Well, dear readers, Kritzerland at Sterling’s 53 was a great big hit. We were sold out and had a wonderful and very responsive audience. These kid shows are always something special and last night’s was no different. All our young performers stepped up to the plate and delivered terrific performances, straight down the line. The fact that they’re all nice kid with good parents is the icing on the cake. The show began with Sami getting things off to a rousing start with my song Welcome To My World. Everything was a highlight and the show basically went without any lyric flubs or any performer problems. Only one number was disappointing to me and it certainly wasn’t the performer’s fault, but the song just got off on the wrong foot with a tempo more like a funeral dirge. The one thing I don’t ever do as a writer is write funeral dirge ballads. We’d been over it at the sound check and I felt it was slow there and said so, so I’m not sure why it ended up even slower for the show. The young performer was left with a tempo where it was very difficult to breathe and phrase properly from having to slow everything up so much. Kids aren’t adept at speeding up on their own – they’re kind of just needing the pianist to simply play it as rehearsed. It was the only thing in the show where that happened, so it wasn’t a disaster, but it WAS my song and a song no one had ever heard before, and I felt bad for the performer who had to deal with it. That stuff happens, though, and in a way it’s a good lesson for singers that they MUST be in the driver’s seat and take charge if something is not as it should be. My other song in the show, Three Friends, landed beautifully and it was a song Marty Panzer especially loved, so that was fun to hear.
The patter got lots o’ laughs and I added a few off-the-cuff things that also got nice laughs. We actually had quite a few people in the audience who’d never been with us before, so that’s always fun. One person sitting up front was Marty Panzer, who used to work with Barry Manilow and has written a lot of well-known songs. Kay Cole was also superb, as was the irrepressible Richard Sherman. It’s such a treat to have these kids meet a legend like him, and he truly adores them. After the show a lot of us went over to Little Toni’s for some food. I had my usual salad and pasta with butter and cheese. We all had fun. So, a simply wonderful evening of terrific young talent getting to shine and shine they did.
Prior to all that, I got at least nine hours of sleep, so that was good. And I did get a little miracle when I got up, so thanks for the excellent vibes and xylophones. The helper came by and picked up some stuff, then I began futzing and finessing. When I went to bed I really wasn’t sure if what I’d written worked at all and whether it was even right for this particular story. So, I’d already figured out how to keep the salient story points and just do them a different way. But when I read it I really liked it and it was kind of just what was needed – sometimes you just need a good night’s sleep for clarity. I did have to clean up a bunch of stuff, and that took about ninety minutes. Then I wrote only a page or two, took a break, but then had to deal with some other stuff. Just before I left for sound check I did two more pages.
After I got home, I wrote six more pages for a total of eight, and I will definitely write between two and four more before going to sleep.
Today, I’ll futz and finesse and spend a good portion of the day writing, choosing songs and getting music, doing some busywork that has to be done by tomorrow, eating, hopefully picking up some packages, and then doing more writing, as well as doing prep work on our next Kritzerland release – the first of 2015, which may, in fact, be two releases.
Tomorrow is more of the same and I believe I have a lunch meeting for the ALS benefit. The rest of the week is writing, getting Muse Margaret her second batch of pages, which will probably be around the same number as the first, somewhere around ninety. Once the Kritzerland show’s songs are all set, I don’t have to deal with that till rehearsal week.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, futz and finesse, write, choose songs and gather up music, do busywork, eat, hopefully pick up packages, prep, and write. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your choices for the Oscar nominations that will be announced on Thursday. What do you feel will be nominated, overlooked, and or forgotten completely but deserving of a nomination? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that Kritzerland 53 was a big ol’ success.