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February 21, 2002:

OPEN A NEW WINDOW

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I am happy to report that whilst driving home from a meeting yesterday, I jogged my memory and remembered a good Chinese restaurant that I’d attended two years ago, right near my very own home. First of all, one must occasionally jog one’s memory or the memory becomes out of shape and flaccid. Jogging is good for memory and my memory jogged two miles yesterday and is no longer flaccid, just a bit sore. What the hell am I talking about? “No longer flaccid”? If that doesn’t sound like a Hinky Meltz and Ernest Ernest song, I’ll eat my scotch tape dispenser. Where was I? Oh, yes my jogged memory. So, I called my friend Margaret Jones, who’d recommended it to me, and she told me the name. I immediately got on my handy-dandy cell phone and called information, who connected me to the number. I ordered Orange Chicken and Cashew Chicken to go. I am happy to report that the Orange Chicken was brilliant, just the way I like it. The Cashew Chicken was also good. And I even have leftovers for today.

I must write these here notes with haste, and of course I’ll try to write them with taste and have them not be a waste. I must be off shortly to have breakfast with our very own Susan Egan and bad boy Jason Graae. I will tell each of them hello from all of you.

I picked up the advance copy of Stavisky yesterday and watched a bit of it last night. It’s a beautifully photographed and directed film – I don’t know that it’s to everyone’s taste, but this transfer is fantastic, in fact, the film has never looked this good. Belmondo is terrific, as is Charles Boyer in one of his final screen roles (I think it was his final role). Mr. Stephen Sondheim’s score is gorgeous (orchestrated, of course, by Tunick). It’s occasionally not edited into the film especially well, but the melodies (yes, Virginia, melodies) are wonderful (a couple of them were recycled cut things from the Follies score). No extras, but who cares when the enhanced transfer looks this good?

I was so pleased to see that we achieved twenty count them twenty posts yesterday. I feel we are coming into our own, at long last. So, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell the man on the street or the woman in the window to all come to haineshisway.com every day. Visit in the morning with your morning cup of coffee or Diet Coke, come at noon and eat your lunch here, or visit us after your evening repast of cheese slices and ham chunks. And post, post, post. Because until you’ve had the joy of clicking on the Unseemly Button you have simply not lived. In fact, let’s click on it now, shall we?

Didn’t that feel good? If you don’t click on the Unseemly Button once a day, you will become flaccid, and we simply can’t have that, can we? I’ll be right back.

I knew No Longer Flaccid was a Meltz and Ernest song. It’s on page 66 of the Meltz and Ernest songbook.

NO LONGER FLACCID Music by Hinky Meltz Lyrics by Ernest Ernest

That time that we took acid
We were young – we were screwy.
You thought I was a camel
I thought you were a four hundred pound girl named Louie.
But we’ve grown up, matured
Our screwiness is cured
We’ve given up on acid
And now our minds are no longer flaccid…

No longer flaccid,
Our minds are erect and straight and tall.
We don’t even smoke any pot
No pot, no not at all.
We’ve stopped taking Quaaludes
We don’t pop those pills.
We don’t need to free base,
We’re free from all our ills.

No longer flaccid,
Our minds were limp and simply gone.
It was hard to tell just what the hell
We were on
But whatever it was we just sat all day
And watched Tron.
(It blew our minds…)

But now we’re
No longer flaccid.
Our minds are clean and free and fine
Ev’rything is healthy and good
The worst we do is wine.
We don’t do any doobies,
The thought of it appalls.
We’re living in the Valley
But not the Valley of the Dolls…
No, we’re no longer flaccid
It truly is a fact.
That we’re no longer flaccid
Yes, we’re no longer flaccid
‘Cause we’ve cleaned up our act.

What a marvelous song of redemption. They really were with it, I must say.

Today’s continuing story will be a short story, because the time has gotten away from me.

So, there I was, September of 1999, knowing what I thought was a job for life was coming to an end at the end of December. I began to think of options. I made a few calls to other companies, but they had their own people doing what I do, or they just weren’t interested in theater music enough to do the kinds of things I did. I met with a nice but crazy label owner – he was very interested in doing some stuff, but on an occasional basis. He, however, was involved in a lawsuit and couldn’t really start doing anything for six months. I sat in my office and thought. And thought. And finally, a light began to come on. Slowly at first, and then stronger and stronger. I began to think about why the return on Varese’s money never seemed to be enough for the owner. Even though I was never given exact or proper sales figures (I think he liked having us a bit in the dark), I basically knew ballpark figures. And what began to come through was that at the end of the day, what Varese was taking in per album, after paying all the pressing and printing costs, the mechanical royalties, etc. what they were left with was in the neighborhood of five or six dollars per CD. Well, it’s very hard to sell a sufficient amount of theater music CDs (it’s a limited niche audience, for the most part – there are exceptions, of course) to make a lot of money when the return is only six dollars. The fact that a lot of my stuff had broken even or made a profit (yes, Virginia, there were albums that didn’t – but that is the nature of the beast)
was amazing when you think about it. Certainly, the albums were critically acclaimed and the people who bought them really did like them. I began to think, well, how can you get more money, how can these things clear more so that the break-even point becomes easier to achieve? And the answer came to me in a flash: The internet. What if I created a label that was internet-based, still having store sales, but making the thrust of the label the internet. If we could somehow reach the three thousand people that had bought most of my albums, and those three thousand (or however many of those we could get) would purchase their albums on the label’s website, instead of clearing five or six bucks an album, we would suddenly be clearing thirteen or fourteen bucks, and doing the numbers, looking at my budgets, I realized that if that could be done, then we could produce things that pretty much couldn’t lose money. I began to formulate a plan.

Well, I must run to breakfast (well, not literally run, it’s ten miles from here). Today’s topic of discussion: Why do you think the state of the original Broadway musical is in perilous condition? What do you think is to blame (or who)? Is it the fact that it now takes up to ten years to bring a show forth? Is it the overused and much abused workshop system? Is it the very ideas people are choosing to musicalize? Post away, my Kimlets.

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