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Mom's
We have season tickets to the SF symphony and have had for years. I remember when I was a teenager and visiting my grandmother. I was doing the dishes and turned on the classical radio station. She (who had been a chorus girl in vaudeville) came in, listened for a minute and then said "Well, it's nice but you couldn't listen to that all day could you??" Household Hints from A Medieval
Home Companion: To make 3 pintes [sic] of ink: Take galls and gum, two ounces of each, and three ounces of copperas. Crush the galls and soak them three days. Then boil them in three quartes of rain wter, or water from a still pool. When they have boiled enough and the water is almost half-boiled away (i.e., no more than three pintes are left), take it off the fire, add the copperas and gum, and stir it until cold. Then put it in a cold, damp place. After three weeks it spoils. I am a theatre critic OK...so it's a new "career", but if you're interested in reading my reviews, go here Updated 2/11/01 WHAT I'M READING... also He, She and It (both books very slowly!) WHAT I WATCHED... Tommy That's it for today!
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TWO OUT OF TWO 4 March 2001 Bad theatre two nights in a row. I’m on a roll. I wish Paul were here. We’d have a good laugh about this. Tonight it was Tommy, the rock opera, at the theatre group we’ve always called "dammit" (DMTC). Perhaps the best line of the evening came from Walt as we walked back to the car. "I don’t know if I’d like this even if it were a good production," he said. And this was not a good production. I am, perhaps fortunately, not familiar with Tommy in any of its incarnations--whether professional stage or movie (Walt suggests we rent the movie before I do my review, but the thought of sitting through it twice...!) I’m also an old fogey when it comes to music. I was an old fogie when I was a teenager. I was in my teens when Elvis gyrated onto the scene. We used to watch Ed Sullivan all the time and I probably saw The Beatles make their debut. And yet I know nothing about rock music. Zip. Nada. I’ve learned to recognize more popular music of the 60s and 70s--supposedly my era--from listening to Ned’s radio show in the morning than I ever did from living through the 60s and 70s. Bob Dylan sucks, people! Can’t carry a tune in a bucket! (There. I’ve finally said it!) I blame my father for my having grown up with the history of rock and roll and knowing absolutely nothing about it. My father was an avid jazz fan. He had an incredible record collection, and specialized in jazz piano. He also played piano and wrote a bit of music himself (neither well). One of the many, many ways I disappointed him was that I never learned to share his love of jazz. He also collected ballad and novelty music of the 40s--Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Frankie Laine--that kind of stuff. He detested rock and roll and thought it was the worst music ever written (second only to Gilbert and Sullivan). I was such a suggestible kid (read "wuss") that it never ever occurred to me to question anything my father told me. I can remember one day saying I wanted to buy a specific record by Sam Cooke and my father hit the ceiling. Went on at great length about what junk it was and how I would be wasting my money, etc., etc. I never did buy that record, which is now worth quite a bit of money, I see periodically on places like eBay, while my father’s jazz collection, which he felt would be my "fortune" after he died, went for a pittance because nobody wanted those old records. So while all my friends were rocking around the clock and doing the hand jive and other such stuff, I was sitting at home listening to balladeers, mooning over Judy Garland, and missing out on a whole generation--my generation--of music. "My" music is the music of my father’s generation. Perhaps that’s why I can’t relate to Tommy. I just don’t understand the music. Or perhaps it just really was an abominable production. At least the next show I’m reviewing will be fun--the touring company of Riverdance. I’ve already seen that once live and several times on PBS and know what I’m getting into there. ~~
The Last Session ~~ |
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Created 3/04/01 by Bev Sykes |
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