Melody Hollis's show was wonderful last night! She is an extremely charismatic child, and she performs like a grownup. It's hard to believe she really picked most of the songs because they were of the so-obscure nature that Bruce is famous for. I think I only recognized about five of them, and one of them I only heard for the first time last December. It left me wondering how such a young person could even know of such songs, but Mark said since she obviously comes from a musical family it is possible she's been exposed to a lot more musicals than I was as a child. I grew up listening to "The Sound of Music" and "Fiddler on the Roof" - we were Jewish, and those were the only records we had, and we played them over and over. Funny, Melody is Jewish too, so she referred to her dad as "Father Hollis" the entire evening, which brought some nice laughs.
It was amazing that she didn't make a single obvious mistake. I kept hoping Father Hollis had the lyrics on his music so he could help her out, but it wasn't needed. Her patter was perfect - not too long, not too short, and always funny. And the song Bruce wrote for her was absolutely perfect too. If I had to pick something to criticize I would say the song that came after Melodyland was too similar to Melodyland in its sentiment, and it would have been better to separate them by a few songs. "Postal Card" is no longer the weirdest song I've ever heard. It's some song about a boy from a place with an impossibly long name. One thing I noticed is that there were no programs, which is good because programs can spoil the surprise element, but bad because if you really like something, and you want to know what the heck it was, you have nothing to refer to. Bruce, what was the name of that crazy song?
Anyway, it will be so interesting to see and hear how she develops into an adult. Right now her falsetto voice is very breathy, but I imagine she'll grow out of that. I look forward to seeing her at more Gardenia shows.
