Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City

Ask me what book i’m reading. Go ahead. Ask.

Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City by Elizabeth Wollman, as if the title of this post wasn’t a dead give away. It is awesome and you should go download it or order it from Amazon.

1970s New York was such a particular place in such a particular time. The city was going bankrupt and everyone predicted it would crash and burn any day. The wild 60s had transformed into the strange and decadent 70s. The sexual revolution was in full swing. Times Square was not the Disneyland it is today, it was the sleaziest sexland you’ve ever witnessed. Hookers, peeps shows, sex shows, adult book stores, adult movie places…little crappy booths whose seats were grimy and sticky where you could watch scenes from porno movies featuring ugly dudes with ridiculous mustaches and chicks with feathered hair and unshaved nether regions. It was before computers where everyone could just quietly enjoy titilation in the privacy of their home. It was before even video cassettes. You wanted sleaze, you had to go out there and get it. And Time Square was the world’s epicenter, the wonderland of sleaze.

Out of this feral mix arose a very specific genre of theater, the adult musical. Oh, Calcutta is the most famous. It would be the one you’ve heard of if you’re heard of any.

This book explores this genre that rose for a few years during the 70s. It’s kind of hysterical at times. At other times it’s quite interesting from a social point of view.  Many productions attempted to be serious in many ways. They tried to frankly discuss the issues arising in the age of sexual revolution, feminism and gay rights. Some tried to be clever. Some tried to be cheap. Some were out for a fast buck and some had high minded aspirations. There was nakedness and lots of pelvic thrusting, but no actual sex.

There’s these delights such as the Musical ‘Let My People Come; complete with the cheesiest 70s soft rock score you’ve ever heard (which we’ll feature in a moment), but also gay musicals reflecting the sexual revolution from a gay standpoint post Stonewall riots.

It’s this lost, forgotten and needless to say fascinating genre which this book explores. I seriously can’t recommend this enough.

Here. Take a listen to this abomination:

That is…. that is so bad it’s…. it’s… it’s hysterical.

And yet, there’ much more. It was a sign of the times. Feminism, gay rights, sexual experimentation were all finding their footing and this genre of New York musical was a part of this moment, as well as a central target for the obscenity controversies that roared and backlashed, particularly as the 70s sputtered to an end the conservative 80s began to slouch towards Bethlehem to be born.

Plus it cannot be left unmentioned, this genre did give birth to a movie. Oh yes. One of the most WTF movies of all time: Alice In Wonderland, an X Rated Musical Fantasy.

 

 

The Album Is Here!

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

Welcome everyone to the grand premiere of the entire album The Dolls Of New Albion, A Steampunk Opera. This 90 minute, 4 Act slightly demented musical story features the immense vocal talents of Lauren Osborn, Jason Broderick and Kayleigh McKnight. Written and produced by Paul Shapera.

Officially out today you can purchase the entire double album for only 12 little measly US dollars. If you live in England or Europe this is like money you lose in your couch and if you live in a Scandinavian country, this isn’t even money. It costs more there to feed a flea.

But wait! There’s more! Not only does the full download come with the complete lyrics, should you want them compiled in one easy spot then take note, if you look near the top of the page you’ll see a new tab called Libretto. It has all the lyrics so you can read them, copy and paste them, or use them to make dirty rhymes by substituting naughty nouns and verbs at just the right places.

It slices! It dices! How many times have you had to put up with embarrassing spills and odors? Well no longer! It’s a @#$#^## download! It won’t mess up your kitchen and is great to cook while listening to!

In order to take this project from here to the live stage in decent venues we need more than anything word of mouth. Seriously, word of mouth is gold. It’s a long road from here, folks, barring unforeseen miracles. Word of mouth…

I’d like to lastly thank Mark Swetz and MProductions for their invaluable assistance.

If you have already purchased the 1st Act or the Random Tracks sampler before May 8th, 2012 and would like a half off discount, please email me at paulms@gmail.com with your name (which i have on file) and i will send you a special download code. Also, thank you, each and every one of you who not only buys it, but actually likes the damn thing. I cannot put into words what that means to me.

 

Next To Normal

While i grew up with musicals, at a certain point after loving them to death, i started to hate them with a passion. Trying to reconcile this leads to the type of musical i write. It also means, especially now that i don’t live in New York and have to chance to see what’s playing just by walking by every day, i don’t keep up with what’s going on in the world of musical theater.

So it was quite interesting for me to discover Next To Normal, a psychologically dark and VERY interesting newer musical (technically a “rocksical”).

While the entire album stays to much in the high octane musical theater genre for my tastes and gets a little musically redundant, i give it the benefit of the doubt of that being more my problem than the show’s. I mean really, you can’t fault a musical theater piece for sounding… like a musical theater piece.

Because when you get over that fact, the show is REALLY kind of awesome and shockingly hard hitting. It’s about a mother with mental illness (bipolar disorder?) and the toll it takes on her suburban family.

In a way, the musicalness of it adds to the impact. Take that first track i just posted. You have this rocksical score with people singing brightly and yet it’s horribly twisted and broken.

While the show’s original modd had a lot more tongue in cheek irony, as the show developed the production staff made the excellent choice to cut out the cute wink winks and instead just be damned serious about the whole thing. Which in my opinion works amazingly. This is not f****** Cats. It actually stares you in the face and doesn’t blink.

The subject matter is.. well… NUTS to put in a musical. Especially without some comedy to lighten it (which is how they did it originally). But the sheer… daring of it is deserving of full kudos, and the fact is, they do pull it off fantastically. Like i said earlier, most of my issues with it are more my issues with the genre itself. What i LOVE is anything that pulls and pushes and stretches the genre, which is the very thing i long for, since deep down, i love musical theater in a sort of strange, bipolar kind of way.

This last clip is from the Tony Awards and i would just point out that the mother and father have a teenage son and daughter. Except they don’t actually have a son, as he died 16 years before. But the mother sees the son regardless and to her he is a very real part of the household.

(P.S.: I’m still alive. i made it out of the village and the mountains with my 3 year old and we are now sitting comfortably in Belgrade where we will be staying until after next weekend.)

 

 

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

If you were to ask me what my favorite musical of the past 20 years is, my answer is hands down immediate.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is one of my favorite things EVER. EVER. When i was stuck on how to end the 4th Act i would watch the ending of Dr. Horrible because it is one of the greatest, most perfect endings of all time. (I never did come up with the ultimate ironic twist, i went for something different)

It was released about 2 years ago on the net FOR FREE by nerd darling Joss Whedon. It has 3 episodes. Many of you have probably seen it For those that haven’t i’m gonna post it. I know all you Americans can just watch it on Hulu anytime, but here in Europe, i don’t get Hulu, so i have to post shorter YouTube vids. I wish i could stream it in just the 3 episodes, but here it is regardless: Pure Awesomeness.

 

The Devil And The Angel

On a periphery from evil clowns, we’re going to feature the closest thing to an evil clown character i’ve made.

Today’s track is from another show i wrote and toured in the States (It’s actually slowly gearing up for another run, but i doubt before 2013). It’s a multimedia theater piece called The Fallen, choreographed by the amazing Shaun Rolly. The track is obviously, very theatrical.

The show is about a fallen angel. She kisses a lonely demon, gives up her wings to experience the world, there’s parties and an orgy and strung out on drugs, yadda yadda yadda. She eventually finds herself maneuvered by the show’s MC/Narrator, who is called Raven, into his Carnival world. He has been subtly drawing her there.

He’s kind of a Devil archetype and this track is where he finally greets the Angel as she enters his realm.

 

The Subculture Song

I’m actually done musically with Act 3 and now working on vocal melodies and lyrics. I, of course, am not actually signing any of the material, but i sing all the lines on the scratch tracks so the vocalists will know what to sing (they also have the option of sheet music).

So i thought since i discussed it earlier i’d post that subculture song i was talking about last week so you can see how it came out.  It’s mean to be sung by a female (who likes to dress up like a dead, mechanical doll), so keep that in mind.

I must mention that there are scratch vocals on it, BUT there are no lyrics. I am literally improvising complete nonsense syllables. Until the lyrics are written they’re there to demonstrate the melody. You must picture it NOT being my voice, and instead a girl’s, with, you know, ideally really cool lyrics.

 

Cabaret, The Movie

The short novel ‘Goodbye To Berlin’ by Christopher Isherwood, usually published together with his other short novel ‘Mr. Norris Changes Trains’ as The Berlin Stories, is one of the most celebrated books written about the Weimar era, that classic explosion of culture which occured in Germany between 1919 and 1933.

Goodbye To Berlin is a semi autobiographical account of Isherwood’s adventures as an expatriate living in Berlin from 1930-1933. It’s a series of 6 chronological short stories focusing on an interconnected group of people living in a wild and glamorously decadent time, with an undercurrent of dread and prejudice seeping into the cracks around them.

This wonderful novel was later made into the play ‘I Am A Camera’ in 1951, which in turn was made into a musical in 1966, and which finally lands us on our post for today, the brilliant 1972 movie adaption of said musical, Cabaret.

Cabaret, starring a young Liza Minelli and Michael York, a timeless Joel Grey, and directed by the great Bob Fosse, is probably one of the best film adaptions of a musical, a great little stylized portrait of the Weimar era, and a wonderful study of a group of personalities as they come in and out of each other’s lives while pursuing their various dreams and vices. All of this is set against the background of a seedy cabaret, The Kit Kat club and wisely, all songs in the movie are only sung and performed within the stage show of the club.

To be honest, the movie reminds me of my 20s.  In any case, the movie also captures a wonderful sense of mood. Wild and free behavior is underpinned by basic selfishness, while slowly but surely a dark militantness, the nazi party, is growing, making it’s way into a society unprepared  and unable to defend against it.

In the original book Sally Bowles is English and Cliff Bradshaw (who is basically Christopher UInderwood) is American. Numerous other difference abound, for instance the fact that Sally Bowles is actually rather bad singer and the Kit Kat Club is a real dive, but the movie works with it’s liberties because the characters do in fact live and breath on film. I’ve personally known Sally Bowles several times. Not the actual person, but i’ve met the character on several different occasions, wearing a different face each time, but unmistakable.

Also, the performance of Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies cannot be overhyped. He has almost no role in the film outside of the cabaret numbers, and yet his performance casts a shadow over the entire film. You will walk away remembering Sally Bowles and the MC.

As a young man, this film and in particular the MC character impacted me tremendously. I explored the use of dark narrators for some time afterwards and in general the use of narration in my work which aims to tell stories has been a career long exploration. (we’ll get into that more in a later post)

Naturally, it is obligatory that we end with the title number. Despite having been used by cheesy performers as a saccharine, feel good song, the actual number is darker and more desperate. Sally is flashy and captivating, but fragile and desperate for a success which, in Germany anyway, we know is doomed although she doesn’t as yet. Only 19 years old, all she has is her moment on stage which is the one thing in her mixed up life she shines at.

 

The Fallen

Today we’re going to look at another show which i wrote sometime back, The Fallen.

It’s a very different animal than the Steampunk Opera, but it too is a theater piece. It’s performed by 2 singers, 10 dancers and features a wall of film that is crucial to the storytelling. The singers, dancers and film all interact in various ways to further the tale.

The show is about a fallen angel. To wit: An angel and a demon kiss atop a cliff. The angel is filled with a rush of excitement and wishes to go and experience the world, while the demon is sad and weary, having had too much of the world. The angel removes her wings and runs off. The demon picks up the angels discarded wings, puts them on and leaps off the cliffside.

That’s the first number and of course the show goes on from there. There’s sex and drugs and dark carnivals, and a Narrator character, Raven, who is central to the show. The choreographer and managing Director is the talented and extremely industrious Shaun Rolly, with whom i have worked on a number of projects. The film is by Laurie A. Smith, a wonderful film maker whose work can be found at www.laurieasmith.com

For those who wish to see actual performance footage from a previous workshop production and some snippets of the new film, here’s one of our fundraising vids:

Here’s the music from the 3rd track from the show. This is only the music (and a still picture vid). In this particular show, the songs are REALLY long (not so in the steampunk opera). The female vocals are performed by the wonderful Jen Folden.

For more information, naturally you can go to the website (there’s always a website….) thefallentheshow.com

 

The Steampunk Opera Overture (demo version)

I sit here in a tine old, village house in the mountains of southern Serbia madly composing away. My wife has taken our beautiful little toddler to Belgrade in order for me to work uninterupted. I rise each morning, eat, chop wood (it’s winter and heat here is OLD school) and sit down in my studio to compose.

And so it’s about time to start sharing. Here is the demo version of the Overture (or Prologue… can’t decide exactly which). As such it will not have vocals.  I don’t know how i’ll tweak it down the road, but for now here’s the first peak at the Steampunk Opera music.

(I should add, this video is just a still image. It’s simply a way to showcase the music. I’ve tried many other methods on other sites and blogs, but i found overwhelmingly, people prefer vids, even if the vid is just a picture. Go figure.)

 

I am going to make a Steampunk Opera.

I  am starting this blog in order to declare my intention to make a Steampunk Opera and to document the process.

Hi. My name is Paul Shapera and I make music under the name Mocha Lab.  I will be posting many selections of my work to date so that you can get an idea of what kind of composer/music producer I am as well as other great artists whose music falls within range of this project. I’ll post on the process and details of putting a theater show up (in London, although i myself am American currently living in Eastern Europe) from the first intention to create it to the opening performance (and Gd forbid beyond).

A theater director in London, Mark Swetz, asked me about doing an opera or some other show that I might be interesting in composing. Sadly, I can’t stand opera. I like much of the orchestration, and I like the male crescendos, but in general the entire style of singing drives me beserk.

I am thoroughly well versed in musical theater, but about 10 years ago I had the realization that I couldn’t stand it anymore.  Sondheim can still work for me and I have a very soft spot for a few musicals I listened to when I was young, but you know… once again the style of singing and corniness just drives me nuts. (If, however, i had to list my 3 top musicals, they’d be Into The Woods, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Les Miserables. So there you go.) I have made several theater shows, including and especially the multi-media show The Fallen which is also on it’s way to be put up in the states, but we’ll get into that another day.

I whimsically thought about a steampunk opera, in which I would create a new genre, building heavily off of the Dark Cabaret movement (Dresden Dolls, Birdeatsbaby, Jill Tracy, Vermillion Lies… most of which I must confess I only discovered once I decided to write this opera.  Actually all I knew was Dresden Dolls, of which I’ve been a big fan. Discovering and exploring a new genre is half the fun of conceiving this). I decided to make this because after whimsically throwing the idea out, I started finding that more and more of my leisure thoughts were being spent working out ideas for the opera.  When one becomes obsessed with an artistic idea without trying to, it is a clear sign you must make it. So I contacted Mark and told him i must must MUST write a steampunk opera. He gave it a big thumbs up and wait now to hear what i’m actually going to do.

I”ve worked out a plot which i’ll go into at a later date and i’m starting the blog now, because today i will be sitting down to play the first notes of music. We’re starting at the beginning, The Overture (or Prologue, depending). I like to go in order of the story.

We’ll talk later. In the meantime I leave you with a sample of another more lighthearted musical story i’ve made. This is the first track off of Cthulhu: The Funksical, by Mocha Lab of course.