Well, dear readers, let’s just get to the meat of these here notes, shall we, or, for our vegetarian dear readers, the succotash of these here notes. I promised you some damn videos from Sunday’s show and I can deliver, oh, yes, I can deliver because I spent hours uploading many videos to the Tube of You today. So, to begin at the beginning, here was the show’s opening number as sung by Marc Ginsberg and Robert Yacko.
Wasn’t that rousing? Didn’t that make you just want to have some proper bangers and mash? Next up we have Sarah Uriarte Berry (on the left) and Carly Bracco doing the delicious duet for two sopranos, Perfect Strangers from Drood – it was a real highlight of the show.
Here’s Robert Yacko doing the song that Rupert says is his favorite of all he’s written, The People That You Never Get to Love.
And here’s Marc Ginsberg doing the delightfully droll I Don’t Need you in a delightfully droll way.
And how about that Kay Cole singing, at the personal request of Rupert, Moonfall from Drood, which, of course, she also does on her new CD.
As you know, Guy Haines was supposed to do this next number, but as you’ll hear and see, he didn’t show up, so I filled in for him, which was only appropriate since the song, Echo Valley 2-6809 was featured on The Partridge Family, as was I back in my actor days. Pay close attention to the spoken line at the end of the song – the same thing happened at the stumble-through – I never had a problem remembering the phone number when I sang it, but I couldn’t remember it to speak it – it got a good laugh.
Here’s Carly Bracco singing Nearsighted – she bought these glasses especially for the show. In the set-up I told the audience I was both nearsighted and farsighted so that half my world was in focus and half out – and that I was also shortsighted, but that’s another story.
Finally for today, here’s Rupert himself singing his number one hit song, with a bit of his number six hit song before it – unfortunately they stopped filming before I said my great adlib about our tombstones.
You know you’re going to be singing that song all day now, don’t you? I’ll have more video in tomorrow’s notes.
Yesterday was a funny old day – not really. I only got about six hours of sleep after only getting two the day before, so I was and am fairly trashed. I was up at six with an upset tummy and a yucky bunch of guck in my throat, which caused me no amount of aggravation and the inability to fall back asleep. I finally did at around nine and didn’t get up until a bit after noon o’clock. I decided to pretty much keep my mouth shut all day due to a trashed throat from too much yakking and hocking. Happily, I had taken home some pinwheel sandwich things leftover from the CD release party – I looked up the calorie count to find that each pinwheel was only 122 calories – so I immediately ate six of them and was still under eight hundred calories and full as can be. Then I did some work on the computer, answered e-mails, printed out a few orders, then moseyed on over to the UPS Store to get mail and packages. There was only one of the latter and none of the former. The one package was rather large and I had no idea what it was, from Amazon. It turns out it was a huge new box set of Leonard Bernstein called Leonard Bernstein The Composer. I’d pre-ordered it from the UK using credit almost four months ago and completely forgotten I’d done so.
It’s twenty-five CDs, including his eight Bernstein Conducts Bernstein albums – they trumpet that those have been remixed and remastered – these albums have had so many incarnations you wonder why they can’t just get it as good as it can be the first, second, third, or even fourth time. Then again, technology improves so you go back to the well. I had the previous Original Jackets box of ten CDs and I thought those were pretty incredible, but even a cursory sampling of those vs. these new ones reveals the new ones to be vastly superior – they’re quite amazing, in fact – the clarity and cleanliness and warmth of the sound, the detail – I really couldn’t believe it could be that much better but it really is. I listened to the soundtrack to West Side Story – I had the original LP version on a Japanese CD – much sought after because it was supposed to be better than its then-US counterpart, and I had the first expanded edition with eighteen tracks. But this thing had nineteen – later, I read it had come out again a decade ago and I hadn’t even been aware of it. So, I couldn’t compare this to that, but comparing it to the eighteen track version was like night and day – the old one sounded horrifying and the new one, which may indeed just be the one from a decade ago, sounded amazing. The way the credits read, it’s really hard to tell if everything in the box has received a new mastering, but all I can say is it sounded amazing. I then listened to the original cast recording of West Side Story and that sounded crisp and clear, too – happily I had the latest prior mastering – comparing them I still gave the edge to this newer version – they’re close, and maybe my ears were playing tricks on me, but it just sounded a bit better. Then I listened to four of eight remixed and remastered CDs and those are just marvelous and, as I said, much better than their prior masterings. I also did a quick trip to Gelson’s for a few small evening snacks – a bit of mac-and-cheese, a bit of potato salad, and some chicken noodle soup, all good. That was basically how the day and evening went, and of course I did work that needed to be done, too. Oh, and uploading all those damn videos for your damn viewing pleasure.
Today I have to be up by ten, then Kay Cole is coming by and we’ll go do The Broadway Radio Show with Donald Feltham, after which we’ll have a quick lunch and discuss her club act that we’ll be putting together for a July date at The Federal. After that, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, and then I have a lot of reading to do – the new musical for which I’ll make lots of notes, and also I have to continue audio proofing the new book for fixes.
Tomorrow and Friday is more of that stuff, Saturday we have a production meeting at ten in the morning, and I’m not sure what the rest of the weekend holds. I suppose I’ll find out.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a radio show interview with Kay, eat, hopefully pick up packages, read and audio proof. 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, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have shared all those videos in these here video notes.