Monday, August 22, 2011
Jerry Leiber (1933-2011)
In lieu of a full-fledged appreciation of Jerry Leiber, the lyricist half of Leiber & Stoller, the songwriting team whose incredible string of hit songs from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s virtually defined the sound of the era, I feel what would be more appropriate is to list a great many of their songs and mention some of the artists who recorded them (There were so many who covered the songs, that would take forever). Leiber, who was 78, is the man pictured at the back in the photo above. The man at the piano is his songwriting partner Mike Stoller. Also, it's worth noting that the team's work inspired one of the more successful "jukebox" musicals on Broadway, Smokey Joe's Cafe. RIP Mr. Leiber.
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Labels: Elvis, Leiber and Stoller, Music, Musicals, Obituary, Theater
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Monday, June 11, 2007
Hope he's proud of what he's done
BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is for the Grease 2 25th anniversary blog-a-thon being coordinated at The Moviezzz Blog.
By Edward Copeland
Grease 2 was an awful movie and I didn't want to admit it when it opened back in 1982. Its screenplay was written by Ken Finkleman, who also wrote and directed another awful 1982 sequel: Airplane II: The Sequel and would later go on to write one of the many Madonna movie disasters, 1987's Who's That Girl?
I had a minor obsession with the movie Grease that almost equaled my obsession with Star Wars (I actually sat through Grease in a movie theater more times than any of the Star Wars films). So I was there on opening day for Grease 2, even though inside I knew it couldn't really be a true sequel without John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
I bought the soundtrack before the film even opened and, really, the songs are the film's saving grace. I've never set through the movie a second time, but I did buy the album when it came out on DVD and have been known to listen to it from time to time.
Sure, even the songs don't equal the ones from Grease, but they contain charm and flair that Grease 2 itself lacked and I feel no shame for still owning that CD. The movie and the soundtrack actually gets off to a strong start with The Four Tops performing "Back to School Again" with a huge production number that definitely shows the sign of first-time director Patricia Birch's work as a choreographer.
Spending my vacation in the summer sun
Getting lots of action and lots of fun
Scoring like a bandit until the bubble burst
Suddenly it got to be September First
Woe is me
All summer long I was happy and free
Save my soul
The board of education took away my parole
I've got to go back, back, back to school again
Even in the second line of the very first song, it sets the stage for the preponderance of double entendres and straight-forward sex talk that would pervade Grease 2. (As I side note, since I saw the original Grease in elementary school, it was years until I learned what Kenickie really meant about his "25 cent insurance policy.)
Just look at the lineup of songs for the sequel: "Score Tonight" (ostensibly about "bowling"), "Do It for Our Country" (faking a draft call to get laid), "Prowlin'" and what can really be said about "Reproduction," which sets sex education to music. Honestly, do you think abstinence-only education could ever produce such a catchy tune?
Since I knew this blog-a-thon was imminent, I pulled out my CD and listened to it again multiple times, to make certain my memories weren't overly rosy, but while the songs certainly won't make Stephen Sondheim blush (or Leiber and Stoller for that matter), most of them retain their charm, especially if removed from the context of the lame movie in which they exist. Really, the only two songs I frequently skip are the "Girl for All Seasons" number and "Rock-a-Hula-Luau (Summer Is Coming)."
In addition to the opening song, "Cool Rider" "(Love Will) Turn Back the Hands of Time" and "We'll Be Together" especially hold up well. Still, if there's only one song to be remembered from this unnecessary sequel, it always will be "Reproduction." 25 years later, it still retains a degree of audacity.
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Labels: 80s, Blog-a-thons, Leiber and Stoller, Music, Musicals, Sequels, Sondheim, Travolta
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Broadway gets some Spring in its step (and some bite marks)
By Josh R
In Annie Hall, Woody Allen famously observed how if a shark stops moving, the inevitable consequence is death. In context, this bit of oceanographic trivia served as a metaphor for the foundering relationship between Allen's onscreen alter ego, Alvy Singer, and the title character played by Diane Keaton. Noting the growing distance between them, Alvy was forced to conclude that "what we have here is a dead shark."
For a long time now, theater aficionados have lamented the state of the Broadway musical, a long-cherished institution whose fortunes have fallen precipitously over the past several decades and has arguably become about as relevant to contemporary popular culture as Viennese operetta. By the 1990s, New York's signature form of entertainment had begun to attain the haggard visage of a tired beast of burden, ready to be put out to pasture if not shipped off to the glue factory — while stalwarts such as Stephen Sondheim, Kander & Ebb and Andrew Lloyd Webber continued to put forth new offerings of diminishing quality, no fresh voices were coming forth to fill the void. Lest one might be tempted to credit the dearth of emerging new talent to lack of initiative or an absence of inspiration, it should be noted that an entire generation of musical theater artists was virtually wiped out by the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The Broadway community, and the musical theater community in particular, sustained incalculable losses; it's impossible to know what the barren '90s might have offered had the lost generation lived to reach maturity (a fact which is startlingly relevant to the show which is the subject of this piece, if you read on).
Devotees of the musical stage can take heart — if recent years haven't exactly marked a complete return to form, the 21st century
has nevertheless provided eager fans with some encouraging signs of life. The 1995 season infamously offered only two "new" musicals — one a bookless review of old Leiber & Stoller jukebox standards, the other a campy rehash of a classic film penned by a composer who'd been around since the late 1960s and operated, theme-park style, via hydraulic lifts (for the uninitiated, that would be Smokey Joe's Cafe and Sunset Boulevard, respectively). For a bit of contrast, the current season is not yet half over, and already we have two bold, challenging new musicals by young composers who can actually be credited with having — gasp — a fresh and innovative approach to content and form. The first of these is Michael Korie and Scott Frankel's Grey Gardens, which I have written about in a previous post. The second is Spring Awakening, which opens at The Eugene O'Neill Theatre on Sunday. While these shows are not without their flaws, their mere presence on Broadway indicates that the shark isn't quite ready to give up the ghost. If it hasn't fully found its bearings after years of torpid immobility (it'll take a while before it starts cutting through the currents like "Jaws" again), at least it's moving in the right direction.Spring Awakening is based on a play by Franz Wedekind, originally published in 1891 and banned in Germany (and in other parts of the world) for decades to follow. It's not hard to understand why. Teen pregnancy, teen suicide, homosexuality, abortion, incest, and the critical importance of sex education for young people beyond what can be
provided by parents (who often fail in the efforts to execute that responsibility) are hot button issues today — one can only imagine the indignation that greeted such a frank discussion of topics at the tail end of the 19th century. The play examines a group of school children at the age of burgeoning sexual awareness, struggling to make sense of their feelings and receiving no help from a puritanical adult establishment which prioritizes virtue, or at least the appearance of it, above the emotional well-being of their young. Taught to suppress or deny their feelings rather than to understand them, this generation has no means of coping with their biological and emotional urges, and most meet with dire fates as a result of their own ignorance (the teenage heroine, for example, doesn't know about the birds and the bees until after she has become pregnant). It's incendiary stuff, and if you imagine that the creators of the musical adaptation aren't conscious of the frightening parallels that Wedekind's century-old observations have to the culture of the here and now, think again.
While the piece remains set in 1891, composer Duncan Sheik and lyricist Steven Sater have outfitted Wedekind's 19th century cautionary tale with a decidedly modern score which runs the gamut from rock to folk-tinged pop — the range is impressive, suggesting influences as diverse as Kurt Cobain and Ani DiFranco, yet it all blends together into a unified whole. The decision to use a contemporary sound was a wise one, lending the proceedings a feeling of edginess and currency, and providing a musical metaphor for the roiling emotions of adolescent angst (something period music might not have captured to the same degree). The obvious inspiration is Rent, the groundbreaking musical by Jonathan Larson which planted its finger firmly on the pulse of mid-90s youth culture, harnessing the pulsating rhythms of hard and soft rock, pop, grunge, hip-hop and Latin music to its re-telling of Puccini's La Boheme. That show had a palpable current of electricity coursing through its veins when it premiered in 1996; even though it may have shown some of its limitations over the passage of time, it's still a brash, bold work of theatrical showmanship which provided Broadway with a welcome jolt of energy by tapping into a new musical idiom.
Spring Awakening doesn't quite reach the breathtaking heights of its predecessor — it lacks the brazen theatricality of Rent, and Sheik's score doesn't quite grab you by the throat the way Larson's did (it's more a really great night of music in a downtown club than a headlong plunge into a rave). The show also could have used more humor to balance out the pathos, something Rent managed with surprisingly nimble dexterity, and
when it stops singing and starts talking, the occasionally creaky dialogue does sound like it was cribbed from a social polemic penned in 1891. Still, these are minor quibbles when you consider how rare it is to find a new work of musical theater that feels fresh, passionate, and unequivocally alive. Much of the credit for this should be given to the cast who, with exception of two actors who play all the adult roles, range in age from 16 to 23 (some look even younger). The well-selected ensemble is comprised of vastly talented performers who may seem idiosyncratic by Broadway's standards — forget about the air-brushed faces and voices of most Broadway choruses — but bring fierce, passionate conviction to their roles and serve the demands of the score beautifully. While Sater's lyrics can occasionally be abstract to the point of inscrutability (I was relieved to hear that "The Pirate Song," the most obliquely worded of the bunch, had been cut for the Broadway production), they are beautifully delivered, consequently give the words more resonance than they would on their own. Special praise must be reserved for Lea Michele, who thoughtfully portrays the confusion of an adolescent girl both fascinated and frightened by her dawning sexuality, and John Gallagher Jr., whose portrayal of the haplessly awkward Moritz verges on caricature but provides a portrait of unabated despair which becomes almost painful to witness. The standout, however, is Jonathan Groff as the intrepid Melchior, who serves as the inadvertent instigator of much of the trouble that befalls the other characters. Blessed with heartthrob looks and an expressive, supple tenor which can shift seamlessly into a rocker's bruised battle cry, Groff provides the show with its most dynamic presence, and his sensitive enactment of the character's ultimate, devastating realization is worthy of the tears it inspires.The show is expertly staged by Michael Mayer, whose lean, spare production puts the focus squarely on the performers. When I saw the production in July during its premiere run at The Atlantic Theater Company, it didn't feel like in any way like a commercial commodity being scrupulously groomed for Broadway — in the tiny Atlantic, which is a converted church, the show was performed against the structure's original brick backdrop and stained glass windows, which suited it perfectly. I'm optimistic that it will retain some of that feeling of intimacy when it opens at The O'Neill — which is not exactly a cavern, but no cubbyhole either. In any event, I plan on making a return trip to Spring Awakening. In a sea full of mild-mannered minnows, it can sometimes be heartening to catch sight of a shark.
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Labels: Diane Keaton, Ebb, Kander, Leiber and Stoller, Musicals, Sondheim, Theater, Woody
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