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December 27, 2013:

SPECIAL MOMENTS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, there are special moments that are so completely magical and transporting that to have one later in one’s life is truly amazing.  Such a moment happened yesterday when the telephonic device rang and it was Richard Sherman.  You must understand a few things: I fell in love with the brothers Sherman and their music in 1961 when I saw The Parent Trap.  There were three songs in the film and each was indescribably wonderful to my ears – the title song, the ballad For Now, For Always, and, of course, the sublime Let’s Get Together.  Then there was their delightful score to Mary Poppins and all their other wonderful stuff over the years.  When Richard by chance heard a track I’d recorded of Tell Him Anything from The Slipper and the Rose playing in a department store, he made someone working there take he and his wife down to where the music machine was, and there he found my album of Cinderella music.  He went to Borders to buy it, and his sales gal had, a year earlier, written me a fan letter and I’d invited her to a few sessions and we’d become friends.  She told Richard that she knew the producer of the album and he asked if he could call me.  A week later he did just that and I invited him to the Varese office so we could officially meet in person.

We hit it off right away, and he was so effusive in his love of what we’d done with the album.  I said we should do a Sherman Brothers album at some point, and he flipped for the idea and later dropped off a bunch of LPs for me.  While I couldn’t make the album happen at Varese, I did make it happen at my subsequent label, a label I created whose name we don’t really like to speak around these here parts.  Recording the album was heaven – the band tracks were done in LA and Richard was at the session and loved all the arrangements that Todd Ellison and I had done.  I recorded the vocals but before I could mix the album, the label exploded, I was out, and the album was “finished” by a complete numbskull (read Album Produced By for the gory details), who not only used full early takes of the singers because he was too lazy to comp vocals, but also left off half the band tracks, which were recorded in two passes – he told everyone he couldn’t find the second pass – as I said, a complete and utter numbskull.  So, on the finished album you have half a band playing half an orchestration.  And as if that weren’t bad enough, the mix is terrible, and the song order is worse.  Richard called me at some point, just to tell me it was out and that even though he knew it would have been much better had I mixed it and finished it, he was still happy with it.  I filled him in on all the gory details and he finally understood just how not good it was.  He asked if there was any way for me to get it back and do a proper job of it, but to this day it just doesn’t seem possible, which is a pity.  I let him read one of my novels and after that he really understood.  We became friends and it was always a treat seeing he and his beautiful wife, Elizabeth.

Right from the beginning, he came to a few Kritzerland shows, and we, in our first year, did an all Sherman Brothers show, which was our first sellout and a great show.  He also came to the Kritzerland show where we did an evening of my songs to celebrate the release of the Nudie Musical Blu-ray.  He was so complimentary about my stuff and just spoke wonderfully about the craft and the humor, and he took special delight in the occasionally racy material.  Since then, he and Elizabeth have been regulars at the Christmas Eve Do and we’ve supped, seen each other at events, and had nice telephonic conversations.  Earlier this year, he’d heard another song of mine at one of the Kritzerland shows and loved it, and I think I said (or he did) that I should write a lyric that he could set to music.  We both loved the idea, no matter who said it.  So, I began to think about it.  Then we were out dining one night and it came up again – I think he’d wanted me to write something funny, but he said to do whatever I felt and that a ballad was fine, too, or just a fun up-tempo.

I kept thinking about and nothing came to me.  Then two months ago an idea finally came to me and interestingly it seemed like something he and his brother would have written – something with a kind of catchphrase that would have been right up their alley.  I wrote the first two verses pretty quickly, although the rhyming scheme made it not that easy to keep coming up with stuff that worked.  I went back to it a few weeks ago, wrote the bridge and the final verse and then, just because I had to know it would work musically, set it to a little tune – and it did work.  So, for Christmas, I presented him with the lyric – he read it a few times and really liked it, and asked if I’d allow him to futz with it if he needed to when setting it to his music, and I said of course he could.

And that was the phone call yesterday.  He’d changed up a couple of words, added a line to the bridge and I think one additional line to the final verse at the end, and I was fine with all of that.  Then he put the phone down and sang and played it for me and it was just a delight and pure Sherman.  And so, whatever we end up doing with it, to have had a lyric of mine set by Richard Sherman is so meaningful to me and so precious, and yes, transporting.  I do think we’ll do a little demo recording of it soon.

Other than that (like there needed to be anything else to make it a great day), I’d had nine hours of blessed sleep, I ate a ham and Swiss on rye and a tiny plate of onion rings, I picked up a few packages, the helper came by and picked up some invoices, I paid some Kritzerland bills, did some banking, and then sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I watched a DGA screener of a motion picture entitled Her, what is billed as a Spike Jonze love story or something.  The film is set in the near future, when a new intuitive operating system is offered for the computer, and a fellow ends up falling in love with the operating system.  It’s a weird little film, too long for its own good, and too precious and coy for my taste.  Critics are, of course, falling all over themselves (save for a couple), just as they did for American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street, and for all the same reasons.  But Her, like the other two, are just ultimately films that don’t work for me.  My biggest problem with Her, unfortunately, is the film’s leading actor, Joaquin Phoenix, who I simply don’t care for.  Amy Adams is okay, Rooney Mara doesn’t have much to do, so one gets a LOT of Joaquin Phoenix talking to his operating system girlfriend, who’s voiced well by Scarlett Johansson.  But in the end it’s just so silly, even though I’m sure Mr. Jonze thinks he’s making all kinds of New Agey and trenchant feelings on love in the 21st century.

After that, I watched a new Blu and Ray of Jacques Demy’s film entitled Trois Places pour le 26th (Three Seats for the 26th), starring Yves Montand playing someone named Yves Montand, and Mathilde May playing someone not named Mathilde May.  It’s kind of a musical, with several numbers – Montand is doing a show about his life – and May plays a wannabe performer who ends up in the show.  Her mom, however, knew Montand and he was madly in love with her in days of old.  He meets up with the mom and she tells him that her daughter (Montand doesn’t know it’s May) is his.  Meanwhile, Montand is fond of the twenty-two year-old daughter (he’s sixty-seven in the film) and after a successful opening night, sleeps with her.  Now, that’s a weird turn for the film to take, and he finds out that she’s the daughter of his former lover – but then it’s implied, but not strongly, that the mother may have lied about that little tidbit, so you’re left wondering was it incest or not?  Montand ends up with mom.  The Michel Legrand score isn’t up to his classics or anywhere close to them.  This film was the last for Demy – within three years both he and Montand would be dead.  It was made in 1988 and Legrand made the big mistake of trying to be “hip” with electronics, so some of the score is so dated-sounding it’s ridiculous – if he just hadn’t done that, it might sound better today.  There is some interesting choreography by then-hot Michael Peters, who co-choreographed Dreamgirls with Michael Bennett, and also choreographed Michael Jackson’s classic Beat It video.  This is a brand new transfer from Pathe and it’s quite beautiful, save for a little greenish hue during the first five minutes, which then goes away.  The color during those five minutes is more correct on the DVD in the Demy set.  But the sharpness and clarity of this new transfer puts the DVD to shame.  They call everything now a “restoration” – it’s not, not if that word has any meaning.  It’s just a new transfer off a 1988 camera negative – it would need no restoration at all – just color timing and a little cleanup.  In any case, the Blu-ray has English subtitles and is excellent and if you like Demy, worth checking out.

After that, I took a hot shower, and then just played on the Internet.

Today, I have a work session at eleven for the Kritzerland show – that shouldn’t take more than an hour, then I’ll eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then relax and watch more motion pictures.

Tomorrow and Sunday will be more of the same, although I believe I have a brief work session on Sunday now for the benefit.  But it will be short.  Then next week are Kritzerland rehearsals and, most importantly, our annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Bash right here at haineshisway.com, and then, of course, on January 1 I begin writing a new book.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have a work session, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player?  I’ll start – CD, too damn many.  Screeners left – The Hobbit, which I really don’t want to watch, 12 Years a Slave, which I really don’t want to watch, and Before Midnight, which is a third part of a trilogy that I haven’t seen the first two parts of.  Blu-rays include three Twilight Time discs and a ton of other stuff.  Your turn.  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall revel in the very special moment that I had yesterday – one for the BK history books.

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