this woman’s work

This was in the summer of 2006 but I can’t remember WHEN that summer and I lost the info to the file when my iTunes crashed and had to be rebuilt or something. But Madison is 2 and some months here (her birthday is at the end of March and this must have been July or August).

It’s funny that I misheard her then — I think she says she went to the pool when now I can tell she says, “We went on the boat yesterday and then we went swimming.” We were at AmFam’s parents’ house.

Mp3 file: A day at the lake

I warn you that she hollers at the end!

I’m uploading this for the cuteness factor but also because I think so much of her early processing of her adoption has to do with her ability to communicate effectively very young. See, this was about the age of this day — they were around the same time. So you can see that she has a lot of words for things and she’s a chatterbox.

This is Madison at around the time of the recording. Cute, eh? Click to make bigger!

One night a million years ago I’m watching Northern Exposure and there’s a scene with something about Shelly’s pageant and there’s a song in the background, something odd and the people singing have accents maybe and there’s a drifting twirling while they show the pageant women spinning in their gowns.

I wanted that song.

I didn’t know how to find it — this was before google — and all I could remember is that it says “pretty” in it. Pretty girls? Pretty something? I remembered the swirling skirts, slow motion and the word pretty — a delicate cacophony of skirts and singing but I had no idea how to find it.

I’ve looked for that song since that show aired in 1991.

I recently realized I could get the series on DVD from the library and comb through them to find the song but c’mon — that’s a lot of television to scan through and I’m a busy person. So I started hunting episode lists trying to find the one I needed figuring I could just get that year and do a lot of fast forwarding ’til I came to a pageant scene. And my friends, I have found it.

It took me awhile because I remembered the scene as if Shelly was watching but I figured out it was actually Maurice watching the pageant in the episode The Big Kiss. And once I figured that out, I found the song. And it’s by Sondheim and I already own it and I love it and I play it all the time and now I can play it in a new context.

Here you go: Pretty Lady mp3 from Pacific Overtures

(Hey, was Northern Exposure the first television show to really utilize their soundtrack? Does Grey’s Anatomy owe them a debt or what?)

I’m waiting for my sister to pick me up and I’ve listened to this Elbow song for the third time. Download it for yourself if you like (reminds me of Peter Gabriel). Because I love you all:

Mirrorball (right-click to save)

And back to your regularly scheduled mix tape!
(more…)

A few years back Brett got me the CD from My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies. The last two songs on that CD are spectacular. First, Jennifer Holliday reprises her stunning “And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going” and the audience goes absolutely wild when she hangs onto this note at the end before soaring up to the ending. And you can hear that people are on their feet, that they are completely blown away by her and just as the applause just slightly lull, Elaine Stritch comes up to sing “The Ladies Who Lunch” and you can hear them go absolutely freakin’ nuts. It’s two major show stoppers right in a row and I think if I had been in the audience, I would have died right then and there.

Our first showstopper isn’t nearly as stunning as those two, I’m sorry to say. But I’m choosing it because it’s got a great showbiz story behind it.

Sutton Foster was in the ensemble cast of the musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, a stage-version of the movie that starred Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. The show was in pre-Broadway try-out and the producers were having trouble with the star. In a case of life imitating hokey Hollywood musicals, they asked Ms. Foster to step up and take-over the lead, despite her being a complete unknown. So what does she do? She stops the show every night with “Gimme Gimme” and then wins a Tony. The show deservedly got mixed reviews (although it won the Tony over critical darling — and much more fun — Urinetown) but hey, you gotta love that Ms. Foster leaped from the chorus and became a star.
–Gimme Gimme

Can’t get enough of ingenue makes good? I’ve got another one for you and it’s got a better song to go with it. Jennifer Holliday was just 17 when she went to Broadway to become a star. At 21 she landed the role as Effie “Melody” White in Dreamgirls. The show was inspired by the Supremes and is about a trio of Black girl-singers in the 60s heading for fame and fortune. Effie is the one who gets left-behind because she doesn’t fit the look (she’s too fat). Her 11 o’clock number is “And I Am Telling You…” and you need to understand something. This was 1982 so it’s not like American Idol was on then with a bunch of youngsters leaping octaves like little bunnies jumping over grassy hillocks. Whitney Houston wasn’t yet a top-40 has-been. No, Jennifer Holliday delivered this song with a gospel-inspired passion that truly took Broadway by storm. I myself did a Very Bad Thing and swiped the cassette of the show from the people I babysat for because I needed to play this song obsessively. And it still has that impact on me. I know this because I was listening to it on my iPod while I was working out tonight and when the song gets to just past the 2 minute and 24 second mark (you’ll hear it), my hearbeats per minute jumped up by about twenty. (If you’ve got headphones, put ‘em on and crank the volume up.)
–And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going

Finally, a true grand dame of Broadway, Elaine Stritch herself singing “The Ladies who Lunch” from Sondheim’s Company. This is a woman used to stopping the show in classics like Pal Joey and making Sondheim standards like “Broadway Baby” and “I’m Still Here” her very, very own. I like her as an example because unlike the other two songs, it demonstrates that you can star in a musical — hell, you can DEFINE a musical — even with a voice that isn’t technically that great. (I cling to this dream because frankly, I can’t sing worth a damn but I like to pretend that my delivery is absolutely swell.) Ms. Stritch may have, in the words of many, a voice like a buzz-saw but it doesn’t matter because the woman can act. If you want to see something absolutely riveting, check out the DVD of the original cast recording session for Company. You’ll get to see Stritch at 3am trying to nail “The Ladies Who Lunch” and failing. (Don’t worry — it has a happy ending as this mp3 demonstrates.)
–The Ladies Who Lunch