The Parent(hetical) Trap

Dear Friends,

Last year, Malcolm was cast in the role of Fred in the Pioneer High School production of Oklahoma! Fred is one of the farmers who attends town meetings and social gatherings, nodding and clapping people on the back. Occasionally, he shouts plot-moving interjections like "Sure is!" or "That's right!" or "Go on, tell us!"

Malcolm was wonderful. Fred is supposed to be a chorus member but audiences agreed that Malcolm brought the energy and gravitas of a Featured Supplementary Supporting Character. It was a definitely a proud parenting moment for us!

This month's Hard Taco song, "The Barber and the Plow Driver (Should Fight)," is an attempt to recapture that old-style musical magic. Both the kids play small roles, and I daresay they elevate their characters from Featured Townspersons to Memorable Civilian Taxpayer Inhabitants. 

The key to the success of this song is that it has parentheses in the tile. That puts it in distinguished company! Parentheses can transform a forgettable B-Side into an instant Billboard Top 10 single. Just look at what happened to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)."

Going forward, I will no longer waste time inventing new song titles from whole cloth. Rather, I will take existing popular songs with parentheses in their titles, and simply swap the parenthetical parts. Listeners will be primed to love these songs, but they won't know why! Here are my planned mashups:

The Blue Oyster Cult and Aretha Franklin

• "(You Make Me Feel Like) The Reaper"
• "(Don't Fear) A Natural Woman"

Elton John and The Offspring

• Pretty Fly (For Fighting)
• Saturday Night's Alright (For a White Guy)

T. Rex and R.E.M.

• Bang a Gong (And I Feel Fine)
• It's The End of the World As We Know It (Get it On)

AC/DC and the Beatles 

• I Want You (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)
• It's a Long Way to the Top (She's So Heavy)

The Beastie Boys and James Taylor

• (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Be Loved By You)
• How Sweet It Is (To Party)

Meatloaf and U2

• I'd Do Anything For Love (In the Name of Love)
• Pride (But I Won't Do That)

Train and They Might be Giants

• Istanbul (Tell Me)
• Drops of Jupiter (Not Constantinople)

Green Day and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes

• (I've Had) (The Time of Your Life)
• Good Riddance The Time of My Life

Elton John and Cutting Crew

• (I Just) (Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)
• Rocket Man Died In Your Arms

ABBA and Otis Redding

• (Sittin' On) (A Man After Midnight)
• Gimme Gimme Gimme The Dock of the Bay

Kelly Clarkson and Elvis Costello

• Stronger Peace Love, and Understanding
• (What's So Funny Bout) (What Doesn't Kill You)

Brittney Spears and The Proclaimers

• (You Drive Me) (500 Miles)
• I'm Gonna Be Crazy

With warmest regards,

Zach

Fanfare for the Featured Townsperson

Dear Friends,

Off-Broadway, here we come! The Hard Taco song for April is called, "Happy in My Neighborhood," and with all the Off-Broadway potential this song has, you'd think my middle name was Lloyd. (In other words, this song has no potential, and I should go back to being a famous purveyor of organic architecture.)

Why do we love musicals? They touch us and inspire us with images of cowboys who do gymnastics. Orphanages teeming with aspiring tap-dancers. Sparkly-eyed heroines who look so beautiful from the seats you can afford, but grotesquely over-painted from the first few rows. Musicals transport us to a world where all people yearn for the same thing... an excuse to stop doing whatever it is they are doing and sing about it instead. This difficult transition can be eased by an effective lead-in line. A good one creates a tension that can only be broken with a full scale musical show stopper. Let's test your musical theater IQ and see if you can remember the lead-in lines to these well-known numbers.

1: "Summer Nights" - Grease!

2:  "If I Were a Rich Man" - Fiddler on the Roof!

3:  "Food Glorious Food" - Oliver!

4:  "Hard Knock Life" - Annie!

5:  "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" - Cats!

6:  "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" - Evita!

7.  Every song in Les Miserables (or for the English speaking world, Those without exclamation points.)

ANSWERS

1: "So Danny, what happened to your eyebrows? Yeah, tell us!" 

2: "Lord, you made a lot of poor people.  But what would have been so terrible if I got to feel up Geri Halliwell just once?" 

3:  "Is that grid-cut pizza?"

4: "That pizza isn't grid-cut. Not a smidge!"

5: "If you thought that was effeminate, watch this!"

6: "Come on, girls. You believe in love? 'Cause I got something to say about it and it goes something like this."

7: "The babysitting service wouldn't have sent a leprechaun... would they?"

Detractors of the genre complain that characters breaking into song is unrealistic and disconcerting, but I find it more difficult to relate to straight plays. I hardly ever die in childbirth in Grover's Corners and come back to re-live just one bittersweet day. Three or four times an hour, on the other hand, I stop doing whatever it is I'm doing and sing about it instead, often accompanied by tap-dancing orphans on a nearby stairwell. 

Why Lady Fiona Grosvener, do you not simply relish the the-a-tre?

I have only one significant gripe with you theater people. I despise (with all my soul) the spelling of the word theater with the r and the e in the wrong places. In this world, there is nothing good or pure that ends in "tre." SPECTRE, Jean-Paul Sartre, The Sallow Harbour Townshippe Shopping Centre... this is not the company you want to keep.

"Theatre" is nothing more than vulgar Anglophilia. Not to brag, but the American Revolutionary War was a total beat down, am I right? (Cue small group of men grunting in assent.) When a certain number of red coats acquired a certain number of musket ball holes, there was an explosion of sticky, wet freedom. Besides getting to count stamps as a tax exemption, we were able to cast off the shackles of moronic British spellings, forever liberated from sentences such as, "Your neighbour does not realise that he has faeces on his wife-beatre." 

If Patrick Henry knew that some of you still felt compelled to write the words metre, litre, or theatre, he would thank his lucky stars and stripes that he got to be dead for the last 200 years. You should be grateful, too, because if Patrick Henry was alive today he would smack the living spotted dick out of you.

And THAT is what I call a good old-fashioned lead-in line. Cue music. Where are my orphans?

With warmest regards,
Zach