Today I went to put a song up and realized I had to write a blog about it. Then I started writing the blog and it kind of ... grew.
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I have a deep, abiding love for musicals.
This shouldn't come as any surprise to people who know me: I love music, I love stories; stories set to music are my favourite songs. And if you can gather a bunch of song-stories together like a bouquet of flowers and put them into the service of a single, overarching story, and give that story capable, talented actors and singers to tell it...I'll be captivated.
People have assumed, based on that single piece of information, that I must be gay. To be fair, I conform to some other gay tropes, but I've had people who only knew one thing about me -- he likes musicals -- figure I also like men.
It's stupid, that stereotype. And outdated. It's true that gay men have long been attracted to theatre, especially back when they were cast in the eternal outsider's role and forced to act their way through life, but that increasingly no longer applies (and thank Whatever for that).
There is, may I remind you, more than one kind of outsider.
No, I'm not gay. But I love musicals.
My first exposure to them came late. Grade 11. Our small but mighty band at Westminster played selections from Fiddler On The Roof. I will never, ever forget that performance, because I almost shit myself the instant it started.
We had one trumpet, and only one: my friend Craig Robertson. He was and is prodigiously talented, and coupled with hard work and discipline borne of true passion, he has parlayed that gift into a richly satisfying career. I entertained thoughts of following in his footsteps and my mother gently but firmly steered me away from those thoughts.
But back then, Craig was also, how shall we put this, a bit of a
That particular arrangement of Selections from Fiddler On The Roof opened with the iconic title theme played by solo...you guessed it...trumpet. Craig decided on the spur of the moment that he was going to take it slightly...uptempo. More than slightly, actually. Damn near twice as fast as marked.
This presented a nontrivial problem for the rest of us. Because after Craig's eight bar solo to open the piece, I came in (baritone, think a small, higher-range tuba) with a counter-melody (you can hear it fourteen seconds in)...and that counter melody is intricate...twice as many notes, meaning it was effectively TWICE AS FAST as the outrageous speed Craig had set. After me, that counter-melody got passed around the entire band at the same ridiculous speed before segueing into another segment.
Later, I asked the conductor, our affable teacher Mr. Clark, how he felt when Craig decided to...test us. "What can you do?" he answered. "We were all along for the ride. I was sure we were going to fly off the road eight bars in."
We didn't.
With the kind of terrified exhilaration I'd previously only felt on roller coasters, I whipped into my turn with that melody. Valves pistoned up and down. I wasn't thinking; I had no time to. The music was supposed to played with a bounce, clearly articulated, which meant -- at the speed I was going -- that I had to double-tongue. I'd never done that in performance, but here I was doing it of necessity. Damn you, Craig, I thought, with more than a little admiration.
The least player in that little band was at least competent, and several people, including Craig's future wife Nicole on flute, were members of the Youth Symphony or otherwise played outside of that ensemble. We each took our turn, and we nailed it. What's more, it sounded better fast, as far as I was concerned. Not that this was something you could say to Mr. Clark, who was as agitated as I'd ever seen him once we were safely offstage.
Sorry, caught up in the memory riptide there for a moment. I miss band. I really miss band.
I made it a point to see the movie version of Fiddler and I was hooked. The late eighties was the heyday of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, and I became a little obsessed with Phantom of the Opera. With (okay, maybe not-so) typical teen ardour, I changed Christine to Darlene and sang Raoul and the Phantom as applicable...then I learned to play the entire score from memory, taped myself doing so, and presented the tape to Darlene. I cringe a little thinking of that, even though I haven't changed much--I still fall hard for people and occasionally have to restrain myself from extravagant gestures. But Darlene took that tape with good grace. Wouldn't have been long before the evening, come to think of it, which itself came a scant couple of months before her proposing to me.
Think of all the things we've shared and seen
Don't think about the things which might have been
--"Think Of Me", PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Eventually I saw Phantom on its first run at the Pantages in Toronto. High school graduation gift from my parents. Went with my then-girlfriend, Lynne. SECOND ROW seats. The chandelier damn near decapitated us at the end of Act 1. Confession: that was and remains the only time in my life that I was with somebody and fervently wished she were someone else. Phantom was a Darlene-thing, not a Lynne-thing. Lynne didn't even really like musicals, I don't think.
University brought my room-mate and lifelong friend Jason, who shares my love of musicals. He introduced me to a lot more Lloyd-Webber (including the one I'm EVENTUALLY going to highlight here). Also a little-known musical called CHESS (lyrics by Tim Rice, Lloyd-Webber's usual librettist, music by the male half of ABBA). You've almost certainly never heard of this one, but if you're of a certain age I guarantee you've heard the song that starts Act II, a mega-hit called One Night In Bangkok.
CHESS is probably still my favourite musical. There are several snippets of lyric in it that felt, at various times in my life, as if I might have written them specifically for myself. Starting when my relationship with Lynne went kablooie:
What's going on around me
Is barely making sense
I need some explanations fast
I see my present partner
In the imperfect tense
And I don't see how we can last
I feel I need a change of cast
Maybe I'm on nobody's side....
"Nobody's On Nobody's Side", CHESS
At intervals even now, this one recurs:
Now I'm where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven't won at all
Running for my life and never looking back in case there's someone right behind to shoot me down and say he always knew I'd fall
When the crazy wheel slows down
Where will I be?
Back where I started
"Where I Want To Be", CHESS
Or how about:
Nothing is so good it lasts eternally
Perfect situations must go wrong
But this has never yet prevented me
Wanting far too much for far too long
Looking back, I could have played it differently
Won a few more moments, who can tell
But it took time to understand the man
Now at least I know I know him well...
"I Know Him So Well", CHESS
Yeah. Change the gender up and I've lived that. That whole bloody song. "But in the end (she) needs a little bit more than me/more security"...
I could just keep linking CHESS lyrics all day along--there an entire song that moves in and out of the libretto with each new production which I consider to be one of the saddest, most beautiful songs ever written--but I haven't even approached what I'm going to write about today and have probably lost half my readers already.
The musicals continued. I have related before how Lynne and I went to see Les Miserables, how I bawled and she remained steely-eyed throughout. My contention is tht if you can see that production and NOT cry, you are in fact dead and don't know it. Incidentally, Eva and I will be seeing it next week at the Grand Theatre in London. It's this year's High School Musical project (last year's was The Addams Fanily and it was far better than I'd thought it would be; any chance to hear Craig playing, I leap at).
I've also seen The Pirates of Penzance and Cabaret, both enlivened with my friend's trumpet. And of course, The Book Of Mormon, a couple of years ago, still among the funniest things I've ever heard. On my bucket list are Rent, Titanic and doubtless a bunch more to come, but I'm open to anything.
One of the musicals I have NOT seen, but DO have memorized, is probably Lloyd-Webber's least known. You probably know that along with Phantom, he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Cats, Evita and a few others, but I'm betting you've never heard of Tell Me On A Sunday.
Tell Me On A Sunday is the "song' half of SONG AND DANCE. The 'dance' half is something called Variations, a set of, ahem, variations of Paganini's 24th Caprice, here performed on cello by Julian Lloyd-Webber, the composer's son.
I could write forever on this. I own no few than five different sets of variations on the 24th Caprice (Rachmaninov, Brahms, Lutoslawski, Hamelin, Lloyd-Webber) and am composing my own. It's an extremely well-known classical piece that (for me, at least) isn't well known enough. To me it's like Pachelbel's Canon--endlessly malleable in the right compositional hands--except I never did like the Canon and its overplay hasn't improved it.
When Rachmaninov finished his 18th variation, he knew he had a hit. "This one", he wrote, "is for my agent". The 18th variation is by far the best known of Rachmaninov's set and is often included on compilation albums by itself, something I've always considered a travesty.
Lloyd-Webber's echo of this is a freaking GORGEOUS piece. He must have known he had a hit, too, because it shows up in both 'Song' (Unexpected Song) and 'Dance' (5th variation).
'Tell Me On A Sunday' is a remarkable and demanding one-woman show. The female character is deeply, deeply flawed, and unable to learn from repeated mistakes in love. She would seem like a caricature but for the fact I've known more than one woman just like her.
Emma defines herself entirely in relation to whatever man she's with at the time. She's incapable of being alone and a series of men see this and batten on her, something she mistakes for eternal love. After each failed relationship, she rationalizes 'it's not the end of the world' and proceeds to the next, eventually ending up with one who's married to someone else. This being a traditional show, that doesn't end well, either...but she finally seems to grasp that her final reinvention must be for her and not for some him.
One of the breakup songs in this musical extravaganza has always stuck with me, and it's my song of the day today. It's the title song,
Tell Me On A Sunday. Please listen to this, it's a powerhouse.
What a stunning, emotional performance. And thirty five years on, when people routinely get dumped by text, the lyrics to this pack a punch:
Don't write a letter when you want to leave
Don't call me at 3 am from a friend's apartment.
I'd like to choose how I hear the news.
Take me to a park that's covered with trees.
Tell me on a Sunday please.
Let me down easy, no big song and dance.
No long faces, no long looks, no deep conversation.
I know the way we should spend that day.
Take me to a zoo that's got chimpanzees.
Tell me on a Sunday please.
Don't want to know who's to blame, it won't help knowing.
Don't want to fight day and night -- bad enough you're going.
Don't leave in silence with no words at all.
Don't get drunk and slam the door, that's no way to end this,
I know how I want you to say goodbye.
Find a circus ring with a flying trapeze.
Tell me on a Sunday please.
I don't want to fight day and night -- bad enough you're going.
Don't leave in silence with no word at all.
Don't get drunk and slam the door, that's no way to end this.
I know how I want you to say goodbye.
Don't run off in the pouring rain.
Don't call me as they call your plane.
Take the hurt out of all the pain.
Take me to a park that's covered with trees.
Tell me on a Sunday please.
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