Category: Music

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The Bourne Imperative

Well, I’m not sure whether I could stomach Lorna Luft and Dallas alumnus Ken Kercheval in a touring production of White Christmas; but Matthew Bourne’s Bizet ballet The Car Man was certainly worth a trip to the splendid Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru (Wales Millennium Centre) in Cardiff Bay. Inspired by James M. Cain’s oft-adapted 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (revived on 24 January 1952 on Hollywood Sound Stage, starring radio stalwart Richard Widmark), The Car Man is set in mid-20th century small town America (the fictional Harmony, pop. 375), The Car Man tells the story of the titular drifter who falls for the accommodating wife of his new boss (a vixen named Lana, after the actress who played her in the 1946 film version). Though easily duped, the cuckold is bound to find out, eventually, and to be less than accepting of the triangular situation.

Unlike his whimsical if choreographically frivolous Edward Scissorhands (my impressions of which I shared previously), Bourne’s earlier Car Man is proper dance theater, with an exceptional performance by Michela Meazza as Lana.

While firmly within the tradition of 19th-century melodrama without resorting to camp, The Car Man bears no resemblance to Carmen. Indeed, the story as told in movement, light, and a generous amount of stage blood is far easier to follow than that of Bizet’s opera or the Prosper Mérimée novella upon which it is based, a plot comedian Ed Wynn insisted on translating for the listening audience of Tallulah Bankhead’s radio variety program The Big Show on 26 November 1950, as opera star Lauritz Melchior struggled to perform Pagliacci: “And as the curtain rises, we see Carmen walking out of the cigarette factory. We know it’s a cigarette factory because there are doctors walking in and out of the building.”

Those medical practitioners, of course, were meant to endorse tobacco rather than treat the workers or assess the risks of smoking.

“Carmen has many admirers,” Wynn continued, “and to each one of them she has given a lock of her hair. Isn’t that beautiful? So, Carmen, or as she is now called by her friends, Baldy, [. . .].”

Not that Mr. Wynn could have possibly prepared me for the theatrical experience of The Car Man. In keeping with his celebrated all-male revision of Swan Lake, the old love triangle has been colored pink; or, rather, it is getting another—an outré—angle, as Bourne tosses a male admirer of Lana’s lover into the bloody mix of lust, jealousy, and murder. Being granted views of a communal shower, a private bedroom, and life behind bars—or wherever else you might expect intimate encounters of the same and opposite sex on a sultry evening, Bourne’s audiences can and should expect the full bodyworks.

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Crude Awakening; or, This Ain’t Show Boat

Unlike the previously discussed play Deuce, this one came highly recommended: Tonys darling Spring Awakening (music by Duncan Sheik; book and lyrics by Steven Sater), with which I caught up during the week leading up to Broadway’s annual awards ceremony. It has been touted as the new Show Boat, the spectacle with a story that revolutionized musical theater back in 1927 (and revived on radio as a musical, a straight play, a musical serial, and a number of burlesques). “Old Man River,” take me now! I realize that I am filing a minority report here; but if this is the new face of Broadway, I just got to slap it.

For starters, that new face is partially obscured by hand-held microphones, props that, along with an audience seated onstage and a blackboard listing the tunes, are meant to suggest, in the by now tiresome postmodern mode of self-reflexivity, that what you see and get is only “Make Believe”—an Epic theatrical in the Brechtian vein designed to be stimulating rather than absorbing. Verfremdung, Broadway style, means to play out whatever is left of a story like a rock concert; that is, by playing to the audience rather than interacting with one’s fellow players.

Spring Awakening is not so much an adaptation of Franz Wedekind’s drama of youth, longing, and disillusionment as it is an assortment of clichés about hormonally-induced teenage Sturm and Drang. This high-Rent production (which won’t break even at the box office any time soon) may well appeal to youngsters who don’t know any better or refuse to listen, and to their parents who assume this noisy spectacle to be happening since it has an energetic and gifted cast that emotes in foul language and jumps up and down a lot, as if out to bring in ‘da punk. In its treatment of sexuality beyond the old boy-impregnates-girl-and-both-pay-for-it formula, however, the show betrays its conservative agenda, acknowledging the reality of alternative stirrings only in the form of comic relief.

Choreographed like an old Britney Spears number and outfitted in costumes left over from a touring production of Ah, Wilderness!, Spring Awakening revels in an identity crisis equal to that suffered by an acne-troubled, media-beleaguered high schooler set to pass out at a Goth concert—and it is just about as cheerful and endearing. “Mis’ry’s Comin’ Aroun’,” showtune lovers.

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"Follow, Follow, Follow, Follow": A Hint from The Fantasticks

Well, “[i]t’s stupid, of course,” and “immensely undignified”; perhaps, “I’ve gone mad.” That is how lovelorn Matt, pining for Luisa, the girl next door, explains his “situation” in The Fantasticks. Earlier this week, I had the good fortune to catch up with the off-Broadway revival of this Mousetrap among the musicals. The current production is staged at the less than enchanting sounding Snapple Theater Center (soon to be renamed after actor Jerry Orbach), a suitably small venue for this intimate play (music by Harvey Schmidt; book and lyrics by Tom Jones, who, nearly fifty years after its conception, still performs in it, night after night, albeit under an assumed name).

I was particularly receptive to the wit and wisdom and whimsy of this literary charmer about love and make-believe, disillusionment and romantic rekindling, to the gentle reminder expressed in “Try to Remember,” the show’s best known tune:

Deep in December it’s nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.

I had just made up my mind to cancel my flight back home to Wales in order stay in New York City until such time as my one and only would come and fetch me and spend a few days together in the city where we first met. It seems that you can have your Big Apple and eat it, after all.

My appeal to “follow” has not fallen of deaf ears. Like Matt, who’s gone out into the world and left his Luisa behind, I can now look forward to a cheerful reunion and the confidence of we’ll-take-it-from-here. Never mind that I am no longer as agile as former American Idol contestant Anthony Fedorov (who plays Matt) and that my Luisa sings as loudly as he snores and tends to sprout hairs on his back. Still, anyone with a sense of wonder, a penchant for “Metaphor” and a love “[b]etter far than [it]” will not have to stretch or struggle to relate to their story.

“[T]ry to see it,” the Narrator encourages the audience: “Not with your eyes, for they are wise, / But see it with your ears.” It may look “mad” to the world, but my act of folly sure sounds like something to remember once the chill of December comes round. The rest will “follow.”

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If Momma Was Buried: The Gypsies of Grey Gardens

Well, I did not sit around for the no doubt excruciatingly drawn out season finale of American Idol, especially not after Tuesday night’s less than scintillating showdown. Instead, I snatched up tickets for Grey Gardens, Broadway’s current musical must-see. Relying on the New York City subway system, I very nearly the opening scenes. A signal problem and the uncertainty of its timely solution convinced me to alight on Fifth Avenue and 59th, giving me a mere twelve minutes to make a dash for it—past the throngs of sailors in town for the 20th annual Fleet Week—all the way to the Walter Kerr Theater, not far from which venue former Idol Fantasia Barrino stares at passers-by from a giant display for The Color Purple.

After assuring those uneasy about the implications of the beads of sweat on my shiny forehead, that I had used Dial, I squeezed into my allotted space, fanning myself with the playbill, just as Grey Gardens opened its gates, rusty and unhinged. What awaited me was the perfect antidote to the excesses of late 20th and early 21st-century Broadway, which is alive but far from well with the sound of Andrew Lloyd Webberish bombast, with the flashy, the vapid, and the utterly pointless (Legally Blonde, the musical, anyone?). The melancholy and darkly funny Gardens defies this trend; neither Christine Ebersole nor Mary Louise Wilson enter the stage in a helicopter, belt out generic power ballads, or give big names a bad one.

Now, there is nothing novel about the play, inspired by the lives of the Camelot-and-went-nowhere Bouviers, aunt and niece of Jacqueline Onassis, who became the subject of a 1975 documentary (which, my paper fan informed me, is now being dramatized for the screen). The titular mansion is filled with echoes of past lives, fictional and otherwise, which is not to say that it is Gardens variety.

The intrigues and conspiracies of eccentric old dears has long been the stuff of dark comedy and melodrama: those Ladies in Retirement come to mind (and was heard on the Lux Radio Theatre, as do Arsenic and Old Lace (adapted for radio’s Screen Guild Theater), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and radio dramas assortment of weird “Sisters” (such as Lurene Tuttle and Rosalind Russell in a Suspense thriller bearing that title). In musical terms, Gardens is Rose missing her turn and turning her socialite daughter into a spinster maid. Edith and daughter Edie are two “Peas” gone to pot.

Above all, Gardens is a character study. To say that it is neither “little old lady land” camp nor Miss Havisham Gothic is not to imply that it misses any opportunity to give us the tour of a house build on ambitions shattered into lost chances, a house out touch with the times even at the best of times, from its Republican heyday during the Roosevelt administration to its decline in the ’60s and ’70s. Gardens is also refreshingly post-Postmodern, which is to say that the show is reflective rather than self-reflexive. So, get out there and smell the faded flowers. Just don’t count on the subway to take you there.

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(Up) Yours in Songs

Well, the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest is history. That it is also politics was once again apparent in the shamelessly biased attacks on our nerves during the announcements of the televoting results. The face of Europe is changing, and that of anyone tuning in west of Latvia likely to get longer. Perhaps, last year’s Finnish win was the traditional song contest’s swansong.

This year, it was the revenge of what the west regards as Europe’s ugly ducklings. From now on, or until further notice from Russia, the contest is going to be one big Eastern Euro-paean after the singing of which most of those precious “points” are being traded by former Communist countries voting for each other’s representatives in a series of mostly predictable not-so-foreign flag waving gestures.

When you live on what now looks like a remote island way to the west of it all, “Flying the Flag” is a pointless exercise; the UK’s Scooch, who misfired with said camp number, could only rely on major points from a minority anglophisle like Malta.

“Yours in song”: Rose Marie (seen here in a photograph from my collection) had nothing to do with it.

The night proved the might of the new Russia, whose brass girlband screamed something about “want[ing] your money, honey,” and the animosity our younger and poorer relations in the east feel toward the western founding fathers of the old love-thy-neighbor fest. Perhaps, voting is still a novel concept to them, which is not to say that the winner of the evening, Serbia’s Marija Serifovic was inferior to the imitation swing from Germany (crooned by a smarmy and charm-deficient Roger Cicero) or the pink mess that was supposed to convey “L’amour à la Francaise.”

Had the runner-up (Ukraine) walked away with the trophy, I would have attributed the success to the outrageous if too-silly-to-be-offensive drag act that thumped its nose at the contest, just as Finland’s provocative monster metal medalists did last year. This time around, winning the contest was not a matter of sending or shaking it up (Denmark’s “Drama Queen” and Israel’s “Push the Button” did not even make it into the finals; nor did Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The natural selection of favorites and the survival of the allegedly fittest or finest was a matter of ethnic myopics, of turning Eurovision into a bloc party in which the eastern front now far outnumbers the west. It wasn’t exactly hostile (the audible resentment of the results by the audience in the hall notwithstanding)—but it sure wasn’t impartial.

Afterwards (and a few Black Russians later) I signed off from the politics of schlock pop-rock with a screening of The Dolly Sisters (1945), in which a musical act from Eastern Europe (Hungary, in this case) gets the full Hollywood treatment. Speaking of Hungary, even at the risk of undermining my east/west dialectics, I thought that Magdi Rúzsa’s “Unsubstantial Blues” ought to have fared better.

Meanwhile, I did not get to continue my Radio Vs. Television series, my plans having been thwarted by yet another broadband brownout; nor was I able to tune in many of the previously announced new drama series airing on BBC 4, relying, clearly overmuch, on internet radio rather than the old wireless.

And now, after permitting friends to celebrate another one of my many happy returns, I am turning by back on Europe for a trip to Gotham. As much as I resent having to pay for wireless access by sipping overpriced java at a Starbucks, I’ll try to report from there . . .

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"Round and Round Hitler’s Grave"

It took a while before the news got around the world; but on this day, 30 April, in 1945, Adolf Hitler got around facing trial and execution by committing suicide in his bunker. It would take another six decades until that hideout was opened for public inspection, when, in 2004, the Führer’s final days became the subject of a German film Der Untergang (2004). The Great Dictator had often been the subject of caricatures and crude character sketches, which are so much easier to accomplish than a life-size portrait. They are so much easier to take, as well, considering that a realistic image forces us to acknowledge that, far from being super- (or sub-) human, Hitler was one of us.

Throughout the Second World War, parodies and revenge fantasies boosted the morale of the Allies, comforted by way of comic deflation or enraged through violent melodrama. Radio popularized songs like Spike Jones’s previously mentioned “Der Führer’s Face” and Pete Seeger’s “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave.” If he could not be assassinated, potshots had to do:

I’m-a going to Berlin
To Mister Hitler’s town
I’m gonna take my forty-four
And blow his playhouse down.

This is how, a few days after the Führer’s death, the Almanac Singers modified those lines of Seeger’s original song when they performed it for a live broadcast of Norman Corwin’s celebrated VE-Day tribute “On a Note of Triumph,” the highest-rated American radio play of all time:

We’re gonna tell the postman,
Next time he comes ’round,
That Mr. Hitler’s new address
Is the Berlin buryin’ ground.

The Führer was dead, all right. Some eager radio writers had already killed him off, in fantasies like the aforementioned “Death Comes for Adolf Hitler.”  And yet, did that “playhouse” of his ever shut down only because its director, its producers, sponsors, and select members of staff were found dead, along with an audience of millions or, as discussed here, tried and executed in the spectacle of Nürnberg?

Corwin cautioned the American public, asking listeners to “fix [their] eyes on the horizons” and swing [their] ears about.” The old regime did not simply expire, no matter how many rounds had been shot to silence the enemy or how loudly one went “Round and Round” the problem of facing the aftermath.

Lately, I have been watching a number of German post-war films that dealt with the recent past of the fallen Reich and were less than sanguine about the Wunder of the nation’s reinvention as a republic. That is, they dealt with the inconvenient truth that the Nazis were not all below ground. Some had gone underground. They went on to make it big during the US-financed Wirtschaftswunder (or economic boom). Both Wir Wunderkinder (1958) and Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (1959) comment on the big fascist business and bureaucracy behind Germany’s capitalist society and its corruption by Nazi big shots who, rehabilitated without remorse, managed to get high up by keeping a low political profile.

It is this sense of a hidden presence, of an unresolved, let alone conquered past, that, many decades after Germany’s surrender, made it difficult for me to face life in that country, a country where fascists old and new still dance round and round Hitler’s grave as if in hopes of a resurrection; where those in denial of the past or in support of its policies still trample on the graves of millions; and where the radical left not only opened wounds, but fire, perpetrating acts of extremist terror.

I have not been back these seventeen years. We all have our baggage, you might say. Sometimes it weighs so heavily on our souls, it keeps us from dancing . . .

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Tara on the Danube; or, The Ambassador Wore Ballet Shoes

Well, that didn’t last long, did it? The wireless connection in our hotel room in Budapest, I mean. It pretty much collapsed after about 48 hours, even though we had paid a small bundle to be online for the week. Not that I find it easy to keep this journal, to keep up with the out-of-date while being out and about on my travels. Our days were filled with taking in the sights; our evenings (and bellies) with goulash, goose liver, and Hungarian wines—from which culinary excesses arose the most curious and vivid dreams. I was paying my respects at the bedside of the by me previously pooh-poohed Zsa Zsa Gabor, shared a moldy piece of decades-old cake with Madonna, who told me my gray roots needed a fresh coating of dye, and was set to teach “My Fair Lady” (whatever that might entail) at a soberingly conservative village school. Those subconscious night flights of fancy were not nearly as strange, though, as the experience of going to the Budapest Opera House to see Gone With the Wind transformed into a Hungarian ballet.

“I bet you, if it was handled right, that picture would make a great book.” That is what the aforementioned Fibber McGee told his wife Molly after watching the premiere of Gone With the Wind at their local theater in early 1940. And there I was, 67 years later, hundreds of miles from my local theater, asking myself whether it could make a great ballet. I had never considered the question; but when we walked into the magnificent Operaház to find out what was playing, we could not resist snatching up what might have been the last as well as the best tickets to the pop-cultural and historical confrontation that was the world premier of Elfújta a Szél.

In her introduction to the piece, US ambassador April H. Foley made a somewhat desperate effort to stress the connections between Gone With the Wind and Hungarian culture, reminding readers of the playbill that the novel was awarded a prize named after Hungarian-born newspaper mogul Joseph Pulitzer; that the production of the movie had involved Hungarian-born director George Cukor; and that it starred a leading lady once “under contract to Hungarian filmmaker Alexander Korda.” Such connecting-the-dottiness rather reminds me of the treatment I am giving American radio drama, which I am wont to work into just about any conversation; especially into this one, given that a scene from Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 bestseller had been dramatized for radio more than three years before it hit the big screen in December 1939.

But, back to the ballet. The last time I exposed myself to the spectacle of cinema gone tiptoeing, my response was less than rapturous. Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands seemed to rely overmuch on fanciful costumes and fantastic sets than on the footwork that had made Bourne’s earlier Swan Lake such breathtaking theater. Choreographed by Lilla Pártay (to the music of Anton Dvorak, whose “New World” was not the bygone one romanticized by Gone), Elfújta was decidedly more traditional in its approach to ballet, even though its retelling of the contrived melodrama that is Gone often felt like a danced synopsis—a series of tiptoe tableaux. However charming or thrilling the moves, it was the tiptoeing around American history that had me wriggling in my seat.

Commenting on Gone’s depiction of the American Civil War, Foley remarked that the “attitudes toward slavery and stereotypes of African Americans are consistent with the historical era” and that “[a]lthough we certainly do not share these views today, we appreciate Gone With the Wind for what it is: an icon of American historical fiction that is still enjoyed by millions the world over.” Now, aside from feeling that Scarlett’s struggles are so much less interesting than the period in which they are set, I was disconcerted to see that there was next to nothing “historical” about Elfújta, that its love story might as well have taken place on the banks of the Danube—had it not been for those three white actors grinning and swaying in unconvincing dark makeup that was nearly as cartoonish as blackface.

I am not sure in which way Elfújta could “enrich an already close and thriving bilateral relationship” between Hungary and America, other than celebrating a mutual dumbing down of the social sciences. Having long been oppressed and subjected to foreign terrors under the communist regime, Hungarians might be better equipped to identify with the suppressed stories of the slaves than with tales involving Scarlett, Melanie, and Rhett. Now, I don’t know what the role of ballet should or could be in today’s culture; but, for all its splendor, the frivolous Elfújta struck me as an ambassadorial misstep.

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Post-Cold War Days, meleg Nights: Eurovision, Idol Worship, and National Identity

I wonder whether I’ll come across any signs of support for Magdi Rúzsa next week when we wander around the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Though no politician, Ms. Rúzsa is something of an ambassador. A former Megasztar (or Hungarian Idol) contestant, she is going to Helsinki to represent Hungary in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, to be held on 12 May. The contest, which has been staged annually since 1956 in an effort to foster a united Europe, rarely brings out the best a culture has to offer; but it often brings out the worst in nationalistic pride. As such, this noble experiment of Cold War Eurovisionaries is an abject failure, both diplomatically and artistically. That it turned out to be a sensational success and is now more popular than ever has more to do with spectacle than respectability. Hoping for musical excellence or cultural relevance would be tantamount to expecting an Academy Award-worthy performance from Hungarian mantrap Zsa Zsa Gabor, recipient of the 1958 Golden Globe in the whatever-happened-to-that category of “Most Glamorous Actress.”

As a German expatriate, and a less than proud German at that, I am too wary of nationalism to be cheering its benefits. In order to counteract nationalism,Eurovision rules stipulate that television viewers cannot call in to cast their vote in favor of a contestant representing their own country; but that rule poses no hindrance to borders-hopping fanatics, of which there are, I am pleased to say, very few Germans, if the notoriously poor performance of my native country is any indication. And yet, even a nation as divided as Iraq can be united in Idol worship, as has been suggested in this report about the Iraqi winner of Star Academy, which is rather a sign of hope than an alarm signal.

Now, I’m not sure how Ms. Rúzsa will fare. Hungary, which joined the competition along with several other reformed Eastern Bloc nations in 1994 (after a failed attempt in 1993), has a patchy record at best; in fact, Rúzsa’s “Unsubstantial Blues” has to make it through the semi-finals (on 10 May) in order to qualify for the main event. I suspect that the number will be overshadowed by some of the more outrageous acts, among which Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serdyuchka is the one to top (although the Danes got a “Drama Queen” in the running). While popular enough to get the nation’s votes, Verka Serdyuchka has enraged Ukrainian nationalists who deem the act an embarrassment, as was the case back in 1998 when transgender diva Dana International represented Israel (and won the competition). Clearly, those sing-to-win performances of Celine Dion or Lulu (recently featured on American Idol) are fuzzy Eurovision history; but is Verka merely presenting a challenge to more traditional acts or challenging the very act of representing a nation? Once you cross the boundaries of gender, are national borders to be upheld? Or is subculture proposed as a transnational superculture?

Cold war days seem to have made way for balmy postmodern nights. The iron curtain has melted into uncurtailed irony; and what once looked like a breakdancing showdown among feuding neighbors is now a free-for-all breaking with traditions. To use a scrap of Hungarian I just picked up, things are certainly meleg these days (meaning “gay” or “not cold”). And as much as I regret the lack of good tunes or taste, I can’t help but warm to this queer new world of a continent I left so long ago.

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"The Party’s Over": Anita O’Day and Betty Comden

Well, by pronouncing the “Party” over I am not referring to Thanksgiving (which I only observed from afar this year), but to a popular song and two remarkable women closely associated with it: “The Party’s Over” from Bells Are Ringing, a musical revived on Broadway, if unsuccessfully, back in 2001, when I saw it with Faith Prince in the part made famous by Judy Holliday. Yesterday, lyricist Betty Comden, who wrote it, and singer Anita O’Day, who performed it, both passed away at the ages of 89 and 87, respectively. I spent some time this weekend researching their careers in search of a radio angle.

Being that Ms. O’Day was a popular singer in the 1940s, that angle was not hard to find. Here you may hear her sing the “Drum Boogie,” accompanied by Gene Krupa’s orchestra on the Command Performance program, broadcast 4 September 1942. “Brother, that is solid sending,” mistress of ceremony Tallulah Bankhead put it in the slang of the day.

The “fine little red-headed vocalist,” as Bob Hope introduced her, would return to the Command Performance microphone on 16 December 1944, this time singing “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.” Together with bandleader Stan Canton, O’Day is heard reading the names (and the fanciful monikers) of the servicemen who requested the number and to whom it was dedicated.

Just a few days after this broadcast, the musical On the Town opened on Broadway, capturing the mood of a war-weary nation by following three marines on shore leave, out for fun in the “wonderful town” of New York, New York (which is where I caught the show in 1997, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park). On the Town was the first of many shows written by Betty Comden and her lifelong collaborator, Adolph Green, who started out with a comedy act in Greenwich Village, called “The Revuers.” As early as 1939, the team took their act to the airwaves. Fun With the Revuers, which featured Judy Holliday (then still performing under the name of Judy Tuvim), became a weekly series on NBC radio and ran until November 1940 (as I learned here).

Comden and Green understood how to maximize their exposure; not only did they perform in the plays they wrote, they also recycled their material for various media. One such piece was the operetta “The Baroness Bazooka,” which was shoehorned into the “Cliche Expert,” a radio comedy produced on 2 May 1944 by Columbia Presents Corwin (for a recording of which I am indebted to the keeper of BlogAdvance’s “Blog of the Month” for October 2006). Based on a character created by Frank Sullivan, “Cliche Expert” is a courtroom farce of sorts, with Comden and Green playing themselves, as “star witnesses” called in to testify to the titular character’s expertise on the subject of trite phrases. Being a burlesque, rather than cliche, “The Baroness” is rudely interrupted and stricken from the record.

This is not to say that Ms. Comden was not an expert in the matter; indeed, she wrote so many memorable lyrics that strike us as overly familiar today. “The Party’s Over” is riddled with cliches like “It’s time to call it a day,” “They’ve burst your pretty balloon” and “the piper must be paid.” Yet somehow such lines lose little of their pathos when delivered with conviction by an artist like Anita O’Day.

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George Gershwin, "Composer of the Week"

Well, I gave up on it years ago. I lost touch, or the desire to catch up with it. With Pop music, I mean. You know, whatever it is that is being presented to you as the latest and therefore presumably the hottest. The “hottest” is rarely what anyone tells you it is; it is something you’ve got to discover for yourself, no matter how odd, old, or remote it may be from current, industry-generated trends. Trends are for those too inert to develop an individual taste, those who listen, wear, read or see whatever sly marketers have styled “stylish.” There’s a lot of this trendsetting by proxy going on in the blogosphere, which has at last turned into an extension of the advertising racket.

I do not feel sorry for web journalists who go in for and are let down by schemes that promise them a few bucks, at the mere mention of which they forsake their integrity and turn hawkers. No, I do not pity them—I despise them for subjecting me to what can only be described as more or less inept infomercials. For once, amateurs and professionals alike, writers and artists with a creative impulse quickened by exhibitionism are given a chance to publish and display whatever they please, whenever they choose, without any interference from patrons or sponsors. Never before has such an opportunity presented itself to so many. Why squander it all to become a mouthpiece for someone else, rather than your own product, idea, or person?

However incompetent in the arts of self-promotion, I am not averse to conjuring the entrepreneurial spirit; nor am I condemning advertising outright. If that were the case, I could hardly endure, let alone enjoy, American radio drama, the first entertainment designed to sell something above and beside itself. It just ain’t for me, this kind of double-dealing. Instead, I relish in the freedom of sharing whatever crosses my path or tickles my still sensitive fancy. And (commercial free) BBC Radio 3 is certainly doing some tickling these days: its “Composer of the Week” is George Gershwin, a song plugger (some kind of human demo tape) who Tin Pan Alley-ooped himself to the top of the perennial pops.

A tuneful if cursory biography of the composer and the many people who shaped his career (Astaire, Max Dreyfuss, Paul Whiteman and Walter Damrosch, impersonated by accomplished if unidentified radio actors, including Kenny Delmar, Frank Readick, Tom Collins, and Agnes Moorehead) was presented on the Cavalcade of America program on 27 February 1939, a year and half after after Gershwin’s death.

I developed a taste for Gershwin’s music some five decades later when a close friend of mine, himself formerly in show business, invited me to see the cheerful pastiche Crazy for You on Broadway (the above poster, signed by the entire cast, being a memento of that memorable event). Now, I have seen plenty of musical theater since then, anything from Show Boat and Gypsy to Sweeney Todd and The Drowsy Chaperone; but no show has left me humming quite as many long familiar yet ever thrilling tunes as Crazy for You, cleverly billed as a “New Gerswhin Musical Comedy.” Now, I don’t know how I might have felt about it had I seen Pia Zadora and Brady Bunch alumna Ann B. Davis in it (the latter getting far more requests for autographs than the former); let’s just say I was lucky to have experienced it being performed by the original cast.

The five broadcasts of BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week series are a serviceable introduction to Gershwin’s works, featuring the voices of Fred and Adele Astaire (“Fascinating Rhythm,” “So Am I”), Al Jolson (the inevitable “Swanee”), Ukulele Ike (“Lady, Be Good!”), Ella Fitzgerald (“The Man I Love”), Audrey Hepburn (“How Long Has This Been Going On”), excerpts from Of Thee I Sing, Strike Up the Band, Porgy and Bess—and plenty of Gershwin at the piano.