Exit, Right
You ever buy a CD because you've only heard one of the songs, and you really like it...naively thinking all of the other songs will be as good as, if not better than the one song? You know when you buy a CD for one song you like, hoping that one song will be worth the $17.99 investment - not including the tax - and the one song you like is the only decent song on the CD because the rest of them are crap and you can't return it?
I'm sorry. I didn't like Songs from an Unmade Bed. I bought the CD because I really, really liked one song, foolishly hoping it would be a good indicator. It wasn't. This was particularly evident tonight when I was rearranging my nightstand, and the jewel case for Unmade Bed was at the very, very bottom of the pile, just below Cyndi Lauper's The Body Acoustic.
Typically, I do not put a lot of thought into the CDs I am going to buy. But I got a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records - and, seriously, who am I to resist a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records? And there was this great song that came on...a song called "Perfect, Finite," that was just deliriously beautiful. Exactly the kind of song you'd want to hear on a New York morning in the east side as you're taking a shower, just before you head off to the soul-sucking temp day job.
If only...If only I didn't know what this show was. I shouldn't have bought the freakin' CD, because I already had the one good song on CD. But, I guess you couldn't blame me. It's a fairly innocuous song, with a bouncy melody and ambiguously haunting lyrics. If anyone had told me this was not a good new band, or some innovative musical, but instead was a "Theatrical Song Cycle" about some Paul Scheer-lookin' dude whining about how his boyfriends never put out sexually, they would have spared me the torture of actually listening to this horrible CD.
The guy who sings this? He sounds like valium. It's not that he sounds like his vocal cords were actually injected with the drug; it's really more like his voice is valium. I don't know what he's going for, or if he's trying to involve himself more with the lyrics than the music...which I guess is pretty understandable. After all, the songs were written by many, many, many people. No less than eighteen composers are credited with the music. The lyrics are all by the same poet. They all contain the same klunky Borscht Belt jokes and kinky, pseudo-intellectual word play pertaining to the laffs involved with faulty gay sex ("Play a part in romantic scenes/Not induced by pharmaceutical means..."). This poet clearly has ideas ("Oh, to be stupid again./Being gripped by a boyish yen..."). Ideas that are all set within the same meter and scansion and near-perfect ha-ha-this-is-clever post-Sondheim rhymes and arcane references even Zelig-era Woody would have to look up ("Screw being older and quote-unquote wiser/Love was once a warm and gushing geyser/That's now about as warm as 'Die Winterreise'). I guess he was just too lazy to set any of them to a tune. Or a beat. Or snazzy choreography.
I should mention that the three above quotes are all from the same song. And it just goes on and on and on and tries my patience.
I can't fathom whose brilliant idea this thing was, or how anyone ever thought it was worth investing their money in; I mean, reading the liner notes? Well, this is the entire plot: Some dude sits in a bed and whines about his crappy sex life, and how he isn't getting any, and how otherwise his life is filled with such nauseating lyrical imagery as "grappling with a block of brie" until he opens the door to his apartment and sees fake snow.
That's it.
And the guy who sings everything? He can't even make a song called "I Wanna Go Out Tonight" sound fun. Where's the enjoyment in this? Are we supposed to be feeling this dude's pain? I mean, I don't discredit his ability as a singer. I think he was in Mamma Mia! or something, which I really can't comprehend, because a show like that requires being happy and singing loud and actually having energy. This guy doesn't even get excited about being on vacation in Italy! And do you want to know why?
Because he never leaves his fucking bed! Jesus! It's like, they might as well have called it "Rose Louise's boring life of unemployment: The Conceptual Theatre Piece."
Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it is me after all. Maybe I just don't "get" conceptual song cycles. Maybe I'm too much of a snob to actually see off-Broadway plays in the Village. Maybe I'm just being naive and have absolutely no understanding of the painstaking craft that goes into the creation of a musical theatre piece. Maybe I just don't want to live in a society where "Sherry Baby" is considered a showtune.
Or maybe anything where the entire band consists of a piano and a cello with no percussion and everyone on the stage is wearing white is enough to drive me batty up a wall.
Blech!
I'm sorry. I didn't like Songs from an Unmade Bed. I bought the CD because I really, really liked one song, foolishly hoping it would be a good indicator. It wasn't. This was particularly evident tonight when I was rearranging my nightstand, and the jewel case for Unmade Bed was at the very, very bottom of the pile, just below Cyndi Lauper's The Body Acoustic.
Typically, I do not put a lot of thought into the CDs I am going to buy. But I got a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records - and, seriously, who am I to resist a free promo CD from Sh-k-Boom Records? And there was this great song that came on...a song called "Perfect, Finite," that was just deliriously beautiful. Exactly the kind of song you'd want to hear on a New York morning in the east side as you're taking a shower, just before you head off to the soul-sucking temp day job.
If only...If only I didn't know what this show was. I shouldn't have bought the freakin' CD, because I already had the one good song on CD. But, I guess you couldn't blame me. It's a fairly innocuous song, with a bouncy melody and ambiguously haunting lyrics. If anyone had told me this was not a good new band, or some innovative musical, but instead was a "Theatrical Song Cycle" about some Paul Scheer-lookin' dude whining about how his boyfriends never put out sexually, they would have spared me the torture of actually listening to this horrible CD.
The guy who sings this? He sounds like valium. It's not that he sounds like his vocal cords were actually injected with the drug; it's really more like his voice is valium. I don't know what he's going for, or if he's trying to involve himself more with the lyrics than the music...which I guess is pretty understandable. After all, the songs were written by many, many, many people. No less than eighteen composers are credited with the music. The lyrics are all by the same poet. They all contain the same klunky Borscht Belt jokes and kinky, pseudo-intellectual word play pertaining to the laffs involved with faulty gay sex ("Play a part in romantic scenes/Not induced by pharmaceutical means..."). This poet clearly has ideas ("Oh, to be stupid again./Being gripped by a boyish yen..."). Ideas that are all set within the same meter and scansion and near-perfect ha-ha-this-is-clever post-Sondheim rhymes and arcane references even Zelig-era Woody would have to look up ("Screw being older and quote-unquote wiser/Love was once a warm and gushing geyser/That's now about as warm as 'Die Winterreise'). I guess he was just too lazy to set any of them to a tune. Or a beat. Or snazzy choreography.
I should mention that the three above quotes are all from the same song. And it just goes on and on and on and tries my patience.
I can't fathom whose brilliant idea this thing was, or how anyone ever thought it was worth investing their money in; I mean, reading the liner notes? Well, this is the entire plot: Some dude sits in a bed and whines about his crappy sex life, and how he isn't getting any, and how otherwise his life is filled with such nauseating lyrical imagery as "grappling with a block of brie" until he opens the door to his apartment and sees fake snow.
That's it.
And the guy who sings everything? He can't even make a song called "I Wanna Go Out Tonight" sound fun. Where's the enjoyment in this? Are we supposed to be feeling this dude's pain? I mean, I don't discredit his ability as a singer. I think he was in Mamma Mia! or something, which I really can't comprehend, because a show like that requires being happy and singing loud and actually having energy. This guy doesn't even get excited about being on vacation in Italy! And do you want to know why?
Because he never leaves his fucking bed! Jesus! It's like, they might as well have called it "Rose Louise's boring life of unemployment: The Conceptual Theatre Piece."
Well, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it is me after all. Maybe I just don't "get" conceptual song cycles. Maybe I'm too much of a snob to actually see off-Broadway plays in the Village. Maybe I'm just being naive and have absolutely no understanding of the painstaking craft that goes into the creation of a musical theatre piece. Maybe I just don't want to live in a society where "Sherry Baby" is considered a showtune.
Or maybe anything where the entire band consists of a piano and a cello with no percussion and everyone on the stage is wearing white is enough to drive me batty up a wall.
Blech!
posted by Gypsy at 7:53 PM
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