Well, dear readers, it is Thursday. I tell you, dear readers, this place is a fountain of information, isn’t it? Where else on all the Internet can you read a sentence like, “Well, dear readers, it is Thursday?” Nowhere, that’s where. And, best of all, our information is accurate – you can take our information to the bank. For example, I took our information to the bank yesterday, and they were quite impressed. If anyone has a clew as to what the HELL I’m going on about, do keep it to yourself. In any case, it is Thursday, so I shall now talk about Wednesday, just to be contrary. Yesterday (Wednesday), I started off the day by doing the Lambada (The Forbidden Dance) when I awoke. Doing the Lambada (The Forbidden Dance) always perks me right up. I then answered some e-mails, made some telephonic calls, and then left for Mr. Grant Geissman’s home environment. Once there, we entered the latest corrections into our galley. Then we printed out a new galley. Amusingly, as I was looking at the first page of the new galley, I found another tiny error. That just frosted me. We fixed it, and reprinted that page. We then worked on our three cover choices, and I now just have to decide which it will be. Grant is also getting ready to sell some musical equipment that, for him, has become outmoded. So, I bought a beautiful Yamaha DX7, which I used to have to rent for sessions for $150 a day. It’s still a damn good keyboard, with lots of good sounds, and it came with three little modules of extra sounds, plus the big extra-sound machine. These things were really expensive – my cost? $300 for everything. I then left Grant’s and headed over to a former haunting ground. My visit there actually was quite strange – it was strange being there after so long and it felt completely weird to me. I suppose I will give you dear readers first crack at this information, which I’m very excited about. The former haunting ground was Varese Sarabande, and I was there to pick up all the tapes for the recording of my musical, Stages, which, as of yesterday, I have licensed for release on Kritzerland. I’m very excited about this for a number of reasons, mostly because over the years I’ve gotten a goodly number of requests for a CD of it. I can’t give you too many details yet, but my hope of hopes is that I will be completely remixing most of the album. One of the multi-track reels has gone missing, but the one I have has all but four songs on it (the final four). However, Stages was recorded on two-inch 16 track tape, just before 24 track became the norm. What that means is that we have to find a studio that actually has a 16 track headstack that will play back the tape. And we’re not sure anyone is going to have it, or, if they do, that it might be prohibitively expensive to do. The fallback position is to just release the album master on CD, but with a completely new EQ and possibly the addition of a couple of instruments on a few key tracks. We will also be doing a new recording of one song that got added to the show after we made the recording (it was made between the show’s closing at LACC, and its reopening at the Matrix Theater two months later). And, because even with the new song, Stages will only run thirty-eight minutes, as a bonus we will be including the entire cast album of my musical Together Again, which I wrote directly after Stages. That won’t be remixed, but it will be completely revamped in terms of its sound. That will, most likely, be our next release, along with another album I can’t talk about yet. I’m also negotiating for another album that I’m really excited about – so, things are moving right along at Kritzerland. I won’t be announcing anything about this release for a few weeks, so you are the first to know.
After my visit with Varese, I went to rehearsal with Mr. Kevin Spirtas. We had our musical director with us today (and we’ll have him a couple of more times as well), which was really helpful. We ran the opening three numbers we’d staged yesterday, and I was very happy with them. We smoothed out a couple of things, then moved on and finished all of Act One. Tomorrow, we’ll move on and do Act Two, and then Friday we’ll run them both. Saturday we’ll have a complete run-through as well. I want to be rock-solid by Monday, because that’s just a week before we do the show. We’ll have run-throughs every day next week, and I’m hoping we can bring in some friends for our final run-through, just so Kevin can get a feel for the audience reaction. I’ll be going with Kevin Monday night to scope out the theater, and to also catch Miss Susan Egan’s act.
After the rehearsal, I took the newly-corrected manuscript to Kinko’s to have a couple of copies made. I’ll be sending one of them out this morning to the fellow who will hopefully be blurbing the book. Then, I’ll just try my hardest to proof one more time, just to be sure it’s all okay. Then we’ll finalize everything, and off it will go to the publisher, hopefully by mid-next week.
My goodness, these here notes are so damnably informative, aren’t they? I’m telling you, you can take these notes to the bank. If you do, of course, then they become bank notes, and is that a bad thing? Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, because I’ve got a busy day ahead of me and I must get crackin’.
Today I shall be rehearsing in the early afternoon, then attending the meeting that got rescheduled, which is in the Wood of Holly. Then I may have some dinner, then I shall return to the home environment, where I will damn well watch a DVD or three (I’m expecting the Warners’ Film Noir Box Volume Two and Point Blank).
And then tomorrow, of course, is the Stephen Sondheim tribute at the Hollywood Bowl. I’ll have more to say about that in tomorrow’s notes.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must write, I must rehearse, I must meet, I must eat, I must travel about in my motor car, and I must pick up packages and even send packages. Today’s topic of discussion: Has there ever been a musical with as many fanatical devotees as Follies? So, what if you could make your dream version of Follies as a film (whether keeping the stage setting or making it more about film). And, let’s say, you could cast any film actor or actress at their perfect age for every role. Who would you cast? Just for the sake of fun, you can’t use any of the original cast. So, if you wanted, you could have Mary Martin as Sally, when Mary was in her mid to late forties. You could have Shirley Temple as Sally, at that same age. Or Jane Powell as Sally. Or Debbie Reynolds as Sally. You could have Buddy Ebsen or Gene Kelly as Buddy, when they were the perfect age. You could have Cyd Charisse as Phyllis at her perfect age. And on and on. Give it your best shot. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we. And take these notes to the bank why don’t you? These sort of bank notes always earn a lot of interest.