Well, dear readers, this week is flying by, like a gazelle watching reruns of Hazel. Do they have reruns of Hazel? Has anyone here seen Hazel? I remember Hazel and I remember sky. I don’t know that I actually watched Hazel but I remember it, at least I remember seeing Shirley Booth in her Hazel getup. Why in the HELL am I talking about Hazel? Oh, yes, the gazelle is watching reruns of Hazel. Maybe we should have reruns of BK’s Notes. Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe I should just write the notes and stop talking about Hazel and the gazelle. Maybe I just should. Maybe I just will. Here are today’s notes:
Bb A D F G C Bb
Those were fine notes, weren’t they? Frankly, I don’t know how I can top those notes. I had a perfectly pleasant and busy day yesterday. That, for those who didn’t see it coming, was a segue. I got up early, answered some e-mails, solved some problems with the DirecTV box and the computer, shipped a few packages, and then did the long jog. I did some polishing of the liner notes, sent those off to the designer, ate some lunch, did some errands and whatnot, and picked up a couple of packages. I then took a break and watched a DVD someone had sent me. The DVD was entitled Show Girl. Yes, the DVD was entitled Show Girl – isn’t that something? You see, back when the show was on Broadway (where it only ran 100 performances), there was something new being tried – Pay TV – where you’d have a pay box in your home and if you put in the right amount of money (I think I’m remembering this correctly), then you saw a show only viewable on Pay TV. I remember vividly (and I wrote about it in Kritzer Time, I think) that we had Pay TV and I saw every showing of the off-Broadway musical The Streets Of New York, which I loved (and little did I know that one of the show’s duo-pianists would become one of my main partners in crime, recording-wise – Lanny Meyers). Well, Show Girl was the first Broadway show to be shown on Pay TV – financed by Paramount, who had a Pay TV branch called Telemeter. I believe it may have been the only show they did. It was shown “live” but must also have been videotaped, hence the copy I have. I received my DVD copy from a Kritzerland fan who was thrilled that I’d put out the CD, but wanted to know if I even knew about the Pay TV thing, since I hadn’t mentioned it in my notes. Obviously, I didn’t. What fun it was to see the show staged, and to hear all the sketches and songs that didn’t make the album. It’s certainly not the best revue I’ve ever seen – some of the sketches are really long and sort of pointless and don’t garner more than a few chuckles. But there is gold in them thar hills, too, and several of the songs are first-rate. Miss Channing, even before she became a legend with Hello, Dolly, had all her mannerisms and shtick perfected and it’s never really changed. In fact, it seems completely set in stone. She’s very funny and does her Carol thing wonderfully. Jules Munshin is not really to my taste, but he’s fine, and Les Quat’ Jeudis are delightful. It’s nice to see an audience from a time when people actually dressed for the theater. And the best is after the curtain call when Carol comes out and does a speech. Yes, long before Dolly, Carol was doing the “You dear people” spiel – she thanks all the Paramount executives, and goes on for quite some time. The quality was what you’d expect, but it was really fun to see it.
After that, I toddled off to do some editing fixes on the Two’s Company video – it went very quickly, and she’ll now put in the credits and performer names (since you can’t see the projections on the video), do some brightening of the image, and then I’ll go make some copies. It’s great to finally have this all edited. I’ll also be posting clips at YouTube from that and from What If.
After that, I came home and began watching a motion picture on Blu-Ray entitled The Deep. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the film before. I got about fifty minutes in and I’ll finish it at some point this day. The Blu-Ray looks very pretty in the underwater scenes especially.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below whilst we try to figure out how the gazelle is watching reruns of Hazel.
Today will be a very busy day, mostly taken up with my trying to make sense of the new Kritzerland master, which arrived yesterday. It sounds really nice, but it’s all over the place in terms of its playing order and there are three too many source cues – I’ve already decided to just make one source cue track and maybe use a little snippet of one or two others to bridge cues. It looks like we’ve got about twenty minutes more music than was on the LP of this score, so that’s nice. So today I’ll be watching the movie and figuring out how and where each cue is used in the film, and then I’ll make a new playing order – I’ll try to stay true to the film order, but will probably shift a few things around to make sure it’s a fun listening experience. That will take a lot of the day. I’m having a lunch at Hugo’s with the gal who did the sets for What If and the Two’s Company benefit, my friend Melissa Ficociello. I haven’t seen her since the benefit, and she wrote me and suggested lunch and so Hugo’s it is.
Tomorrow it’s lunch with our very own dear reader Jeanne, and there will be errands and shipping aplenty today, tomorrow, and Friday. On the weekend I’ll be having a work session with the composer and lyricist of the long musical.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, watch the movie whose score we’re issuing so that I can make sense of our album order, I must lunch, and I must do errands and whatnot. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, as reruns of Hazel continue apace.