Earworms

..Don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me... I'm getting burnt out on musicals. When I was designing lights and scenery more of my work was in straight plays (as well as trade shows and the like). But since I went mostly to the Sound side of the aisle ...there's a hole in the world like a great black pit... I've been working mostly musicals (with the odd live music show or graduation ceremony to break it up).

..Doors and windows, open and close... Over an average year I work -- as in actually sitting at the board mixing for each and every performance -- six to eight full musicals. ...and that's my new philosophy... The last one of those ...Easy Street; that's where we're going to be... was thirty-four performances. Add rehearsals and brush-up and dance calls ...these things you can not dispute, banana is the funniest fruit... and I hear each song through a good fifty times.

And this is mixing, mind you. ...high on the hill is a big old house with something dead inside it. Spirits walk the halls at night and make no effort now to hide it... So each and every song I'm listening intently, listening for any drop-out, trying to achieve a good vocal blend, ..fixing the roof, and raking the hay, is not my idea of a perfect day... and of course keeping track of where I am in the song so I can anticipate the chorus entrance and other fader moves. ...So I'm the king of the jungle... You can bet those songs get stuck in my head!

Add to this a good dozen shows I am consulting for, helping to load in, set up, ...you can do it, you can do it if you try... and at least a half-dozen music shows which inevitably have a few songs from musicals ...here's to the ladies who lunch... in them. ...my time of day...

I am right now ...a paradox, a paradox... meeting on four shows ...there's a long thing winding staircase without any bannisters... and of course already listening to the music for those. ...never met a man I didn't like...

So not only is there plenty of opportunity ...notice me, Horton... to get songs from one show stuck in my head ...look at me, way up high... the fact that I'm somewhere in the process of multiple shows at once ...the Bronx is up and the Battery down... means the jukebox of my head gets rather crowded. ...everybody wants to be a cat...

I'm getting a little tired of it. ...the cow as white as milk the hair as yellow as silk... Pushing the faders on the board is a nice little combination ...where shining shine benignly drips... of constant tension and the cruel understanding that my best efforts will still not bring out the music the way I want it to be brought out. ...you got to know the territory... And I'm getting particularly bored ...those magic changes... with pulling transmitters out of sweaty mic bags and dressing them with fresh batteries and condoms (and bits of electrical tape and moleskin). ...how did you get to be you, Mr. Shepard...

Still ...Who's that hiding, in the tree top... I've got a pretty good gig now. It's not resident designer, ...they don't turn their head as they see me walk by... but it is as close to a steady gig as you'll ever get as a freelancer. So it's off to learn yet another set of songs ...what a glorious feeling, I'm happy again... until they, too, get stuck in my head.


Did I mention I work some of these shows more than once? I just closed my third "Annie," and not long before that was my fifth or sixth "Wizard of Oz," I also did "Producers" twice in one year, I've got my second or third "Grease" coming up, also did my second "Seussical" and my second "On the Town."

On the other hand, also was involved in "Merrily we Roll Along," "Into the Woods," "Pippin," and a couple of other surprisingly big standards for the first time. So there is always something new as well as something familiar, something peculiar, something......oh, darn it! And there I go again....