POST 44: "Beautiful Music" |
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“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.” Mother Teresa
So writing has made me a different fan. A more discerning one. Frankly, with all due respect, I don’t want another Christmas album. I’m not interested in “Barry does another decade.” I don’t doubt his talent. That is why I want to see his what is uniquely his.
So I went back and looked deeper at the several “concept” albums Barry produced, initially 2:00 AM Paradise Café, but more in depth Here at the Mayflower and Fifteen Minutes (all highlighting original material) and the theater album Harmony. As I listened, I reconnected the dots of the stories Barry told in his songs from The Drunkard, from the early commercial albums and from the Copa saga.
I recalled how 2:00 AM Paradise Café marked a radical break with the commercial pop style that had garnished Barry 25 songs that charted over a ten-year period. At one point, I would have thought such a switch incomprehensible, a betrayal of all things teeny-bopper, to what my 19-year-old ears were used to hearing when they went into exile.
Here at the Mayflower is an album based on the name of a building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, near where Barry grew up. The album is a delightful exploration into not just the contemporary pop sound associated with Barry’s name, but branches into jazz, Latin-style, show tunes, big band rhythms, unique and inviting as the lives and dreams of the building’s occupants. All these people are ordinary, perhaps working class people, and the glimpses we are given into their lives shine a light into our souls. These people are really us. In “Come Monday,” Diane in 3B is “makin’ a plan…I’m gonna change my hair/ It just don’t fit my face anymore/I'm getting’ out of here Tired of all the stallin’/This time it’s for good ….Come Monday My life starts again My new point of view is beginning.” Ken in 5N is going to lose weight, get in his clothes again and graduate.
Of course the Mayflower has walls so thin that the music and problems invade each other’s worlds in “Turn the Radio Up” and its response, “I Hear Her Playing Music,” as well as “Talk to Me,” along with designated building/neighborhood gossip (“Freddie Said”). Having lived in a few New York City apartments with razor-thin walls, I appreciated these songs. Been there. Seen that.
The romantic dramas of the occupants, the nightlife escapades dim in the power of two songs about the eldest couple at the Mayflower, Esther and Joe (“Not What You See” and “I Miss You”). Oh my. These songs brought flash backs to all the elderly couples in the churches I’ve served who have lived on the Upper East Side, Morningside Heights, Jamaica (Queens), and Bay Ridge, who have lived all their lives in their apartments or homes – 50, 60 years in a rent-controlled New York City apartments. The stories they tell of old neighborhoods before they changed. Tales of the old country. Stories of ethnic neighborhoods with specialty stores and restaurants and characters that roamed the streets. Of challenges faced and of loved ones long gone. I just love these two songs, I love it when 83-year-old Joe says, “Sonny, no one is/what they look like/Everyone’s so much more.”
I would like such wise, colorful neighbors on my very sedate block, without the smartasses and hoodlums on the street corner, spray-painting every stop sign they see. I especially want a conversation with the guy like the one in “Border Train,” vowing, “No more livin’ half asleep.”What a line.
Contrast Mayflower with the album 15 Minutes, another concept album written in 2013, which has the feel of a rock opera. Once again Barry is not afraid to take musical chances there is a dominant guitar/drum feel to many of the tracks on 15 Minutes that is not your usual easy-listening Manilow signature. 15 Minutes tells of the rise and fall and final redemption of a rock star, although I recognize in it the tale of some megachurch pastors and other prominent political personalities. While inspired by some of the very public struggles of singer Britney Spears, Barry found parts of himself as well in the stories that unfold on the album.
The story of 15 Minutes leaves a lot of room for dialogue. The trajectory to “fame” then the collapse and the recovery all have openings that invite conversation. But the biggest question is perhaps why this desperate cult of celebrity? Barry’s writing, beginning with Barry Manilow I (for example Sweetwater Jones, to Riders to the Stars, She’s a Star) to 15 Minutes, voices this cultural longing for fame and renown over the years. It captures the American dream of making it big and making a name for yourself. 15 Minutes, written by Barry who had close to 37 years of fame and public scrutiny, tells the under-tale. The anonymous struggle and triumphs of the Mayflower lure you in. 15 Minutes, like the world of celebrity today, although about “being known” (“He’s A Star” is the flip side of “She’s a Star”), the character is rendered as less accessible than Ken of 5N or old Joe, weeping for his beloved Esther, for at the end of the show we are told, “He’s left with no companions, only enemies and slaves.”
At the height of fame, for which this fictional character worked so hard for 15 years, he discovers he has alienated his partner and other close connections in his life. He is left with an entourage, an adoring crowd “covered in smiles,” and a fanatical fan here and there. Please, not all fans are “Lost Ones” as depicted in “Letter from a Fan” which sent chills down my spine. Throw in the paparazzi, and he asks, “Fame, is it worth it?” (“Winner Go Down”). The walls of the Mayflower may be paper thin but the walls erected through the experience of fame in 15 Minutes are impenetrable. The singer hits bottom in “Slept through the End of the World” and “Trainwreck” as the star is discarded like last season’s reruns.
The final tune, “Everything Is Gonna Be All Right” is as about as close to spiritual as you’re going to get in the secular field. It reminds me of a song of Barry’s I have not heard, “Do You Wanna Be Saved?” the final song from the musical, The Drunkard, which I would love to see someday. The themes are linked: we do not have to self-destruct. We can make healthy choices for our lives. This requires having the right people around us, doing the right things, and being decent human being.
How does the singer recover himself? 15 Minutes does not delve into that part of his history. This is the gap, as a minister, I would want to explore the most.
Shoutin’ hallelujah / Joy is comin’ to ya / Everything is gonna be all right/ Singin’ to remind you/ Happiness will find you / Everything is gonna be all right. It reveals that healing requires the touch of the transcendent – however you define it. Some call it God. Others call it the beach. Or some favorite tune. Some of my friends in AA call it the “chair.” Whatever it is, it requires something bigger, greater than us, different from us. I think we could all learn from this one. It doesn’t just happen. Some effort is required, and I wonder what effort this singer made to redeem himself.
Then there is Harmony, the story of the Comedian Harmonists. It is also the story of Barry and his collaborator, Bruce Sussman, who have doggedly and devotedly worked on this theatrical piece since 1991, when Bruce learned of the story of the Comedian Harmonists, the German the internationally acclaimed sextet, from diverse backgrounds. They were the Beatles of the 1920s. Yet their memory was abolished by Nazi Germany because of the Jewish composition of the group. Barry and his life-long collaborator have not only been diligent about putting together a musical that honors the story of the Comedian Harmonists, but also faced legal struggles with Broadway produces. Ultimately, they emerged triumphant, retaining artistic control.
Whereas 15 Minutes tells a story of a fictional rock star finding fame and redemption, Harmony is a powerful story that uses music to restore the rightful place in history to the Comedian Harmonists. Not fame but memory, which is more enduring and important.
When we restore memory that was brutally suppressed, we are all healed. It is not surprising that this act should come from the writer who penned for us “One Voice” and is using his voice to ensure those beautiful voices are remembered, so that Harmony will continue in our world, and all walls which divide us may come down. Harmony was reprised at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and Los Angeles; and won awards in both cities as well. Here’s to Harmony on Broadway, where it rightfully belongs.
Put simply, it’s a story that needs to be told.
Notes: A Simple Path: Mother Teresa: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/139677-the-greatest-disease-in-the-west-today-is-not-tb
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
So writing has made me a different fan. A more discerning one. Frankly, with all due respect, I don’t want another Christmas album. I’m not interested in “Barry does another decade.” I don’t doubt his talent. That is why I want to see his what is uniquely his.
So I went back and looked deeper at the several “concept” albums Barry produced, initially 2:00 AM Paradise Café, but more in depth Here at the Mayflower and Fifteen Minutes (all highlighting original material) and the theater album Harmony. As I listened, I reconnected the dots of the stories Barry told in his songs from The Drunkard, from the early commercial albums and from the Copa saga.
I recalled how 2:00 AM Paradise Café marked a radical break with the commercial pop style that had garnished Barry 25 songs that charted over a ten-year period. At one point, I would have thought such a switch incomprehensible, a betrayal of all things teeny-bopper, to what my 19-year-old ears were used to hearing when they went into exile.
Here at the Mayflower is an album based on the name of a building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, near where Barry grew up. The album is a delightful exploration into not just the contemporary pop sound associated with Barry’s name, but branches into jazz, Latin-style, show tunes, big band rhythms, unique and inviting as the lives and dreams of the building’s occupants. All these people are ordinary, perhaps working class people, and the glimpses we are given into their lives shine a light into our souls. These people are really us. In “Come Monday,” Diane in 3B is “makin’ a plan…I’m gonna change my hair/ It just don’t fit my face anymore/I'm getting’ out of here Tired of all the stallin’/This time it’s for good ….Come Monday My life starts again My new point of view is beginning.” Ken in 5N is going to lose weight, get in his clothes again and graduate.
Of course the Mayflower has walls so thin that the music and problems invade each other’s worlds in “Turn the Radio Up” and its response, “I Hear Her Playing Music,” as well as “Talk to Me,” along with designated building/neighborhood gossip (“Freddie Said”). Having lived in a few New York City apartments with razor-thin walls, I appreciated these songs. Been there. Seen that.
The romantic dramas of the occupants, the nightlife escapades dim in the power of two songs about the eldest couple at the Mayflower, Esther and Joe (“Not What You See” and “I Miss You”). Oh my. These songs brought flash backs to all the elderly couples in the churches I’ve served who have lived on the Upper East Side, Morningside Heights, Jamaica (Queens), and Bay Ridge, who have lived all their lives in their apartments or homes – 50, 60 years in a rent-controlled New York City apartments. The stories they tell of old neighborhoods before they changed. Tales of the old country. Stories of ethnic neighborhoods with specialty stores and restaurants and characters that roamed the streets. Of challenges faced and of loved ones long gone. I just love these two songs, I love it when 83-year-old Joe says, “Sonny, no one is/what they look like/Everyone’s so much more.”
I would like such wise, colorful neighbors on my very sedate block, without the smartasses and hoodlums on the street corner, spray-painting every stop sign they see. I especially want a conversation with the guy like the one in “Border Train,” vowing, “No more livin’ half asleep.”What a line.
Contrast Mayflower with the album 15 Minutes, another concept album written in 2013, which has the feel of a rock opera. Once again Barry is not afraid to take musical chances there is a dominant guitar/drum feel to many of the tracks on 15 Minutes that is not your usual easy-listening Manilow signature. 15 Minutes tells of the rise and fall and final redemption of a rock star, although I recognize in it the tale of some megachurch pastors and other prominent political personalities. While inspired by some of the very public struggles of singer Britney Spears, Barry found parts of himself as well in the stories that unfold on the album.
The story of 15 Minutes leaves a lot of room for dialogue. The trajectory to “fame” then the collapse and the recovery all have openings that invite conversation. But the biggest question is perhaps why this desperate cult of celebrity? Barry’s writing, beginning with Barry Manilow I (for example Sweetwater Jones, to Riders to the Stars, She’s a Star) to 15 Minutes, voices this cultural longing for fame and renown over the years. It captures the American dream of making it big and making a name for yourself. 15 Minutes, written by Barry who had close to 37 years of fame and public scrutiny, tells the under-tale. The anonymous struggle and triumphs of the Mayflower lure you in. 15 Minutes, like the world of celebrity today, although about “being known” (“He’s A Star” is the flip side of “She’s a Star”), the character is rendered as less accessible than Ken of 5N or old Joe, weeping for his beloved Esther, for at the end of the show we are told, “He’s left with no companions, only enemies and slaves.”
At the height of fame, for which this fictional character worked so hard for 15 years, he discovers he has alienated his partner and other close connections in his life. He is left with an entourage, an adoring crowd “covered in smiles,” and a fanatical fan here and there. Please, not all fans are “Lost Ones” as depicted in “Letter from a Fan” which sent chills down my spine. Throw in the paparazzi, and he asks, “Fame, is it worth it?” (“Winner Go Down”). The walls of the Mayflower may be paper thin but the walls erected through the experience of fame in 15 Minutes are impenetrable. The singer hits bottom in “Slept through the End of the World” and “Trainwreck” as the star is discarded like last season’s reruns.
The final tune, “Everything Is Gonna Be All Right” is as about as close to spiritual as you’re going to get in the secular field. It reminds me of a song of Barry’s I have not heard, “Do You Wanna Be Saved?” the final song from the musical, The Drunkard, which I would love to see someday. The themes are linked: we do not have to self-destruct. We can make healthy choices for our lives. This requires having the right people around us, doing the right things, and being decent human being.
How does the singer recover himself? 15 Minutes does not delve into that part of his history. This is the gap, as a minister, I would want to explore the most.
Shoutin’ hallelujah / Joy is comin’ to ya / Everything is gonna be all right/ Singin’ to remind you/ Happiness will find you / Everything is gonna be all right. It reveals that healing requires the touch of the transcendent – however you define it. Some call it God. Others call it the beach. Or some favorite tune. Some of my friends in AA call it the “chair.” Whatever it is, it requires something bigger, greater than us, different from us. I think we could all learn from this one. It doesn’t just happen. Some effort is required, and I wonder what effort this singer made to redeem himself.
Then there is Harmony, the story of the Comedian Harmonists. It is also the story of Barry and his collaborator, Bruce Sussman, who have doggedly and devotedly worked on this theatrical piece since 1991, when Bruce learned of the story of the Comedian Harmonists, the German the internationally acclaimed sextet, from diverse backgrounds. They were the Beatles of the 1920s. Yet their memory was abolished by Nazi Germany because of the Jewish composition of the group. Barry and his life-long collaborator have not only been diligent about putting together a musical that honors the story of the Comedian Harmonists, but also faced legal struggles with Broadway produces. Ultimately, they emerged triumphant, retaining artistic control.
Whereas 15 Minutes tells a story of a fictional rock star finding fame and redemption, Harmony is a powerful story that uses music to restore the rightful place in history to the Comedian Harmonists. Not fame but memory, which is more enduring and important.
When we restore memory that was brutally suppressed, we are all healed. It is not surprising that this act should come from the writer who penned for us “One Voice” and is using his voice to ensure those beautiful voices are remembered, so that Harmony will continue in our world, and all walls which divide us may come down. Harmony was reprised at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta and Los Angeles; and won awards in both cities as well. Here’s to Harmony on Broadway, where it rightfully belongs.
Put simply, it’s a story that needs to be told.
Notes: A Simple Path: Mother Teresa: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/139677-the-greatest-disease-in-the-west-today-is-not-tb
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.