornings over those twenty-five years were spent pretending he was reaching for Sally in bed.  The music here uses what I like to call the vanilla chords, a major ninth and peacefully related harmonies.  There’s very little tension, so we have to believe Ben is earnest.  A B section starts with a phrase we’ll hear again later, but the B section won’t be heard again.  It neatly brings us back to the opening harmony, and the A is heard again.  Now the C utilizes scales, but fights the routine nature of this by going into different harmonic places.  The D section is passionate and bold, almost like something you’d find in an operetta.

With the A section underscoring, Sally speaks, asking for a kiss.  Then, it seems she’s starting the B section, but she’s not calm enough to use it, breaking off into a variant involving the same dance-like rhythm Richard Rodgers used – too often for my taste – in a comic trio with words by Sondheim, No Understand.  Then there’s something of a climax on the words “You remembered, and my fears were wrong!” Next comes a quieter sentimental theme, and, if you’ve been following this very carefully, you’ll recognize it uses the same rhythm as I Want To Be With You‘s C section (no one would call this a steal; it’s just coincidence).  Then Ben restates the theme as Sally’s self-recriminative nature gets the better of her.  She sings a countermelody that plays on chromatically descending thirds.  On the word “happy” both characters trail off as the orchestra plays a set of eighth notes.  These sound, to me, like musically treading water, but it gives the characters time to look into each other’s eyes, commune and decide to sing together.  They do, a truncated restatement of the song, and, rather than cuing the audience to applaud, on the final sung note the sentimental theme returns on a solo violin.

It’s probably no secret which of these two duets I prefer, but both are very sophisticated approaches to going beyond the standard construction of the Broadway love song.  And I hope every writer reading this aspires to that level of non-standard sophistication.  Someday.  When you’re ready.

Naming names

I’m getting self-conscious about my incessant name-dropping. Will try to curtail.

So, up in Westchester, there’s a community where a certain Secretary of State and her husband, a former President, have a home. The local high school was attended by three of my closest friends, and also someone who became Miss America, then lost her crown, then became far more famous as a performer (including Broadway musicals) than any pageant-winner I’ve ever heard of.  Every year, the students wrote a revue, satirizing school life.  And their methodology including writing and rehearsing many more sketches than they wanted to end up with.  So, they’d do a rough run-through, take a look at the whole thing, and cut out anything deemed to be a turkey; hence the event’s name, Turkey Day.

My friend Adam (I use his name because he’s kind of the progenitor of this story) took the idea of Turkey Day and applied it to the Columbia Varsity Show, which he, nearly single-handedly, resurrected out of many years of dormancy.  Also at Columbia around that time were me and a fellow from Hawaii (or so it is claimed; I never saw his birth certificate) who went on to become President – not the one who lives in Westchester.  (Must not drop names!  Must not drop names!)  Since then, every year, the creation of the Varsity Show involves a huge Turkey Day in which a very large number of alums looks at what they’ve got, and then has a long and incredibly detailed discussion of how it might be better.  Since there’s nothing I like better than helping make a musical better, I look forward to this rite of spring, and have attended more of them than anyone ever. 

The collective wisdom of the crowd is wondrous to behold.  The critique goes on for hours, and people say truly smart things.  I usually tell them that nobody attends the Varsity Show for the plot, so, as far as I’m concerned, the less plot, the better.  The writers occasionally run adrift concentrating too much on story.  The audience is looking for something a revue can give them – potshots at different aspects of campus life.  I also preach in favor of a short show, knowing that the Varsity Show I wrote the score to (along with some guy who just won a prestigious prize for humorists and a woman who’s written for Friends and The West Wing) failed to fill both sides of the ninety minute cassette tape I recorded it on.  (Yes, I’m that old.)  It’s been reported (by a journalist who sometimes writes for The New York Times) that whenever the question comes up of whether the show’s too offensive, I always tell them what those people can do if they can’t take a joke.

The Varsity Show (its 118th year’s edition opens tonight) benefits from having an audience with a common and specific knowledge base.  It’s by the students, for the students, and it helps the humor when a similar perspective is shared by folks on both sides of the footlights.  One thing I remember about writing shows in college was that I could count on a very smart audience.  Nowhere else could I have gotten away with:

Don’t take secret glee in

The fact they’re plebeian

Or act like Marie An-

Toinette

“Plebian” is a five-dollar word, usually utilized by patricians.

This year I piped up about structure in comedy songs.  First, AS WITH ALL SONGS, you need a workable title.  Then, it helps as if you think of this title as being akin to the thesis sentence in an expository paragraph.  The other sentences support the thesis, give little examples of why the title is true.  Sticking to a strict template (as you probably should, in a comedy song), a good number is three supports, possibly ending with the thesis.  The hardest part?  Making sure each of those three lines is a funny one.

So, in case I haven’t made this clear enough, I’ve a couple of stanzas examples from my own work.  This is from the duet I wrote for my mother and my bride’s mother to sing at our wedding.  (The entire lyric is HERE.)

BEA

Say, can you teach me how to be the perfect meddler?

How to insinuate I’ve noted every flaw?

How do I firmly stand my ground?

How do I throw my weight around?

What is the way to be the greatest mother-in-law? 

CAROL

If you articulate complaints and criticism

And never let an unkind word get stuck in your craw

Whether you’re taking down a hem

Or simply making fun of them

You’ll be the mother of all mothers-in-law

(click to hear Maybe)

It’s a very ancient saying, (but a true and honest thought) that if you become a teacher, by your pupils, you’ll be taught.  In attendance were two younger composers, and they’d impressed me when they were in the hot seat during their Turkey Days.  One made the compositional suggestion that one can keep a song interesting by varying accompaniment figures.  This was much on my mind a few days later when I was coaching an actress prior to a production of the other composer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical.  (God, now it sounds like I’m going out of my way to avoid dropping names.)

The lovely song, Maybe, begins with a quick arpeggio on sixteenth notes, that then calms down into slower notes.  And I’ve only described one bar.  I hear that, and get the sense that the character’s mind keeps racing, and yet she manages to calm it down, in the end of the measure.  In the second A section, which is a bit longer, strings sneak in, adding warmth and refinement.  For much of the show, Diana has been associated with frenetic and acerbic rock music (she may be the oldest major character in a musical ever to be depicted with rock, an innovation that makes sense since she’s someone who’s lived her entire life in the rock era).  Now that she’s successfully gaining control over her mind, there’s an echo of the ordered respectability one hears in string quartets.  Then there’s a third A section (unusual, that) where the rhythm kicks in, a sort of combination of driving pop played against bowed refinement, as if she’s comfortably residing in a harmonious place.  On the line “a girl with a mother who just couldn’t cope” the rhythm drops out, and the violins ascend.  Listening to this, one is in doubt whether Diana can continue to hold it together.  The daughter finally chirps up, in the bridge, and the music has a steady rock feel.  This character, Natalie, is peeved but articulate.  Leading into a section where the women overlap, the accompaniment figures get very quick, although the pace of the song has only been upped subtly.  Diana’s next solo section is sparely backed, with half-notes, sometimes pushed.  The communication is too important to have much hit the ear besides her voice.  When quarter note chords are played, the tempo trails off, which gives a certain halt to words she finds difficult to get across.  Natalie’s answer is rhythmically similar, with chords on one, two and three but not four.  And then, for the final rapprochement, chords hit just on one and two, and the harmonies do not resolve.  Next To Normal smartly steers clear of pat endings.

I wish I could say those writers picked up their know-how at a Turkey Day, but I’d have to mention their names, so I can’t.

Love is like a sitcom

I recently had reason to recollect a small triumph from my youth. It was the first time I got paid for writing anything, and it was a substantial amount of money for me at the time. I sold a story to a television producer. Subsequently, he failed in his attempts to sell it to the networks, and that was that.

Some of the best musicals of the 1960s were written by folks who used to pen scripts for the small screen: Peter Stone (1776), Neil Simon (Little Me, Sweet Charity, Promises Promises) and Michael Stewart (Bye Bye Birdie, Carnival, Hello Dolly) brought skill sets borne of their Golden Age of Television experience.  And it’s not just librettists: Stephen Sondheim wrote for a sitcom before getting produced on Broadway.  So, it’s a fair supposition that there’s at least a little to be learned from stuff on the tube.

I see that two women I’d created revues with in two different and unconnected decades are now working together on a new sitcom.  Skills honed in musical comedy land, now applied to the small screen.  To do the reverse, make sure you’re examining good television.  Now I’m not going to spend time here placing different series into “good” and “bad” categories.  What matters are the elements that make up a good episode.  Be analytical about it as any academic: why do you enjoy the television shows you find particularly well-written?

One of the things you’ll notice about filmed television (as opposed to multiple-camera sitcoms, a dying breed), is that scenes are over quickly.  So, each hour contains a multitude of ends-of-scenes.  The conclusion of a scene is called a button, also used as a verb.  The writer must ask herself: How am I going to button each scene?  One common way is with a joke.  Go out on a big laugh, and the viewer won’t mind being taken away from the action that’s just been presented.  If it’s funny enough. Another out is the shocking revelation.  If this gives the viewer fodder for contemplation, you can go to a commercial break and viewers will still be thinking about it by the time they’re finished pressing Fast Forward.  Of course, commercials, or, on long-form series, ends of episodes can use a good cliff-hanger.  I’ve been saying for years that musicals need to get the audience wondering what will happen next.  A good long-form serial will keep you wondering all week, and that next episode becomes appointment television.  You can end scenes with dramatic moments which don’t require further exploration.  One very long-running television show gave a character a cancer scare, and, in the final scene, she got the good news she didn’t have cancer.  A cause for celebration, but the writer knew we didn’t really need to see that celebration.

In musicals, we’ve a distinct advantage: We can always end our scenes with applause-earning numbers. But a scene that ends without a button looks damn awkward, in either medium. And consider this: energy-wise, it’s rather difficult to end a big song and then resume the same scene with dialogue.  The audience feels the huge drop in intensity when you go from sung (and, perhaps, danced) material to spoken words.  Don’t ignore the drop.  I once had a bunch of workers happily goofing off in an impromptu production number, which of course was greeted with an ovation, and then the boss walks in, asks “What’s going on?” and the awkwardness of the comparative silence became a joke in and of itself.

One network television series that, it’s generally acknowledged, was particularly well-written was The West Wing. Quite literally, when my wife is home sick, she takes out season-set DVDs and revisits episodes she’s seen many times. They’re worth looking at just to see how scenes end.  When you’ve viewed a lot of effective endings, you’re more likely to come up with effective ways of ending scenes in your musical.  And, if you’re smart, you won’t have as many scenes in your show as you’d find in a typical West Wing episode.  Too many buttons makes for an unwieldy suit.

Years ago, I attended a new musical comedy with a television comedy writer. Critical of the effectiveness of some of the jokes, he speculated they wouldn’t have made it out of rewrite night on his show. This was a big Aha! moment for me. Every sitcom, before it goes before the cameras goes in front of a large table of funny sorts: punch-up specialists, jokifiers, the layers-on of levity.  Why shouldn’t musicals, my brain stormed, go through the same process?  As it turns out, musicals do go through the same process, and I vowed that one day I’d have a script of mine improved by beneficent clowns around a table. Many years later, around a fancy dinner table at my director’s apartment, the dream came true.  Some of the funniest people I know read the script out loud, and, wherever appropriate, batted better and better gags back and forth.  My script grew far funnier that night.

And now I suppose I have to quote one of the rewrite gang’s added jokes. This exchange didn’t survive into subsequent drafts, only because the character they’re talking about changed so that she wasn’t a klutzy dancer.

DONALD

All morning she’s been kicking holes in the scenery trying to learn my dances. So I brought her over here.

DANNY

Terrific. Tell her to start kicking over there. We could use a window

All those Olivier Awards recently going to Matilda reminds me I once wrote a song by that name.  It was part of a television pilot around ten years ago, in which characters kept breaking out into song.  The networks scoffed: a musical comedy TV series? That’ll be the day.

My heart

On the Titanic centennial there seems to be some sort of obligation that every blog focus on the tragedy.  And I might as well confess it: the catastrophe was completely my fault.  I thoroughly botched it.  But at least I got paid. 

It’s rare I get hired – well, we could stop that sentence right there: It’s rare I get hired.  But I meant to say it’s rare someone wants me to be just the librettist of a piece. And that makes sense because people hear my songs, and therefore become aware of my composer-lyricist abilities; for book writing, you’ve got to see a performance of one of the shows I wrote the book for. And that’s not most of them.

A wonderfully warm actor and singer, Lee Winston, had some sort of relationship with a musical group that was planning a Titanic-related performance.  They’d meticulously researched what pieces were played by the ship-board ensemble, including, most famously, Nearer My God To Thee.  The story goes that the musicians’ sense of duty to the vessel was such, they continued playing until a big wave drowned them all.

Lee’s idea was to add dialogue.  It would be interesting, and far more moving, to get to know these musicians.  They’d play all the music, and, when the characters went on break, they’d interact.  Certain that he could procure my modest fee from the ensemble, Lee told me to go ahead and write it post haste.

The structure of this little drama was dictated by the chronology of events. Get to know the musicians, then there’s this big crash sound.  There’d be some uncertainty about how serious the accident was: after all, the Titanic had been touted as an unsinkable boat.  Worry and panic would grow and then, at the denouement, we’d see the musicians’ decision process, to stay on board, playing.

Now, all of that sounds plenty dramatic, but there’s an inherent problem: the audience is ahead of it.  I don’t know how widely-known it is that the band played on, but surely publicity materials for the show would make the ending clear.

There was also the matter of making the characters individuals, and lovable ones.  That’s something that needed to be established in the opening scenes. And since all the numbers would be diegetic, I couldn’t rely on songs to help characterize anybody.  In this way, the project wasn’t like a jukebox musical, which attempts to use pre-existing well-known songs to tell a story.  I had my story handed to me, and a large set of songs that weren’t fondly-remembered hits.  But now it sounds like I’m making excuses for myself.

The script I came up with was perfunctory; none of it heart-felt.  The producers of the concert took one look at it and decided their concert should remain a concert.  Lee, a man of his word, paid me for the script that would never be used.  I felt bad taking the money.  While I regret not doing a better job, and have no one to blame but myself, looking back on it, I feel sorry the producers failed to collaborate.  A first draft is a little like an architect’s first drawing.  It’s a way of beginning a conversation, in which all parties discuss, and put forth their ideas of what the thing should turn out to be.  In this case, it was one unimpressive draft and the plug was pulled.

A few years after my ship sank, and in a hurry (producers apparently wanted the opening to coincide with the 85th anniversary, but failed) estimable Tony-winners Peter Stone and Maury Yeston created a musical, Titanic, and faced some of the same problems.  (And both again won Tonys, as did the show itself.)  Stone’s approach to the script involved introducing us to an extremely large panoply of characters, assumedly letting us know just enough of each so it would be moving when so many of them die.  The quantity of passengers and staff is dizzying, and one song just involves an amusing woman rattling off names and descriptions of First Class toffs.  On the plus side, Stone provided a number of romantic situations for Yeston to turn into his typically rapturous songs. There’s a marriage proposal, a new love, and an old married couple deciding to perish in each other’s arms.  But ultimately, I think, the authors get done in by this approach.  Way too much time is spent introducing new characters; there’s way too little plot.  And there’s no denying it feels like they’re just rearranging deck chairs while we’re all waiting for some hardly impressive special effect we know is coming.
And now to tell a tale out of school: One year, I did a musical showcase in which a large group of students did my favorite number from Titanic, Lady’s Maid.  In it, Yeston shows the immigrants in steerage, all expressing their dreams of what life in America will be like.  ”I want to be a lady’s maid, lady’s maid in America.  In America the streets are paved with gold.” About a month later, non-musical track students did their own cabaret, and it was considered sporting to send up the more serious-minded musical track crowd.  So, I wrote up a parody, which was then costumed exactly the same way as the previous version, with precisely the same staging, about lower class passengers with a more primal need: “I want to use the ladies room, ladies room in America.  In America the pipes are made of gold.”

If you’ve read this blog enough, you know of my passion for verisimilitude and echt period detail.  So I don’t need to tell you what I thought of the James Cameron blockbuster in which the main characters all act and talk as absolutely no one in 1912 ever did.  I recommend a blog on the cinematic disaster that’s far funnier than I would have been: I Re-Watched Titanic So You Don’t Have To.  You’re Welcome

Find the words

There was a scene in the 2005 musical comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels that I just adored.  It took me a number of years to put my finger on why I enjoyed it so much.  Once I did, though, I felt I discovered something that’s essential to acting.  We’re writing for actors, of course, so it helps to know something of what they go through.

It’s a scene between Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz in which Butz’s sincerity is in question.  At first glance, it would seem to be a plain love scene, in which a man and a woman grow closer, singing a pretty song.  But, in the context of the whole show, the stakes are much greater. You see, Freddy is the pupil of a master con man, who takes him on very much in the manner that Higgins takes on Eliza in My Fair Lady.  Also like My Fair Lady, there’s a delineation of class.  The teacher is a high-brow con, impeccably tailored, which is part of what makes him successful.  But Freddy has no class at all.

So, like Eliza at Ascot, there’s considerable tension built up over whether he can seduce an heiress.  Can he converse with her without revealing he’s a fraud?  And, to up the stakes even more, can he sing a love duet with her?

She starts the cleverly-titled Nothing Is Too Wonderful To Be True and it’s so rhapsodic, the audience falls in love with her.  Not just a pretty girl with a pretty voice singing a pretty melody (music and lyrics by David Yazbek); there’s something about the way she chooses to celebrate the natural beauty all around her that makes her inherently lovable.

Then she turns to Freddy and puts him on the spot: what phenomena does he find Too Wonderful To Be True?  Now the fun begins, as we watch Freddy struggle to think of wondrous things: Crazy Glue?  The free toiletries hotels provide?  Radio call-in giveaways?  It’s a parallel to yelling “Move your blooming arse!” at Ascot and yet he’s just charming enough to put it across.

(couldn’t find Scott & Butz; these are high schoolers)

There’s a whole host of reasons to love this number, but the bit that I keep using in my teaching has to do with seeing Freddy in the process of coming up with all those Wonderful examples.  As played by Norbert Leo Butz, who won a Tony for his performance, the struggle registers on his face, in his whole body.  We watch him think, and there’s much fun in that, true tension.

And, to some extent, this is what should be going on in all non-diegetic musical theatre, and theatre in general.  Characters, usually, haven’t memorized the speech they’re about to make, or the words they’re singing.  So, too, the performer is involved with the thought process of coming up with what to say.  When we see a dull portrayal by some singer-who’s-not-an-actor it’s often lacking in spontaneity because the lyric feels recited, not discovered.  When we see actors in the process of giving birth to the lyrics they sing, songs are more believable, and the players more delightful.

Cast your show with folks who can do that and the results will be Too Wonderful, even better than free shampoo.

Born yesterday

This is the 100th post on this blog.  Which means I get to self-congratulate, look back, crow, consider the future, and try to convince readers of this entry to go back and read the other 99.

Speaking of “99″ – Barbara Feldon.  A year ago or so, I ran into Barbara Feldon at the world premiere of a new musical, the name of which I don’t remember.  As we chatted, I remembered that a collaborator of mine had once told a marvelous story about complimenting her so profusely she gave him a kiss.  On the lips!  So, I brought up the story to see if Feldon would remember.  She did not.  Which crushed my friend.  I guess kissing him wasn’t the most memorable night of her life.  But hey, we know she attends original musicals, so she’s aces in my book.

And so are you, for reading these mad ramblings.  They come out very regularly, compared to most blogs: every five or six days; usually six.  Sometimes I have to strategize when they’ll appear, weeks in advance, if I know I want one to come out on a certain date.  Once such “timed” entry was my most popular ever, a review of the television abomination, Smash.  In a way, I’m disappointed that my comments on a lousy network pilot should attract more attention than, say, a rave about a musical experienced on stage.  The point I’ve probably made more frequently here than any other is that musical theatre is an art form that must be experienced live, in a theatre, not in an excerpt.  The magic of musicals, to an extent that can’t be overstated, involves a flow of energy back and forth over the footlights.  The performer, live, is putting a voice, and facial expressions, and body language, and movement, out there for the delectation of a live audience.  The audience, in turn, reacts – most often with laughter, but sometimes with gasps, inevitably with applause, and, a friend of mine swears Bernadette Peters could hear my sniffles as she sang Children and Art on stage at Broadway’s Booth Theatre.  This has an effect on the performer, who will adjust what she’s doing in a thousand subtle ways, all because of the live response.  And I seem to have lost my point, which is that I wish more people would go out and see new musicals.  Certainly, sitting in your living room gaping at a cathode tube is the palest of substitutes.  And the interest in the Smash critique rather than the one about The Scottsboro Boys reminds me that more people are staying home than going out.  And do they make those things with cathode tubes any more?  I doubt it.  They did when I was a kid, though.

And when I was a kid – I kid you not – I was very excited to discover that Ed Platt, who played the Chief on Get Smart, had been in musicals.  Some weird snobbism exists in me that leads me to feel that the actor who’s done musicals is somehow a superior creature to one who hasn’t.  I admire the ability to appear live, eight days a week.  And the ability to act while singing.  I don’t particularly care for opera, as I’m somewhat accustomed to singers there sounding great but not acting so great.  One of my more popular posts delineates the basic differences between an opera and a musical: I don’t really get what’s so fascinating about semantic distinctions.  But as I’ve cheerfully admitted, I’m anti-semantic.

A more popular post than that referenced the anti-Semitism in the unaccountably popular comedy song, Shiksa Goddess.  Here I won’t complain.  I accept that a lot of people love that song, and I’m glad so many are interested in my pointing out its flaws.  There’s something satisfying in holding a widely-held belief up to the light and revealing the warts.  If I’ve changed a few minds over the hundred posts, well, that’s gratifying.

Used to be, I’d read newsgroups, message boards and chat rooms about musical theatre.  From time to time, I’d feel a compulsion to answer some outrageous statement with a calmly-worded and, in some way, humorous response.  Then, one miscreant decided to devote hundreds of posts to saying I was a terrible person.  Eventually, he chased away the group’s entire readership.  Along the way, I’d gotten into the habit of giving my opinions about musicals, but there had to be a better way of scratching that itch.

Enter a marvelous musical theatre writer named Mark Sutton-Smith.  Over a meal at that diner I wrote a song about, he convinced me of a few things:

• That every musical theatre writer nowadays needs to have some sort of presence on the web.
• That utilizing WordPress would make blogging easy, or, at the very least, do-able; in any event he promised he’d answer questions.
• That besides my individual voice as a show-writer, I’ve a unique ability to put in words a perspective on musical theatre others would find valuable.

Immediately I had this anxiety that blogging would take up time usually devoted to musical theatre writing.  But the argument was made that it would replace the similar time I used to spend on newsgroups and on-line forums.  I also feared that Mark would have to spend so much time answering my questions, he’d never find time to write anything himself, but right now he has a new musical, The Usual, running in Michigan until April 22.

And I’ve had two shows on the boards since this blog began: the trunk-song revue, Things We Do For Love and the Portland production of The Christmas Bride, which required a new orchestration (the great, time-consuming, auto-didactic accomplishment of 2011).  So that initial fear failed to materialize: I’ve gotten stuff done.  But another anxiety is always with me: that I’m not getting enough done.  To quell this, I thought back to the back pages of some songbooks I dearly loved as a kid.  There were separate collections of Gershwin, Porter and Arlen that listed the composer’s complete output, year by year.  And, some years, they wrote nothing.  Or just one song.  So, if a few months go by and I know I’ve completed nothing, I can still feel like I’m in the company of geniuses.

As I’m yammering on, celebrating the completion of my hundredth post, I see I’ve gone over a thousand words on this one.  I try to keep these things shorter than a thousand words, and include links, videos, audio files and amusing Easter eggs.  The one thing I’m not sure I can continue doing is the post-naming protocol.  But, since nobody seems to have figured out why each of the 100 has such an odd title, perhaps no one will miss it.