jeffreychrist

Music Box: Idina Menzel Live At Radio City Music Hall

Idina Menzel lives in a musical kingdom where she rules as the Queen and her uber-fans are of many facets – her disciples, her defenders, her watchdogs, her court jesters, and her steadfastly dedicated army. Dare, if you will, to publicly state that the Emperor has no clothes, and you will be harangued, and scolded, and her votary will wish you banished to the tar pits of another land.

Yeah, they’re nutty like that.

I’ve often taken to Twitter and FB to complain (ok, mock, really) Menzel’s status as a theater (and gay) icon. Loathing the bloated, yet seemingly beloved, Wicked, it’s always been a curiosity that so many have elevated her to the status that she thrives in (more recent examples include her “screeching” at the Oscars and her “Live: Barefoot At The Symphony” PBS special and album). But I live with someone who adores her, so, as a good boyfriend/partner/whatever – and thanks to my work connections – I was able to finagle two free tickets to her sold out Radio City Music Hall one-night only event. (As an example of that snark, here’s what I posted once the tix were secured: I was just comped 2 free tix to Idina Menzel’s Radio City Music Hall concert on June 16th. Lucky me. I get to endure 2 hours of shrieking. All for Rob. What a man suffers through for love. ‪#‎HeyItsFree #‎IHaveAHeadacheAlready.Yeah, I know – no boundaries.)

Now, to be fair, and completely honest, I’ve always liked Menzel as an actress and a personality, where, whenever interviewed, she was lovely, earthly, un-manufactured, if you will, despite her vocal “styling” seldom pleasing my ears. (Of course I never meant the literal definition of “screech” or “shriek” in my description. It was always colloquially.) Her high belts were, and remain powerful, yet always thin – often bordering on shrill, rarely full, or robust. Every power note hit often results in a tinny tone, resulting in her wavering off-course, missing the landing. Her propensity to slur many of her words together leaves some lyrics indecipherable. When she hits her highs in head register, it always bamboozled me at the almost biblical reaction of the audience. (Although, I’ve always admitted that her tone was gorgeous when she sang in chest register.) Though such gut reaction is a personal emotion and cannot be negated by snark (especially mine), like the aforesaid emperor, I’ve sat in abstract awe at the rapturous response, always wanting to bellow, “She’s naked!!!!!”

In the three times I saw her in Wicked (don’t ask) her act-1 show-stopper, “Defying Gravity,” was bombastic (not her fault), anticlimactic (sorta her fault) and strident (yeah, her fault). Sure, she could’ve had an off-night, but three? I admired her in Rent a few years prior to Wicked (though admired no one from the disastrous filmed version), she was fine in (Andrew Lippa’s version of) the otherwise meandering The Wild Party, and liked her arc in Glee. (Forget about the insults hurled my way when I audaciously, apparently, declared that Lea Michele out sang Menzel on the latter, though Menzel’s performances were always stellar.)

So, night of the concert, I hurried Rob (he didn’t like Wicked either, but he became enamored with Menzel from Glee), packed my earplugs and Advil and hoped for the best.

And while I didn’t get ‘the best,’ I was surprised as anyone that I was besotted and instantly smitten – faults and all – during her Radio City debut. I can’t explain it, really. But after a rough start (that damned “Gravity” song opened the show and was problematic), with every successive word spoken, story strung and song sung, she was kinda sorta magical. As seemingly unrehearsed (she does, after all, perform 8 shows a week in the dreadful If/Then and, I suspect, didn’t get much rehearsal time for this show), scattered, unusual, inconsistent as it all was, to my ears and eyes, this eternalized the charm.

Perhaps I was expecting a banshee jamboree – a nightmare filled with the sounds of dinnerware clattering on the classic Radio City stage, mired in yelps and scowls. Instead I witnessed a woman who was charming, sweet, hilarious (having losing a week earlier to foregone conclusion Jessie Mueller, she gave a fantasy Tony Award acceptance speech, which was lovingly heartfelt and very funny) and totally aware of her fallibility. She cursed at whim, despite the audience scattered with children (thanks to the treacly muck that is “Frozen” – hey, she didn’t ask to be a role model for children – and that damned Oscar winning song), performed a hooker mash-up (“Love For Sale” and “Roxanne”), kept all the “fucking special“‘s in Radiohead’s “Creep,” and, during one of her costume changes where her right breast was partially exposed, before an audience member let her know, said, “Fuck it, they’re real.” Oh, yeah…and she sang her guts out. Sure, bum notes were in profusion but I come to realize that’s part of her métier. And she doesn’t give a shit, and that’s refreshing in a genre stifled with constraint.

Midway through the show, Menzel quoted a recent review, which lambasted her “screechy” tendencies (and for a brief moment, I imagined that she was calling me out – yeah, I know, me. A miniscule, nonexistent blip in the blogosphere. I got over myself swiftly). That this was a preamble to a misguided Ethel Merman tribute almost proved that particular reviewer correct (Menzel is the polar opposite of Merman).

Personal highlights include 2 Menzel concert staples; a haunting, emotive reading of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” which brought Rob to tears, and a song that always brings me to emotional overload, “No Day But Today,” from Rent. Through these performances – as well as “Creep,” and a U2 cover (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) – Menzel was adamant to break away from that misbegotten role as the Tween Queen thanks to Wicked and Frozen.

If her one night at Radio City proved anything, it’s that she might have finally broken free from such shackles. Despite how many ghastly covers of “Let It Go” the world will be saddled with eternally thanks to YouTube.

Sigh. Let it go, Jeffrey. Let it go.

Wardrobe malfunction:

Both Sides Now:

No Day But Today:

Her faux-Tony Award Winning speech:

Creep:

Take Me Or Leave Me:

Legacy: Casey Kasem

More than 500 Sunday mornings of my pre-to-teen years were spent with my ears glued to the radio from 8am-12pm listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. It was a weekly ritual; while my mother and sisters were downstairs in the kitchen starting Sunday’s afternoon dinner (the scent of sausages frying in the pan wafted throughout our home) and my brothers played outside in the backyard, I was in my room, bed on the floor, pen in hand, jotting down that week’s Billboard hits in my notebook as narrated by Kasem – in between the myriad of artist facts, chart trivia and of course, Casey’s Long Distance Dedications.

As my teen years progressed, this tradition waned – friendships, love, passion, sex, girlfriends, boyfriends, reality, high school, life all snuck up on me – but I’ve always harbored these memories in the storehouse of my mind as idyllic relics of my youth. So, for the thousands of hours of happiness you’ve given me, I hope you are resting in peace, Casey Kasem. And thank you for telling a million kids to “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars…”

Read Kasem’s obit here.

Legacy: Jimmy Scott, The Voice of an Angel 1925 – 2014

“The Voice Of An Angel” has become such an insipid cliche that it surpasses pure ludicrousness. But, if heaven actually existed (yeah, yeah, I know), and if there were such entities as angels, and if those angels were actually able to bless us in song, I always hoped that they would sound like Jimmy Scott.

Now they might. And I just might believe.

Rest in peace, Jimmy.

Photo courtesy Howard Baden.

Read Scott’s obit here.

Legacy: Phil Everly – Bye Bye, Love

Their perfect harmony nonpareil, their catalog too mammoth to fully convey, Don and Phil Everly – The Everly Brothers – created some of the most gorgeous and ubiquitous recordings in the annals of Rock N Roll. I mean, Bye Bye Love, All I Have To Do Is Dream, When Will I Be Loved, Cathy’s Clown, Wake Up Little Susie, Let It Be Me and on and on and on.

Sadly Phil crossed over to Rock N Roll Heaven. Earlier today, Everly died of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, at 74.

Rest in peace, Phil. And thank you for the music.

And their 1984 “comeback,” written by Paul McCartney:

Music Box: Merry Nicksmas!!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all the Chiffonheads in all the lands, no matter how you observe the holidays. As Stevie brings us tidings of great comfort and joy every day of every year, I wish the same for you and your loved ones.

And, Stand Back, 2013 – because, For What It’s Worth, After The Glitter Fades from this holiday, and the winter Storms pass, I’ll be like a Gypsy, and like Rhiannon, spinning in the Enchanted 2014, No Questions Asked, like I’m on the Edge of Seventeen! I Can’t Wait!

Christmas Angel, Sing To Me…

(Annual Repost)

Even as a non-believer, and even with all that the holiday entails (the myths, the inventions, religion), I’ve always adored Christmas. To me, and for me, it’s always been the ethos of the holiday – the carols, decorating the trees, the tidings of great comfort and joy from loved ones, the spirit of love and compassion and the conceptual peace-on-Earth-good-will-toward-men. Naive, perhaps, maybe even foolish; some might proclaim (as I’ve done so very often) that reality dictates it is not love that makes the world go round, but money, greed, hate and intolerance. And, more often than not, they are masqueraded in the religious dogma that, ironically – and speciously – enough, they allege opposition to.

But it is not – and never was, for me – the religious doctrine or the mythology; rather the ideal of the season, and I never let that aforementioned reality imbue my unabashed immersion of Christmastime and the power that rescinds that reality. You don’t have to believe in a virgin birth to hold tight the tenor of Christmas.

Sorta how (Calamities of Nature’s version of) Linus’ soliloquy from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” explains it (click to enlarge):

More specifically, his last paragraph.

For me, Christmas is my love. Christmas is my friends. Christmas is family. Christmas is battling the vampires and dragons to the death for the ones that you love. Christmas is progress, not regress. Christmas is believing, if even for a nanosecond, that perhaps love – and not hate – actually does make the world go round. Or at least our love makes our worlds go round – those fortunate enough to have love, family and friends. Christmas is a community that lends its hands – and hearts – to those in most need during this holiday.

Platitudinous? Perhaps. But I’m not ashamed to own it. The “Christmas spirit” should be the spirit of the “every day.” We are the captains of our own souls and create our own fates…so, we need to be the person who we can actually look into the mirror at. Perhaps be even more than that reflection, not less.

Many, many years ago, once upon a time, when I was a wannabe songwriter and self-proclaimed poet, I wrote this little poem below, and while the innate message is of “hope and love,” this Christmas poem was crafted during a period I call my dark ages – a chapter in my life I look back upon only in abstract awe that I actually ever survived. Perhaps those stories are better left hidden within the storehouses of my soul. But even then, as now – whatever demons resurrect(ed) in my life, I, again, never let them deter my adoration of the holiday spirit, even when it seems an impossible task.

What has made my heart smile over the years is knowing that friends I cherish love this poem. Especially those with children. After copyrighting it years ago, a few years after writing it, I hand-wrote it (ah, the lost art of the handwritten word!) inside the Christmas cards I sent that year and the response was lovely and surprising. It was such a simplistic thing (it actually rhymed!) literally written while on a ten minute walk home from the subway, passing glorious neighbourhood holiday decorations while kids were running around the local park. Yet, throughout the ensuing years friends told me they actually read it to their children! How can my soul not gleam at the thought that my unsophisticated words of optimism in darkness would bring such light to others? I was honored and deeply humbled. As I still am.

And, as uncomplicated as it might be, it is how I feel throughout the holidays…and I share it here because if it can possibly put the smallest smile on a face, then it’s worth sharing. It’s not a monumental work; hell, it ain’t even the opposite of that. It is not of epic proportions. It’s merely guileless and mildly sanguine. But it, simply, is.

I want to wish all my family and friends…near and far, tangible and intangible, a most extraordinary holiday beyond our dreams and aspirations, and a new year filled with promise. Enjoy your days surrounded with people you love. I wish for all who read this – friends, family, strangers – the most magical Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Chanukah, Happy Festivus, or however you choose to observe. Set asunder your beliefs or non-beliefs, whatever your religious or non-religious persuasions. Forgo the animosity you might imbibe in a world you might find indifferent.

Even for a scintilla of a moment, will it hurt for anyone to just…believe?

Christmas Angel
(a holiday dream…)

Where is the snow at Christmastime?
Where are the songs that I sing in rhyme?
They’re inside your heart and they ring in time
Open your soul…let your soul shine

Christmas angel
Sing to me
Meadowlark
Don’t abandon me
Santa Claus
I need you now
Don’t want the Grinch
Coming around

So I dance in the flight of the snow-white dove
As I swallow the flakes as they land on my tongue
And I carol all night to the ivory and pine
With chestnuts afire…an intervention divine?
While the children playing with the snowman, pleased
Creating snow angels at the trunks of the trees
And I thank you, Christmas angel, for bringing me here
Even Mr. Scrooge, full of holiday cheer

Christmas angel
Sings to me
Meadowlark
Lets me fly on her wing
And Santa Claus has come to town
I knew he’d never let me down
He never ever lets me down

@1998 Sage Song Musings

Music Box: Stevie Nicks – Wild Thing

In a short 1981 interview, Stevie waxes philosophic about her guest appearances during Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ 1981 tour, and the magic of music television. Ah, remember those days…

(PS – the audio during this interview was recorded extremely poorly – a sign of the times for the then-fledgling TV network. I tried to clean it as much as I could.)

Legacy: Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013

(photo source http://goo.gl/tb0cyF)

“I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.
It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die…”

Rest in peace, Nelson Mandela~

Read his NY Times obit HERE.

Music Box: The Ladies Who Lunch Medley

A Bed And A Chair: A New York Love Story

“A BED AND A CHAIR: A New York Love Affair” was a Stephen Sondheim compilation presented by New York City Center and Jazz At At Lincoln Center, and as longtime Sondheimite, I’m sad to say I missed what promised to be a glorious night at the theater.

Another Sondheim revue, you say? Yeah, I know.

But this one promised to be different, as the over two-dozen Sondheim songs were sifted through jazzy arrangements via Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, who acted not only as musical director of the show, but performed with the Jazz At Lincoln Center orchestra.

And headlining? Only the peerless Sondheim muse Bernadette Peters, and the incomparable Norm Lewis, along with the fantastic Jeremy Jordan and Cyrille Aimée.

AND the show was directed by the brilliant John Doyle, who won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the genius revival of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” – with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone – almost a decade ago, and has also helmed revivals of “Company” and “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Damn! I missed all that?!

But in our modern age of technology where (almost) nothing goes uncaptured, I was hopeful that some denizen in the dark whipped out their cellphone to somehow encapsulate some of the magic.

Thank you, denizen.

One YouTuber by the name of ggjohnson posted two separate clips of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” as performed by all four headliners. This piece, originally by the eternal Elaine Stritch from the classic “Company” (but you knew that already), sprinkles other Sondheim gems throughout the performance – “Agony” (from “Into The Woods”), “Can That Boy Foxtrot” (from “Follies”) and “Uptown, Downtown” (from “Marry Me A Little”/”Follies”) – to create a medley that you wouldn’t think would work, but, together, form a new amalgamation that cabaret performers will replicate for years to come.

The first minute or so of the video fade in and out of darkness, as gg was conspicuously trying to go unnoticed, but even with these minor caveats – and hopefully with the blessing of gg, who owns this footage – I edited both clips together as a whole for a streamlined view of this extraordinary medley.

One part of two, this is a delight to behold. Thank you gg!

Reel Life: The Last 5 Years

I know – I shouldn’t be so highfalutin because they are totally different organisms – but I’m always a little weary about film versions of beloved musicals not living up to expectations (see Les Miz, Hairspray, The Wiz, the Beyonce-ruined Dreamgirls, and so on). So I’m naturally skeptical about the upcoming The Last Five Years, the film adaptation of the 2002 cult classic about the genesis and disintegration of a marriage. With Book and Score by Jason Robert Brown, the original Off-Broadway production was a show-stopping vehicle for relative newcomers Sherie Renee Scott and Norbert Leo Butz. The film version, currently in post-production, stars the wonderful Oscar-nominee Anna Kendrick and Broadway’s talented Tony-nominated Jeremy Jordan.

And therein lies a quandary. The role of Cathy calls for power, nuance and emotion – all of which Kendrick has displayed in her acting. While she was fine in her minimal singing roles on film (Camp, Pitch Perfect, which has garnered Kendrick an unlikely Top 40 single, Cups (When I’m Gone) I don’t know if she has the lung power – or vocal dexterity – to pull off the necessary transitions the score calls for. It’s not Sondheim, I know, but it sure ain’t the frivolous pop of Pitch Perfect either. Jordan possesses a muscular, powerful range and his persona works on stage, but so far on screen – whether as the angry young man on TVs misbegotten Smash or as Dolly Parton’s allegedly charming nephew in the cringe-fest Joyful Noise – he’s always less-than likeable (blame his roles) and never charming (blame his scripts). But, man, what a voice.

Also, the stage version had a clever, albeit tricky, chronology – the couple’s story was told in reverse of each other. Cathy’s role begins at the end of their marriage, while Jamie’s starts right as the couple’s romance blossoms. There’s rarely an interface between either character (except when their timelines meet, in the middle).

How will they handle this aspect in a big movie? Altering the whole idea of the reverse narrative would be a grave mistake and I can’t imagine how screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (Water For Elephants, P.S. I Love You, The Mirror Has Two Faces, The Bridges Of Madison County, and the recent HBO Liberace biography, Behind The Candelabra) will adapt that structure to film (LaGravanese is also directing).

As much as I adored the show, the material was stronger as a concept album – its edifice often confused on stage. If LaGravenese remains faithful to the source, the result could be a befuddling clusterfuck on screen. Yet, if he synchronizes the plot line in a more mainstream, diluted approach, how unique would the film be from the thousand other NY-boy-meets-marries-divorces-girl love story we’ve slogged through ad nauseum?

That onus is on LaGravanese. And knowing the scary, passionate obsession of this show’s fan base, one I don’t envy. (But I’m sure looking forward to the result.)