Couldn't Have Done It Without You from L8 [By the Mummers]

Drawn to Me from Cartoon

Easy Choices from Winterland [By the Mummers]

Inching Along

I've had some breakthroughs with software. I've been longing to be able to take these audio files with me because I do some of my best "editing" on this show when I'm bopping around the city. Thanks to a friend, I discovered Reason, where I can save all these lovely files as wavs and keep them on my psp as I alter them.

We like this much.

A song I wrote and one I co-wrote were featured in a performance in the city this past week. A first for me! This is a theatre group that I am a part of, a collaborative experience if ever there was one. The response was beautifully positive.

I also have some side projects, musically, that I'm tinkering with. But Sweet Jane is creeping along. I feel that snowball cresting the hill and I know I can be careening down it anytime now. Something is done to touch up a song every day. We like that as well. That is all from me for now.

Originality and Perspective

So back in the day--"the day" in question being 1900-1960ish--vocal stylists would perform the works of Berlin and Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart and countless other composers. This was the standard--slight pun intended. It was part of jazz, musical theatre, and pop music.

So how did we come to scorn any singer who doesn't write their own music? An accomplished pianist can be lauded for rocking out Bach and Chopin without ever writing anything of his own. It seems that the voice is the only instrument that has quite suddenly become packaged with an obligation to create as well as articulate. It hardly seems fair.

The same people who might look down on a pop star for having a limited hand in the composition of their work is the same person who might revere Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald. These women aren't famous for their compositions. They are famous for their voices.

So when did singing cease to be a talent and an art? I mean, throughout the ages it's been so that anyone who wasn't tone deaf could sing. In the 20th century with an increase in mass communication, radio, television etc, personalities came forward that elevated vocal phrasing to an art form, past the operatic. It amazes me how artists can be decried for a lack of originality when the vast majority of popular music and entertainment is founded on a bed of covers, remakes, retellings and reworkings.

It just seems intentionally snobbish to disregard the work of one in favor of another so arbitrarily. I will not give specific examples as I'm sure anyone with firing synapses can make their own comparisons. I suppose I'm just continuing my ever present quest for perspective. One band is inspired by another band: awesome. Johnny Cash covers some classic songs and it's art, but someone covers a Johnny Cash song and it's blasphemy? It don't work that way.

Originality is in articulation. It's not the song, it's how Judy Garland sings it. It's reorchestration, it's reimagining. Musical Theatre is not rife with "original" work. In the Heights is an original telling of a fairly standard story. In the words of Stephen Sondheim: Anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new.

How hard is that to accept? If it doesn't work for you, tis well. But let me tell you that while you may lament Britney Spears covering "Satisfaction" someone was saying the same thing about The Rolling Stones, back in the proverbial day.

Why am I awake?

I'm up too late and I have to work too early. I blame coffee. My addiction is not what it used to be and my body clock is nothing resembling stable so here I am. I think I'll watch another episode of Code Monkeys and attempt to fall asleep. My head is aching with this cold, making it difficult for me to spend my awake time productively. Damn winter in the fall. Damn it, I say. For real though, I have to be at work in 3 hours. Oh yeah, that's happening. I need to invest in some Tylenol PM, methinks. In other news, I get a desk on Tuesday, hopefully. Let's hear it for a concrete work space. I've been wanting one of those for quite some time now. 1st Ave bustles, even at 2:00 AM. Life, like writing a show--it seems--is not unlike assembling a jigsaw puzzle in a windstorm. That does not, however, lessen the satisfaction of finally slamming that last piece home and shaking your middle finger at said wind.

Cause the wind cares.

Must sleep...oh look, my Kelly Clarkson download finished...

And

Okay, the beginnings of a new blog. I have loose parameters for this blog. Essentially it will be where I post rants, vamps and news pertaining to the show I am writing, as well as the occasional little cartoon.

Because I like cartooning.

My show is called Sweet Jane. I can't imagine its name changing unless Lou Reed is hardcore come licensing/rights time, an event which could actually derail the show quite a bit since I'm building the score around that damn song. I don't see that as a likely hurdle. I'd rather have the hard copy first.

Why Sweet Jane? My little musical takes plays in a morgue and centers around the unidentified corpse of a young woman. Unidentified female corpses are generally called Jane Does. Would you believe it took me 4 years of rattling this chestnut around my head for that idea to come to me? A lot of the show has written itself since then. But it continues to evolve. I had been embarking on one particular path for a finale, but have since concocted a more fiery, intense end for my show. Raising the stakes, baby.

This is a process, it has been a process. It is my first full length show. It will nonetheless be a one-act a la Last Five Years. I'm looking for it to run 100 minutes max. There are two actors, a man and a woman. And we are in a morgue.

Happy show! I hope for it to be a happy show. In the meantime I go about my business in NYC performing with By the Mummers, auditioning, and work work working. The challenge, as I choose to perceive it is: to churn out this show with all these other balls in the air. Can it be done? That's a cynical question to ask. In the meantime I hope to provide some theatre-oriented cartoons to keep my juices flowing and entertain those who choose to smile (now that was patronizing).

It's always once upon a time in New York City, folks. Howard Ashman wrote that.