Back from a very weird evening - not even sure WHAT it was - it was, I guess, a series of concerts, but maybe to benefit abused women or something - really hard to tell. They did it at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, but onstage. It was an audience made up of elderly rich and entitled and "hip" people (like Norman Lear) and young "hip" people who stood and cheered at every riff of every song. The evening was of Tena Clark songs. This is how much I know about pop music after 1985 - I had and have no idea who this woman is. They say she is legendary so I guess she's had some million selling hits. She also wrote the score to the musical Twist that was born and apparently died in Pasadena at the Pasadena Playhouse. Or maybe it's still Broadway bound four years later. Every song sounded the same - Tena explained how she came to write them. The host was, well, all about herself - she stood there for every performer's number, moving around in distracting ways, making faces like she was "into" the music so much it was aching her soul - the musicians were all that way, too. Just sing, just play the damn music, and don't put on the acting - it's just so self-indulgent. Some good performers including Mary Wilson and Patti Austin - but the younger folks were all that riffing and screaming stuff that I don't like or respond to. One of the singers, young Sara Niemietz who, I think, was in Jason Robert Brown's 13 is now a pop kind of gal who's being produced by Snuffy Walden. It's a shame she didn't pursue her musical theater career - she's got some talent and I think a lot more than the pumped up, reverb-laden soulful pop singing she was doing.
