Tag: Music
I am pleased to be able to introduce a new contributor to this blog who, like my other guest writers, knows a lot of stuff that I don’t. Ashley Griffin is a writer, actor, singer, and dancer whose expertise is in the area of musical theatre, the history of which she has taught at New York University. She has performed on- and off-Broadway as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, and London. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway, in L.A, and Chicago, and she is most well known as the creator of the pop-culture phenomenon Twilight: The Unauthorized Musical Parody. Ashley has a long-time interest in circus, clowning, and physical comedy, and one of her current projects is a collaboration with Joel Jeske on a physical comedy version of Alice in Wonderland. — jt
I’ve been enjoying the oddball music and physical comedy of the Maestrositites for a couple of years now, but didn’t want to write about them until I first did my Spike Jones post. I didn’t realize it would take me two years to get around to it!
No, not the very modern film and music video director Spike Jonze, but comedy musician and television variety star Spike Jones (1911–1965). My first introduction to the loony imagination of this latter-day vaudevillian was via audio tapes in the 1970s. I could only guess what his antics looked like, but it was funny enough, and I seem to recall my partner Fred Yockers and I sometimes using it as pre-show music. It certainly got us in the mood, if not the audience. Some material made it to VHS by the 1980s, and eventually to DVD, but The Best of Spike Jones is the first remastered, fairly definitive sampling of his work. It actually came out a couple of years ago and I bought a copy right away, fully intending to write a blog post on it “next week.” Well, better late than never….
Here’s a curiosity I stumbled upon while sitting in a bar with some clowns in Vilnius (Lithuania) this summer. In one of those rare moments when television coverage wasn’t devoted to the Olympics, our eyes all took notice of a slaphappy video playing on the tv above us. I am proud to say that I was still sober enough to write down the name that flashed on the screen at the end. I guess it must have been early in the evening.
NY Times video: Acrobat stunt doubles walk the Metropolitan Opera’s elaborate set in Robert Lepage’s staging of Richard Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. Thanks to Riley Kellogg for the link!
From the BBC wire, 12 August 2011. Richard Westcott reports:
Staff at Birmingham’s Central Library have discovered a priceless collection of more than 500 silent movie music scores. They made the find during a clearout before a move to a new building and unearthed more than just a bit of old junk.
Back in 1985 through some contact in Germany I vaguely remember as “clown David” (hello, wherever you are!), I got hold of what I’m pretty sure was the first tape of Grock’s full-length show to make its way to the United States. We premiered it on what today would be considered a small television set for an appreciative audience (that included Bill Irwin) at our 2nd NY International Clown-Theatre Festival. Also on that tape was this unidentified clip starring Charlie Cairoli (1910—1980) doing some musical clowning and busting out with some killer dance steps. I guess it’s rarer than I realized, because not only don’t I see it anywhere on the web, I don’t see any of his work.
Today is the 73rd birthday of Tommy Smothers and, as much as I think it’s important to honor the work of those who have passed away, it’s a pleasure to be able to salute a fine comedian who is still very much with us. Tommy Smothers was one-half of the Smothers Brothers, partnering his younger brother Dick (born 11-20-39) on their own CBS television variety show. They are still active and in fact both can be seen in cameo roles in last year’s The Informant!.
But it is physical, and it is funny in a joyous laughter kind of way. Two hundred dancers and a whole lot of hidden cameras descend upon the unsuspecting commuters at the majestic Antwerpen Central Station and go wild to the sound of my old girlfriend, Julie Andrews.
I’m no expert on Frankie Manning or the lindy hop, but both are worth knowing about regardless of any indirect connection with physical comedy. Manning made it to just short of his 95th birthday, active almost to the end, and left behind a lifetime of achievement in developing and popularizing the lindy hop. The NY Times obituary is a good starting point, but also check out the Frankie Manning web site and the Wikipedia entry.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin