The "Big Statement of Political Philosopy" Musicals with Innovative Music

When I want to write as though I know something I put it here in this old-fashioned blog, as if the word "blog" always existed. "Captain's Blog Star Date" etc... (I recently saw Star Trek episodes that I ignored 60 years ago. It took me this long to know they are great.) Musical theater is the best playground for innovative songwriting, though even a grand opera is, potentially, one big song. To categorize the "Twelfth Night" roasts produced by the New York City Bar Association, I offered the term "ballad opera," a musical play drawing from popular songs of the day. The Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge is a 2001 example. A 1728 example is John Gay's The Beggars Opera, which, when it became The Three Penny Opera (1928), also drew from popular songs of the day. However, when playwrights collabarate with an innovative music composer, such as with The Magic Flute, they can achieve an immortality, even though their intent was to use their available talent and costumes (at the Freihaus Theater) to entertain their local audience in 1791. It is in the same breath that I add, my music for Crystal Field's annual summer Street Theater compares with Hans Eisler's scoring for Bertold Brecht. However, the composer with eternal divinity in the Brecht collaboration is Kurt Weil. As for this blog post, after convincing another attorney/songwriter to include me in his plans for an abridged stage reading of the 1965 Broadway musical, "The Roar of The Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd," I confronted a political philosopy allegory whose primary creative force was also its composer. There are various names associated with The Roar... but its shape, even with Robert Merrick as its producer and Leslie Bricusse as co-writer, is of its director, writer, composer and star, Anthony Newley. (the musical is shaped like Anthony Newley -- I mean that it highlights his talent, personality, his origins, and his status as a celebrity.) He's sharing his experience with class and aspirations toward achieving the status of "gentleman." He broadly exposes how we modify our behaviour with rules, and reduces it to the best of vaudeville; it's upsetting and depressing to me. He tries to trash civilized interaction while being a product of it. He gives freedom to the singer of "Feeling Good." He gives himself a false optomism that, well, if you actually sing his finale song (Sweet Beginning) through to its bitter end you're (I'm) reduced to tears. There's something in the music that transcends its efforts to uplift. It transcends into a genuine swirl of musical emotion. Our standard western scale has 7 notes. The eighth note is an octave above the first. We use Roman numerals I-VII to identify the chords we get from adding the notes a third and fifth above them. When the numerals are lower case the chord from that note is minor...All right... For Sweet Beginnings I hear/see-in-the-score six phrases, each one with the same starting point in another key... It starts in F, goes to A, goes to a ii/V progression, to iii/VI -- a rapid variation of this progressing runs throughout the score. The last phrase returns to the F with an extension worthy of repeat (iii/VI to ii/V), ending on a tonic chord (I) that keeps rising to the major chord a step above it. The I to II chord pattern was already set by the earlier song "There are (G) so many things to re (A) member..." And the words are bittersweet as well. "And so, my friend..." It's sublimely sad and sublimely beautiful. The song rushes away from us. It's only when we look slowly at it that we see and feel its emotional power. That's what I'm suggesting is what we find there, and everywhere throughout the score. The music in this show taps into stronger emotions than any I see in its book, and I'm just getting the abridged version the Marc Leavitt prepared. However, the more I played the score the more I imagined writing it and then trying to figure out why. A factor for me is: without knowing about this score I grew up in its wake. I then add here that it grew out of the wake raised by the radical chord changes of Burt Bacharach and James Bond. What I want to highlight is, there seems to be great inspiration here. Then back to me, whether or not anyone but me knows about it in my own work, I can tell you that I find it there too, and so I remain, while alive, very much the beneficiary of my own writing. It's too selfish, I know and other things sustain me as well... anyway... People can be inspired by the work of Anthony Newley, so I here recommend it as source material for your path toward enlightenment...

The Sparks Albums produced by Muff Winwood

I received a remainder bin cut-out copy of Sparks May 1974 Kimono My Place album from Ebay, after buying there a second copy of Sparks November 1974 album Propaganda, I also bought Sparks 1974 Propaganda in 1974 at Alexanders Department Store. As with many things I discover to be important to me, I couldn't find my Propaganda album after using it to learn one of its songs, At Home/At Work/At Play, for Susan Hwang's Sparks Birthday celebration in April, 2024. Upon receipt of our second Propaganda copy two months ago, our daughter (age 7) began continuously listening to it in its entirety while following along with the lyrics on its inner sleave, which I believe helps improve anyone's reading. Since 1974, I had never heard the entire album. I only listened to the first three tracks and the second side song, Something for the Girl with Everything. It escaped me that, if those tracks were good, then it was worth my time to hear the others. I just listened to those same tracks, Propaganda, At Home At Work At Play, Reinforcements and Something for the Girl with Everything.* Our daughter was not so limited and as a result I have heard the whole album many times (Wow, that's a good well played, well recorded album and it sounds great too.). I tried to share my understanding of the lyrics to the Something for the Girl song.... The singer sings to "you," who, through gifts, is buying the silence of a girl, also "you" because... "She knows everything. She knew way back when you weren't yourself." Other times the singer is singing directly to the girl with everything. "Nobody's going to hear a word you say." Like the song, At Home at Work at Play, which also uses the "you" as self-reflection, I think the singer is having a (histrionic?) inner monologue. He is really in a state of intensity in the song, and the achievement of that condition in music is worthy of MUSIC, both in its writing and performance. I think our daughter appreciates the humor in the singer's words. In an effort to help that I connected an expanding list song she had already enjoyed last holiday season, the "12 Days of Christmas" to explain why the "Three Wise Men" were "there" (in the Sparks song), and that their gift of a "partridge" came "complete with ornithologist." I tried to add that the only ornithologist I remembered was James Bond. However, she was well beyond the content of that song as she listened and read along through the entire album, which I'm realizing is in accordance with the artists' intention: that we listen from beginning to end. Quick notes from memory. There's an apocalyptic Noah's Ark finality to the album's last song, Bon Voyage. There's a song about a child (the son in the BC song?) responding to strangers with instructions from a higher authority, his parents (Thanks But No Thanks), and about a family coming apart although its father is reminding them that, together, they are as connected as ABC (BC). The lyrics are beautiful throughout Propaganda, and despite their variety and challenging pronunciation, their musical setting, with its impossible vocal range, plays as if effortless. My conclusion is that the entire audio existence of these songs is impossible, and yet they exist in these pristine recordings. Production on both records is by Muff Winwood. He's the brother of Steve Winwood of the band Traffic. Mixed by Bill Price Adrian Fisher - Guitar Trevor White - Guitar Norman Dinky Diamond drums Ian Hampton - Bass Martin Gordon plays bass on Kimono Apparently, their prior album, Kimono My House, has a reputation as the better album. After three repeat listenings (after the first listening I thought, no, not better) I'm realizing its own impossible greatness. It's just the record itself doesn't sound as good. The many things I thought were missing in "music" are already here. Now, if I have anything to add it is on top of these towering achievements. Oh the pressings... for some reason Island records used more vinyl for their US Propaganda release, enhancing its beautiful recordings with a more solid vinyl sound. The Kimono album vinyl was far more bendable in the copy I recieved, reminding me of the 1970's era of the dynaflex disc. Somehow the Propaganda album, released six months after Kimono, escaped that trend. Also, after more than 50 years since its release I can report my discovery that The Sparks Brothers are not on the cover of their Kimono album. * note: Those four Propaganda tracks were among the recordings I listened to while imagining a "novel" I was then writing, called Storm Cloud.