It's the return of this one. Let's hope I can describe the rules adequately.
In this game, the object is to build a continuous chain of Sondheim lyrics. Each new lyric in the chain should begin with the lyrics left in boldface by the previous player and build upon them.
For example, Player A starts off with:
"My windowpane has a lovely view,
An inch of sky and a fly or two"
Player B responds with:
"What do we do? We fly!
Why?
What do we do? We fly!"
Player C then adds:
"What can you lose?
Only the blues"
The object is to keep this chain going as long as possible. The next player has to find a Sondheim lyric that contains "blue" and then leave off on a word that he/she thinks/knows will be in another Sondheim lyric. The object is cooperation rather than competitiveness, although if you've got a very sneaky lyric in mind, you'll probably be Liked for it.
The only other rule I can think of is try not to use the same song in response. This game kept going for years on the old board. Let's see if we can make it to a couple of weeks, at least!
So, I will start this one with something I hope is easy
"Maria, I just met a girl named Maria"
"Hello little girl
What's your rush?
You're missing all the flowers
I don't remember the original rules, but I assume a plural noun can be matched with a singular one. If not, I'm declaring that rule here. ;)
I've been thinking, flowers -
Maybe daisies -
To brighten up the room
"Good times,
Room hums,
Company!
Late nights,
Quick bites"
Sweeney
Quick, though, the trade is brisk.
But it's here!
It's where?
Coming up the stair
(Is this allowed?)
Fluttering up the stairway,
Shuttering up the windows
Nah, it's not cheating.
"Sitting in the window or
Standing on the stair
Something in them cheers the air"
Three cheers and dammit,
C'est la vie.
I got through all of last year,
And I'm here.
Passionless lovemaking once a year?
Leave the lies ill-concealed
More Sweeney
Ladies seem to love it
Flies do, too!
Hand the bloody money over!
Hand the bloody money over!
(I'll throw in the 'y' for extra credit, even though KathyB didn't leave it):
Twenty minutes to arrange
Those bloody awful flowers... (Bang!)
Can I get away with more? (Bang, bang, bang!)
Then I have to brush my hair,
And that could take me hours... (Bang!)
A fit of vapors? (Bang!)
No, that's too quaint. (Bang!)
A wracking cough, and then
A graceful faint? (Bang!)
A lengthy lecture (Bang!)
On self-restraint?
PS: In the old game, plurals and singulars were definitely not freely interchangeable. If the clue included the 's' in bold, the response had to include that 's' too.
The person leaving the clue could helpfully decide to simply not boldface the plural ending (e.g., "classes in optical art"), thereby allowing the responder to ignore it ("What if her coach is second class?"). But if the plural actually changes the spelling (e.g., "the fillies of the Follies"), then there's no way around it: you can't leave "Follies" (no bold 's') as the clue, because follie isn't a word; and you can't respond with "If I was a Folly girl" because then you'd be pulling a 'y' out of thin air while leaving the actual -ies ending entirely unaccounted-for. The specific combination of letters is very much the point here -- as much as, if not more than, their meaning.
The same applies to verb/adverb/adjective forms and other such spelling alterations (-ing, -ed, -y, -ly, -ily, etc.): it's okay to simply not boldface these endings (Kathy's "bloody," above), as long as their exclusion still leaves a legitimate word ("blood") as the clue. And the response can likewise be part of a longer word ("flies," ditto). But the spelling has to remain intact, and the response has to account for the entire clue -- hence, if the clue was "Walking off my tired feet," with the 'ing' bolded, then the answer can't be "Today I woke to weak to walk". But the reverse -- "too weak to walk" as the clue, "walking off my tired feet" ('ing' not bold) as the response -- would be fine.
Again, it's about the sequence of letters, not the meaning (beyond the stipulation that the clue must be an actual word) or even the part of speech: "All the wolves, all the lies..." / "And my Lucy lies in ashes" is perfectly legit, in either order, despite the fact that one is a noun and the other a verb, and their meanings are entirely unrelated. But the sequence of boldfaced letters has to be accounted for in its entirety and without alteration.
Spacing is the one thing that I believe was allowed to change from clue to response: if you wanted to get devious, you could respond to "...Where there never was a hat!" with "Was that the reason, tell us, John...?".
What I'm less sure of is whether the reverse would be allowed, i.e. leaving "was that the reason," with a space in the middle, as the clue, inviting "isn't much blue in / The Red and the Black" (same spacing) but also "where there never was a hat" or "it's got a pot o' gold / At the other end" (different spacings) as possible responses. My hesitance springs from the question of whether the actual word in this example -- there -- needs to appear in its normal, properly-spaced form in the clue, not just as one option among several possible creatively-spaced responses. If you leave "The Red and the Black" and I respond with "pot o' gold at the other end," then we really are just playing with letters -- the actual word "there" has become kind of a phantom (there's no there there!), which doesn't seem right somehow.
Thanks, Dave. I'm pretty sure I never played this game when it was on the old board, so it's valuable to have someone who remembers the rules in such detail. Anybody who wants to know how this game works should read
@scenicdesign71's message.
And love is a lecture
On how to correct "your"
Mistakes.
One another's terrible mistakes
Witches can be right,
Giants can be good
There are big, tall, terrible,
Awesome, scary,
Wonderful giants
In the sky!
Love this game!! ;D
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due...
I insist on
Miracles, if you do them,
Miracles - nothing to them!
I say don't,
Don't be afraid!
Going with "afraid":
Listen everybody, I'm afraid you didn't hear
Or do you want to hear a crazy lady fall apart in front of you
You could drive a person crazy.
You could drive a person mad.
You have a thought you're fairly bursting with,
A personal discovery or problem, and it's
What's your rush, Henrik?
Shush, Henrik,
Goodness, how you gush, Henrik,
Hush, Henrik,
You murmur
I only--
It's just that--
For God's sake!
Later, Henrik...
In the murmurs, in the gestures,
In the pauses, in the sighs.
As for applause, please,
When there's a pause, please,
Although we welcome praise,
The echo sometimes lasts for days
Mock me with praise.
Let me be used.
Vary my days.
But alone,
Is alone...
:D
Quote from: MartinG on Jul 11, 2017, 02:02 PMMock me with praise.
Let me be used.
Vary my days.
But alone,
Is alone...
:D
The reference is pretty obvious ;), but are multiple words allowed?
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 11, 2017, 02:06 PMQuote from: MartinG on Jul 11, 2017, 02:02 PMMock me with praise.
Let me be used.
Vary my days.
But alone,
Is alone...
:D
The reference is pretty obvious ;), but are multiple words allowed?
I've a feeling Martin has
no-one is alone in mind as the next lyric in the chain?
Perhaps he "bolded" more than he meant? I prefer it when it's just one word, though ...
Rather than hold things up, I'm going to assume Martin's lyric has been accepted ...
No one is alone
Truly
No one is alone
I wish...
@scenicdesign71 seems to remember the old game pretty well, so I'm going to let him determine if multiple words are allowed. Until he weighs in, I'm going to rule that you can only use a single word as the next target, though that sequence of letters can be spread across multiple words in the response.
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 11, 2017, 03:35 PM@scenicdesign71 seems to remember the old game pretty well, so I'm going to let him determine if multiple words are allowed. Until he weighs in, I'm going to rule that you can only use a single word as the next target, though that sequence of letters can be spread across multiple words in the response.
I remember multiple words being allowed, as long as those words were found in the same order in another song.
Quote from: KathyB on Jul 11, 2017, 04:24 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 11, 2017, 03:35 PM@scenicdesign71 seems to remember the old game pretty well, so I'm going to let him determine if multiple words are allowed. Until he weighs in, I'm going to rule that you can only use a single word as the next target, though that sequence of letters can be spread across multiple words in the response.
I remember multiple words being allowed, as long as those words were found in the same order in another song.
Was just about to say the same thing. ;)
wish...
And there you have it. Multiple words are allowed.
wish
How I wish we'd been asked.
A weekend in the country,
Peace and quiet.
Uh oh-- should I have left "peace" or "country" instead?
I fully admit to not having thought this one out when I played it, and just thinking that there was bound to be another "quiet."
Not to worry, there are several.
AND HONEST, I DIDN'T SEE ANY OTHER ANSWERS THE LAST TIME, REALLY!!!
*looks around* Okay, going.
Inconspicuous, Sweeney was
Quick and quiet and clean, 'e was
Back of his smile, under his word
Sweeney heard music that nobody heard
Sweeney pondered and Sweeney planned
Like a perfect machine, he planned
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Jul 11, 2017, 04:26 PMQuote from: KathyB on Jul 11, 2017, 04:24 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 11, 2017, 03:35 PM@scenicdesign71 seems to remember the old game pretty well, so I'm going to let him determine if multiple words are allowed. Until he weighs in, I'm going to rule that you can only use a single word as the next target, though that sequence of letters can be spread across multiple words in the response.
I remember multiple words being allowed, as long as those words were found in the same order in another song.
Was just about to say the same thing. ;)
wish...
Phew, that's a relief. I was pretty sure as I remember playing
...and funny and fine in the old game.
Quote from: Bobster on Jul 11, 2017, 10:28 PMLike a perfect machine, he planned
ROSALIA
I'll give them new washing
machine.
ANITA
What have they got there to keep clean?
ALL
I like the
shores of America!
😉
I honestly don't know if this fits the rules or not, but it's all I could think of.
That faraway shore's
Looking not too far.
We're following every star
I don't need a lot,
Only what I got,
Plus a tube of greasepaint and a follow spot!
I'm a Broadway Baby,
Slaving at the five and ten,
It's called: what's your choice?
It's called: count to ten.
It's called: burn your bridges, start again.
You should burn them every now and then,
Or you'll never grow...
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 12, 2017, 03:46 PMI honestly don't know if this fits the rules or not, but it's all I could think of.
That faraway shore's
Looking not too far.
We're following every star
Absolutely fine as I understand it :)
And it's water under the bridge that's all,
Just water under the bridge
Faded handwriting on the wall,
Just water under the bridge
One hand, one heart,
Even death won't part us now.
We may just be the best thing that has happened to us---
Kiddo...
Partner...
Another moment like this may not happen to us---
Oh, if life were made of moments
Even now and then a bad one!
Leapin' lizards! That's why I'm so bad!
Right!
Officer Krupke, you're really a square
Still I'll stick it till
I'm on a bill all over Times Square!
Some day maybe
If I stick it long enough
I can get to strut my stuff
There's a lot that's at stake --
But you've stalled long enough,
'Cause you're still standing stuck
In the stuff on the steps.
Better run along home
And avoid the collision...
From the way that people
Keep avoiding—
No you don't!
Heaven knows I try, sir
Sweet Polly Plunkett lay in the grass
Turned her eyes heavenward, sighing
"I am a lass who alas loves a lad
Who alas has a lass in Canterbury
'Tis a row dow diddle dow day..."
A pinch and a diddle
In the middle of what passes by,
It's a very short road from the pinch and the punch
To the paunch and the pouch and the pension,
It's a very short road to the ten-thousandth lunch
And the belch and the grouch and the sigh.
One thousand whims to which I give in
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.
Love, I hear, makes you blush and turns you ashen
You try to speak with passion, and squeak...
I hear...
Love, they say, makes you pine away
But you pine away with an idiotic grin!
I pine, I blush, I squeak, I squawk
Today I woke too weak to walk
And ladies, my lord, are weak
Ladies and their sensitivities, my lord!
Have a fragile sensibility
When a girl's emergent
:-\ This is driving me mad...
Quote from: MartinG on Jul 15, 2017, 04:13 AM:-\ This is driving me mad...
I was sure it would be somewhere in Passion, but can't find it ... yet.
😞
To repost Leighton's current lyric:
QuoteAnd ladies, my lord, are weak
Ladies and their sensitivities, my lord!
Have a fragile sensibility
When a girl's emergent
Still racking my brains... :-\
Well, played through every soundtrack while doing weekend stuff over the past couple of days hoping for a memory jog and drawn a total blank. :-[
May need a teeny clue here
@Leighton.
Quote from: MartinG on Jul 16, 2017, 07:02 AMWell, played through every soundtrack while doing weekend stuff over the past couple of days hoping for a memory jog and drawn a total blank. :-[
May need a teeny clue here @Leighton.
I've been through most of the lyrics, too. Only ones I haven't looked at properly are Pacific Overtures and Anyone Can Whistle (and a chunk of Merrily ...) so I reckon it must be in there somewhere. 🙇♀️🙇♀️🙇♀️
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 14, 2017, 10:09 AMAnd ladies, my lord, are weak
Ladies and their sensitivities, my lord!
Have a fragile sensibility
When a girl's emergent
I think this is a bunny. (https://www.emojibase.com/resources/img/emojis/hangouts/1f407.png)
Quote from: Bobster on Jul 17, 2017, 03:48 AMI think this is a bunny. (https://www.emojibase.com/resources/img/emojis/hangouts/1f407.png)
Lovely bunny!
Does that mean a non-runner?
That is a very cute bunny.
Quote from: Vera Charles on Jul 17, 2017, 04:28 AMQuote from: Bobster on Jul 17, 2017, 03:48 AMI think this is a bunny. (https://www.emojibase.com/resources/img/emojis/hangouts/1f407.png)
Lovely bunny!
Does that mean a non-runner?
That's what I think, yep.
Quote from: Bobster on Jul 17, 2017, 09:26 PMQuote from: Vera Charles on Jul 17, 2017, 04:28 AMLovely bunny!
Does that mean a non-runner?
That's what I think, yep.
So, in the absence of @Leighton telling us which lyric he was thinking about, should we revert to this?Quote from: Bobster on Jul 14, 2017, 06:12 AMLove, I hear, makes you blush and turns you ashen
You try to speak with passion, and squeak...
I hear...
Love, they say, makes you pine away
But you pine away with an idiotic grin!
I pine, I blush, I squeak, I squawk
Today I woke too weak to walk
In the tea, my Lord,
The chrysanthemum tea —
An informal variation
On the normal recipe.
Though I know my plan had merit,
It's been slow in execution.
If there's one thing you inherit,
It's your father's constitution,
And you're taking so long, my Lord ...
Do you think I was wrong, my Lord? ...
No, you must let me speak:
When the Shogun is weak,
Then the tea must be strong, my Lord ...
My Lord — ?
I'll warm me bones on the esplanade
Have tea and scones with me gay young blade
Then I'll knit a sweater, while you write a letter
Listen to the stories.
Hear it in the songs.
Angry men
Don't write the rules
And guns don't right the wrongs.
You would have liked her
Honey, I'm wrong
You would have loved her
Mama enjoyed things
Mama was smart
See how she shimmers?
I mean, from the heart
He's a very smart Prince
He's a Prince who prepares
Knowing this time I'd run from him
He spread pitch on the stairs.
It's a rip in the bustle and a rustle in the hay
And I'll pitch the quick fantastic,
With flings of confetti and my petticoats away up high.
It's a very short way
From the fling that's for fun
To the thigh pressing under the table.
It's a very short day
Till you're stuck with just one
Or it has to be done
On the sly.
Look, they won't hold us
A table
At ringside
All night!
The evening air
Doesn't feel quite right
In the not-quite glare
Of the not-quite night
And it's ...
Wait! Is that a star?
Wood star ...
Water star ...
All celestial omens are —
Excellent.
Oh God I should stop playing games. I highlighted the wrong bloody word; it was meant to be girl. Serves me right for playing after having a pint (or two!)
Sorry to have held you all up for so long! Though fascinating that the word fragile doesn't appear anywhere else in the entire canon!
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 18, 2017, 03:24 PMThough fascinating that the word fragile doesn't appear anywhere else in the entire canon!
It really is fascinating since it's so evocative and innately musical.
The Baker's Wife does say "You needn't hold him like he's so fragile," but I couldn't recall a sung use of the word.
Quote from: wittyandbright on Jul 18, 2017, 03:03 PMWood star ...
Water star ...
All celestial omens are —
Excellent.
Is that actually scored?
@Bobster?
Quote from: MartinG on Jul 19, 2017, 07:11 AMQuote from: wittyandbright on Jul 18, 2017, 03:03 PMWood star ...
Water star ...
All celestial omens are —
Excellent.
Is that actually scored? @Bobster?
Naughty Cookie, nope. ;)
[attach name=Excellent.jpg type=image/jpeg]131[/attach]
Back to
star...
Oh look, Johanna---
A star!
A shooting star!
No job? Cupboard bare?
One room, no one there?
Hey, pal, don't despair--
You wanna shoot a president?
C'mon and shoot a president...
Some guys
Think they can't be winners.
First prize often goes to rank beginners
Quote from: Bobster on Jul 19, 2017, 07:44 PMQuote from: MartinG on Jul 19, 2017, 07:11 AMQuote from: wittyandbright on Jul 18, 2017, 03:03 PMWood star ...
Water star ...
All celestial omens are —
Excellent.
Is that actually scored? @Bobster?
Naughty Cookie, nope. ;)
[attach name=Excellent.jpg type=image/jpeg]131[/attach]
Back to star...
The old rule was that if it was notated, it was accepted.
Quote from: valmont on Jul 20, 2017, 11:45 AMQuote from: Bobster on Jul 19, 2017, 07:44 PMQuote from: MartinG on Jul 19, 2017, 07:11 AMQuote from: wittyandbright on Jul 18, 2017, 03:03 PMWood star ...
Water star ...
All celestial omens are —
Excellent.
Is that actually scored? @Bobster?
Naughty Cookie, nope. ;)
[attach name=Excellent.jpg type=image/jpeg]131[/attach]
Back to star...
The old rule was that if it was notated, it was accepted.
So the word should have been
excellent, not
star? (It does appear to be notated.)
As Administrator, I feel I need to rule here. And what I'm going to rule is that we go back to the word excellent.
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 12:27 PMAs Administrator, I feel I need to rule here. And what I'm going to rule is that we go back to the word excellent.
Good call.
But also, bugger! I was really struggling with
excellent.
Quote from: Vera Charles on Jul 20, 2017, 12:37 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 12:27 PMAs Administrator, I feel I need to rule here. And what I'm going to rule is that we go back to the word excellent.
Good call.
But also, bugger! I was really struggling with excellent.
Ditto.
Quote from: KathyB on Jul 20, 2017, 12:53 PMQuote from: Vera Charles on Jul 20, 2017, 12:37 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 12:27 PMAs Administrator, I feel I need to rule here. And what I'm going to rule is that we go back to the word excellent.
Good call.
But also, bugger! I was really struggling with excellent.
Ditto.
We may have to declare it a bunny, in which case we'll go back to
guy.
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 01:00 PMQuote from: KathyB on Jul 20, 2017, 12:53 PMQuote from: Vera Charles on Jul 20, 2017, 12:37 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 12:27 PMAs Administrator, I feel I need to rule here. And what I'm going to rule is that we go back to the word excellent.
Good call.
But also, bugger! I was really struggling with excellent.
Ditto.
We may have to declare it a bunny, in which case we'll go back to guy.
If
@wittyandbright is who I have an inkling he might be, then
excellent will appear in a Sondheim lyric somewhere.
I could, of course, be wrong on both accounts.
I am very confused now. It should have been excellent, because that word is notated in rhythm. So we did not go back to star, which made my entry invalid. But now we think there is no other use of excellent, so it's a bunny, which means we did go back to star? So my link from star to shoot is valid, and Kathy played on shoot, to give us guy? And that is where we are now-- guy. Do I have that right?
Quote from: Bookman George on Jul 20, 2017, 01:36 PMI am very confused now. It should have been excellent, because that word is notated in rhythm. So we did not go back to star, which made my entry invalid. But now we think there is no other use of excellent, so it's a bunny, which means we did go back to star? So my link from star to shoot is valid, and Kathy played on shoot, to give us guy? And that is where we are now-- guy. Do I have that right?
No,
excellent hasn't been declared a bunny yet, so it's still in play. I'm relying on
@Vera Charles instinct about the player's identity.
Judge Turpin has an "excellent" late on in Sweeney - during the final sequence ("Excellent, my friend!") - but no idea if it's notated
Quote from: Leighton on Jul 20, 2017, 02:53 PMJudge Turpin has an "excellent" late on in Sweeney - during the final sequence ("Excellent, my friend!") - but no idea if it's notated
Anybody have the sheet music?
@Bobster, maybe? I'm awfully tempted to declare this a bunny and go back to
guy.
Thanks, Chris. I will wait for the next installment of the saga, and play accordingly.
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 20, 2017, 02:57 PMQuote from: Leighton on Jul 20, 2017, 02:53 PMJudge Turpin has an "excellent" late on in Sweeney - during the final sequence ("Excellent, my friend!") - but no idea if it's notated
Anybody have the sheet music? @Bobster, maybe? I'm awfully tempted to declare this a bunny and go back to guy.
I have the vocal score, and unfortunately "Excellent, my friend" is not notated.
We have a bunny!
guy
Don't be shy
Meet a guy
Pull up a chair
The air is humming
And something great is coming
And soon we're humming along —
Hmmm-Hmmm-Hmmm —
And that's called writing a song
I've added a :bunny: bunny :bunny: emoticon. Seems like it might come in handy.
writing
Giorgio...
Giorgio...
I am writing to you, my angel,
Though not long since you've been gone
With a most unhappy heart.
Because, in truth, as time goes on,
I think of nothing else but you
And us.
Oh, my love, my sweet,
You've changed,
I've watched you change,
You're not the man I thought I knew.
You're not the man who started
And much more open-hearted
Than I knew you to be.
It takes two
I thought one was enough
I just joined last week and found the words people picked to be pretty obvious with several matches jumping to mind quickly. I was trying to throw a challenge out there. I was surprised to see a picture of the score to Pacific Overtures as evidence that "Excellent" wasn't in the score to that show. I was happy to see that overruled, but then I was called a "bunny." I assure you "Excellent" is in a Sondheim score. I checked several sources - copies of music and recordings. In fact, it is in the same song twice.
I assumed this was a forum of devoted Sondheim fans with extensive knowledge of his lyrics.
Good luck. I'm looking for higher ground
Not a bunny
Quote from: wittyandbright on Jul 21, 2017, 05:10 AMI just joined last week and found the words people picked to be pretty obvious with several matches jumping to mind quickly. I was trying to throw a challenge out there. I was surprised to see a picture of the score to Pacific Overtures as evidence that "Excellent" wasn't in the score to that show. I was happy to see that overruled, but then I was called a "bunny." I assure you "Excellent" is in a Sondheim score. I checked several sources - copies of music and recordings. In fact, it is in the same song twice.
If the only other place a word can be found is in the same song, then that, unfortunately, doesn't count. In the rules of this game, you can't answer a song with the same song.
We
are Sondheim fans with extensive knowledge of his lyrics; however, many of us (at least me) don't have our razor-sharp brains working quickly at hand at all times, so are likely to play more common words that we know are out there somewhere because we're at work and don't have the chance to look it up (or some other comparable excuse).
We may also pick words with several obvious matches because we like the surprise of not knowing where the next lyric is going to be from.
Welcome to the Cookie Jar, wittyandbright. Don't let us scare you off.
I read the rules. I'm not referencing twice Pacific Overtures, but it is in a song from another musical and in THAT song "Excellent" is mentioned twice.
You had a good thing going....going... gone
Quote from: wittyandbright on Jul 21, 2017, 05:59 AMI read the rules. I'm not referencing twice Pacific Overtures, but it is in a song from another musical and in THAT song "Excellent" is mentioned twice.
You had a good thing going....going... gone
Well, then I am an idiot for not finding it. My brain is not working well these days. had the resources, but unfortunately not the desire to go through the lyrics books, and that is due entirely to my current frame of mind. I'm sorry for not being the type of player you want. I just know I have a bad habit of playing words that I think are out there somewhere, but turn out not to be, so I tend to "play it safe" instead. I still wish you'd stick around.
Edit: I just posted to say excellent was not a bunny but the song I thought it was in, "Two Fairytales" has "excellence" which doesn't work. It still might exist somewhere but I have not found it yet.
Quote from: wittyandbright on Jul 21, 2017, 05:10 AMI just joined last week and found the words people picked to be pretty obvious with several matches jumping to mind quickly. I was trying to throw a challenge out there. I was surprised to see a picture of the score to Pacific Overtures as evidence that "Excellent" wasn't in the score to that show. I was happy to see that overruled, but then I was called a "bunny." I assure you "Excellent" is in a Sondheim score. I checked several sources - copies of music and recordings. In fact, it is in the same song twice.
I assumed this was a forum of devoted Sondheim fans with extensive knowledge of his lyrics.
Good luck. I'm looking for higher ground
Not a bunny
Wittyandbright,
You weren't being called a "bunny," honest. The lyric is the "bunny." (At least that's how I understand it. I didn't play this game when it was first developed some years ago.) I probably jumped the gun a bit in declaring that there was no match for it, but I wanted to keep to keep the game moving. While, yes, we actually are a knowledgeable group, I feel a responsibility as administrator to keep the games moving so that people won't get bored and stop checking in. In retrospect, I should have given you another day to check in and verify that there was a match.
I hope you don't leave. Despite your first impression we're very welcoming to newcomers, but we're also struggling to hold on to a user base that's more accustomed to the Facebook messaging model where things happen quickly if they happen at all. Given your assurance that there is another
excellent in Sondheim's lyrics, we'll go back to the word and start again from there. I'd appreciate it if you'd stick around to give hints about its location and hope you'll forgive me for a too rapid assumption.
With wittyandbright's assurance that the second "excellent" exists, let's all return to the task of finding it. I know we have some people here with exhaustive knowledge of the Sondheim canon and I genuinely believe that it's there. Any ideas? I'll be checking lyric sites and Sondheim lyric books.
Quote from: Chris L on Jul 21, 2017, 11:36 AMWith wittyandbright's assurance that the second "excellent" exists, let's all return to the task of finding it. I know we have some people here with exhaustive knowledge of the Sondheim canon and I genuinely believe that it's there. Any ideas? I'll be checking lyric sites and Sondheim lyric books.
I, too, believe that
excellent does indeed appear somewhere in the Sondheim lyrical canon. I've just spent a
hugely pleasant couple of hours meandering through the Sondheim vocal scores that I own and been diverted off to my piano a number of times to "play" through songs I haven't thought of in a long time. So, a huge thank you to
@wittyandbright for enabling me to revisit some of the wonderful music Sondheim has given to us. I'll have to take a break from it for now, but will come back to it in a few hours if nobody finds it before I get there!
Quote from: wittyandbright on Jul 21, 2017, 05:10 AMI just joined last week and found the words people picked to be pretty obvious with several matches jumping to mind quickly. I was trying to throw a challenge out there. I was surprised to see a picture of the score to Pacific Overtures as evidence that "Excellent" wasn't in the score to that show. I was happy to see that overruled, but then I was called a "bunny." I assure you "Excellent" is in a Sondheim score. I checked several sources - copies of music and recordings. In fact, it is in the same song twice.
I assumed this was a forum of devoted Sondheim fans with extensive knowledge of his lyrics.
Good luck. I'm looking for higher ground
Not a bunny
Those snide remarks notwithstanding, there were times in the past that non-pitched words--though notated--were not considered acceptable but that had changed and I'd forgotten.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Quote from: Vera Charles on Jul 21, 2017, 01:44 PMQuote from: Chris L on Jul 21, 2017, 11:36 AMWith wittyandbright's assurance that the second "excellent" exists, let's all return to the task of finding it. I know we have some people here with exhaustive knowledge of the Sondheim canon and I genuinely believe that it's there. Any ideas? I'll be checking lyric sites and Sondheim lyric books.
I, too, believe that excellent does indeed appear somewhere in the Sondheim lyrical canon. I've just spent a hugely pleasant couple of hours meandering through the Sondheim vocal scores that I own and been diverted off to my piano a number of times to "play" through songs I haven't thought of in a long time. So, a huge thank you to @wittyandbright for enabling me to revisit some of the wonderful music Sondheim has given to us. I'll have to take a break from it for now, but will come back to it in a few hours if nobody finds it before I get there!
I wonder if, while we wait for one of us to find where
excellent appears and/or
@wittyandbright comes back to us with a clue, we should continue the parallel thread (i.e. Leighton's
enough) just to keep a version of the thread going. What do you think,
@Chris L ?
Quote from: Vera Charles on Jul 22, 2017, 07:21 AMI wonder if, while we wait for one of us to find where excellent appears and/or @wittyandbright comes back to us with a clue, we should continue the parallel thread (i.e. Leighton's enough) just to keep a version of the thread going. What do you think, @Chris L ?
There have been no hints yet from
@wittyandbright as to where the second
excellent is, so yes, I think we need to keep playing from
enough.
Wouldn't do in my shop
Just the thought of it's enough to make you sick
And I'm telling you them pussycats is quick
No denying times is hard, sir
If you're quick,
For a kick,
You could pick
Up a christening,
But please,
On my knees,
There's a human life at stake!
Listen everybody, I'm afraid you didn't hear...
I'm so happy I'm afraid
I'll die
Here in your arms.
What would you do if I died,
Like this, right now,
Here in your arms?
That we ever should have met is a miracle...
[Ed.: While hardly an obscure word, 'miracle' doesn't seem like a wildly common one either (no more so than, say, "excellent"). So I was mildly surprised by how many times SJS has used it: there are at least five other instances (i.e., not including "Happiness") that I'm aware of, so take your pick!]
[The indefinite article is almost a freebie; in general usage, my guess is that it probably introduces the word "miracle" more often than any other modifier, so it shouldn't -- and in fact doesn't -- really make this a particularly more-difficult target than "miracle" alone would be: four of the five instances mentioned above include it.]
You need never again have a worry or care
I will show you a miracle marvelous rare!
Gentlemen, you are about to see something that rose from the deaaaaad!
On the top of my head!
Scarcely a month ago, gentlemen,
I was suddenly struck with a rare Oriental disease!
Though the finest physicians in London were called
I awakened one morning amazed and appalled
To discover with dread that my head was as bald
as a novice's knees!
{PS Christopher of the old board was I believe the originator and became moderator of this game. He loves bunnies :bunny: and always has one in his classroom for his students.
He determined when there was a word that didn't appear in the Canon it would be called a Bunny.
I can't remember if that changed to the 3 post warning of Butler Subtler Locksmith to show a stall or if that was another game.}
Quote from: Bobster on Jul 22, 2017, 08:10 PM{PS Christopher of the old board was I believe the originator and became moderator of this game. He loves bunnies :bunny: and always has one in his classroom for his students.
He determined when there was a word that didn't appear in the Canon it would be called a Bunny.
I can't remember if that changed to the 3 post warning of Butler Subtler Locksmith to show a stall or if that was another game.}
I think "locksmith" was in the All Lyricists Except Sondheim game.
Al?
No.
Big?
Fat.
Young?
Bald.
Harry!
Yeah.
Okey-doaks.
Come on, folks!
And where we gonna go?
Wherever we go, whatever we do,
we're gonna go through it together.
We may not go far, but sure as a star,
wherever we are, it's together.
There won't be trumpets,
But sure as shooting,
You'll know him when you see him.
Don't know when, don't know where--
And I can't even say that I care.
All I know is, the minute you turn
And he's suddenly there...
...We were waiting for a carriage...
...Newsboys...
...Suddenly there's shouting in the street...
...Lizzie's sheet...
"The president's been shot."
...I'll remember it forever...
...And I thought:
Where I was, what I was doing...
Something just broke
"The president's been shot."
My God
I was up near the ridge
Plowing...
We were working at the plant...
I was halfway through correcting the exams...
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood.
Do not let it grieve you:
No one leaves for good.
Hey, fella
Feel like you're a failure?
Bailiff on your tail? Your
Wife run off for good?
Hey, fella, feel misunderstood?
C'mere and kill a president
A boy like that who'd kill your brother,
Forget that boy and find another,
One of your own kind,
Stick to your own kind!
A boy like that will give you sorrow,
You'll meet another boy tomorrow...
Say toodle-oo to sorrow
Mm-hm.
And fare thee well, ennui.
Bye-bye
You're gonna love tomorrow
As long as your tomorrow is spent with me.
Tomorrow I'll be floating in the Hudson with the other garbage...
In the middle of the world we float,
In the middle of the sea.
The realities remain remote
In the middle of the sea.
Kings are burning somewhere,
Wheels are turning somewhere,
Trains are being run,
Wars are being won,
Things are being done
Somewhere out there, not here.
Who out there could love you more than I?
What out there that I cannot supply?
Stay with me
Stay with me, the world is dark and wild
Stay a child while you can be a child (https://genius.com/Stephen-sondheim-stay-with-me-lyrics#note-12320783)
With me
Take me to the world that's real;
Show me how it's done.
Teach me how to laugh, to feel,
Move me to the sun!
The sun won't set
It's fruitless to hope or to fret.
It's dark as it's going to get.
Well, you never know if it's going to / run
I've run the gamut.
A to Z.
Three cheers and dammit,
C'est la vie.
Something in them cheers the air.
Pretty women
Silhouetted
Stay within you,
Glancing,
Stay forever,
I'll remember it forever...
And I thought--
--where I was, what I was doing...
Something just broke.
"The president's been shot."
Quick, Jerome,
Get the president,
There's a crazy man
On my TV screen
Those good and crazy people, my married friends,
And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
(Yes, I meant to put the question mark in bold.)
This is nice, isn't it?
I mean, the band.
Don't you think
We make natural partners?
Don't you think some flowers
Pretty daisies
Might relieve the gloom?
Down here, fire and gloom...
Up there, not a lot of fun.
Friday nights for a bit of fun,
We'll go dancing...
Meanwhile...
I can't hear a waltz
Oh my lord, there it goes again
Why is nobody dancing in the street?
Can't they hear the beat?
Magical, mystical, miracle...
Maybe they're really magic
Who knows?
Why you do
What you do
That's the point:
All the rest of it
Is chatter
Giggling, wriggling out of our tights
Chattering and clattering down all of those flights
God, I'd forgotten there ever were nights
Of waiting for the boys
Downstairs.
- The soldiers have forgotten us
- The boatman schwitzes
- I am completely out of proportion
- These helmets weigh a lot on us
- This tree is blocking my view
It's our head on the block
Give us room and start the clock
Our time coming through
Me and you, pal
Me and you!
Me and you!
But it's six o'clock
So it's six o'clock
It was due to arrive
At a quarter to five
And it's probably already
Down the block
It'll be here
It'll be here
Have a beaker of beer
And stop worrying dear
Stop worrying where you're going—
Move on.
If you can know where you're going,
You've gone.
Today was perfectly perfect, you say,
Well, don't go away,
Cause if you think you liked today,
You're gonna love tomorrow,
Mm-hmm,
You stick around and see
...And how you're always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick or the dog or the light;
How the kind of woman willing to wait-
'S not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night...
Waiting around for the girls upstairs
After the curtain came down
Money in my pocket to spend
"Honey, could you maybe get a friend for my friend!"
Goodbye, my friends, and good riddance
Pardon while I disappear
I've stuffed the dailies in my shoes
Strummed ukuleles, sung the blues
Seen all my dreams disappear but I'm here.
I've slept in shanties, guest of the W.P.A., but I'm here
Danced in my scanties
Three bucks a night was the pay, but I'm here
I've stood on bread lines with the best
Watched while the headlines did the rest
I think the "I" is bolder as well.
Quote from: AmyG on Jul 29, 2017, 08:41 PMI think the "I" is bolder as well.
Oops, it should have been just "disappear" :( sorry!
Thank gawd for that :D
Extra! Extra!
Hey, look at the headline,
Historical news
Is being made.
Extra! Extra!
They're drawing a red line
Around the biggest scoop
Of the decade.
A barrel of charm,
A fabulous thrill.
The biggest little headline
In vaudeville
Men in the mines to dig the iron.
Men in the mills to forge the steel.
Men at machines to turn the barrel,
Mold the trigger, shape the wheel.
It takes a lot of men to make a gun.
One gun.
A few years ago I wrote a long post on the old FTC questioning whether Sondheim had ever written for any characters who could fairly be called inarticulate -- in the sense that (I argued) Hammerstein's Billy Bigelow is, even in his most searching moments. In his book scenes in Assassins, Czolgosz might seem to qualify. But in the privacy of his thoughts during the musical soliloquy that begins and ends "Gun Song," SJS uses the simplest of language (90% of the words in the stanza above are monosyllables, and none would challenge a third-grader) to endow the unemployed steelworker with a kind of grim poetry. These passages struck me powerfully when I first heard them sung by Terrence Mann at Playwrights Horizons in 1990, and they remain among my favorite Sondheim lyrics.
I wish the cow was full of milk.
I wish the walls were full of gold-
I wish a lot of things...
I wish...
It's not for me,
It's for my Granny in the woods.
It isn't true, not for me!
It's true for you, not for me.
I hear your words, and in my head
I know they're smart--
But my heart, Anita!
But my heart...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOoKi6q9ZXE
F - My heart belongs to someone else. C - Your breath so warm...
Stay forever
Breathing lightly
Pretty women!
Blowing out their candles
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying...
Five fat babies
And lots of security
Jessie has maturity
And plenty of security.
Whatever you can do with them, she's done.
You can do it
All you need is a hand
WE can do it
MAMA IS GONNA SEE TO IT!
Curtain up!
Light the lights!
I dim the lights
And think about you
Spend sleepless nights
To think about you
I do not read to think. I do not read to learn.
I do not read to search for truth
I know the truth, the truth is hardly what I need.
I read to dream.
His needs are few, his room is bare,
He hardly uses his fancy chair,
The more he bleeds, the more he lives,
He never forgets and he never forgives.
Someone to bleed you of all
The things you don't want to tell.
That's happily ever after...
Ever, ever, ever after
In hell.
Clara, I'm in hell
This is hell
Living hell
This godforsaken place
This sterile little town
Now, why did he turn it off so quick?
A sign that our little town is sick....
- Brilliant!
- Clever!
- Good!
- Brilliant!
- Brilliant!
- Brilliant!
Sick people running wild, no less,
And who is responsible?
You're responsible,
You're the one to blame
It's your--
Trouble is, Charley,
That's what everyone does:
Blames the way it is
On the way it was,
On the way it never ever was.
They have never understood
And no reason that they should
But if anybody could
Do not put your faith in a cape and a hood,
They will not protect you
The way that they should.
And take extra care with strangers,
Even flowers have their dangers.
Quote from: Vera Charles on Aug 04, 2017, 04:05 AMDo not put your faith in a cape and a hood,
They will not protect you
The way that they should.
And take extra care with strangers,
Even flowers have their dangers.
I've just realised that
flowers has been used before ... if that's not allowed, then
Do not put your faith in a cape and a hood,
They will not protect you
The way that
they should.
And take extra care with strangers,
Even flowers have their
dangers.
...And to get what you wish,
Only just for a moment--
These are dangerous woods!
Let the moment go.
Don't forget it for a moment, though...
Please lady!
Don't forget that guns can go boom!
Boom
Crunch
The dinosaurs surviving the crunch.
Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch -
Go have lunch 'cause I'm not getting married
You've been grand but I'm not getting married
Back in business and ain't it grand?
Let the good times roll
Yesterday things were out of hand
Now they're under control
I'm calm, I'm calm,
I'm perfectly calm,
I'm utterly under control.
I haven't a worry,
Where others would hurry I stroll.
I'm calm, I'm cool,
A gibbering fool
Is something I never become.
When thunder is rumbling
And others are crumbling,
I hum.
I am the princess, guarded by dragons
Snorting and grumbling and rumbling in wagons...
She's in her kingdom, wearing disguises, leading a life that is full of surprises...
And sometime this summer, she'll come galloping
"The girls of summer get burned
They start the summer unconcerned
They get undone by a touch of sun in June
Plus a touch of the moon"
Careful, here's the home of
Beautiful girls,
Where your reason is undone
Beauty can't be hindered
From taking its toll
You may lose control
Faced with these Loreleis,
What man can moralize?
Stepping back to look at a face
Leaves a little space in the way like a window
But to see
It's the only way to see...
And when the woman that you wanted goes
You can say to yourself, "Well, I give what I give..."
You wanted people out strolling on Sunday...
Sorry, Marie.
See George remember how George used to be
Stretching his vision in every direction
See George attempting to see a connection
When all he can see
Is maybe a tree
"The family tree"...
Sorry, Marie.
I know, Honey, you don't agree
But this is our family tree
Just wait 'til we're there, and you'll see
Listen to me
Honey, I'll take the grand,
Sugar you keep the spinet
And all of our friends and
Just wait a goddamn minute!
Gold dust
Glittering and littering the goddamn ground!
...You and me against the world, Addie,
You an me against the world!
You and me together,
Weathering the weather,
Fording the crevasses--
...Freezing off our asses--
...We'll never make our fortune
Just by sitting on the porch 'n'
Looking wistful,
When there are nuggets by the fistful...
...Nuggets by the fistful!
Time to leave the nest.
...Time to venture forth,
Can't go further west,
Might as well go north...
Most honorable Judge Turpin...
Honorable...
Honorable...
I venture thus to write you this
Urgent
Note to warn you
That the hot-blooded
Young sailor
Has abducted your ward, Johanna...
Pretty lady with a flower
Give a lonely sailor half an hour
Pretty lady can you understand a word I say?
Don't go away
I could understand a person
If a person was a fag.
But worse than that,
A person that
Titillates a person and leaves her flat
Is crazy...
Point of order. Is this kosher? The actual lyric is "But worse 'n that".
Quote from: valmont on Aug 22, 2017, 12:53 AMPoint of order. Is this kosher? The actual lyric is "But worse 'n that".
I agree. Judges?
Fair cop C:-). Of course it's "worse 'n" - what was I thinking??
Duly edited.
(Kudos if you can find what I had in mind though! ;) )
So where are we in this game? Are we playing worse 'n as if it were a single word -- which I don't think it is -- or worse as a word by itself, in which case the 'n or than question is beside the point?
I edited the original post to highlight worse only, so that's the word in play.I
Thanks, Martin. That makes sense. Now to find a worse somewhere...
Good things get better
Bad get worse
Wait, I think I meant that in reverse
You're sorry-grateful
Regretful happy
One has regrets
Which one forgets
And as the years go on,
The road you didn't take...
Rain gathering,
Winding into streams,
Like the roads to Boston.
Your turn.
...
I love her like the moon,
Making jewels of the grass
Where my lady walks,
My lady wife.
Sunday, by the blue purple yellow red water
On the green purple yellow red grass
Let us pass through our perfect park
Our little world
Is perfect,
A world that's just for me.
Our little world:
Growing my hair...
Braiding her hair...
What do I care
What they're doing out there...?
Who out there could love you more than I?
What out there that I cannot supply?
Stay with me.
Stay with me the world is dark and wild
She was young, she was wild,
Ariadne.
She was shy like a child,
Had this funny dimple when she smiled;
Lips as soft as petals,
Hair the color of the sun,
Breasts--
Your breasts, your lips...
I didn't know what love was.
I want you every minute of my life...
I don't know how I'll live when you're gone!
I will always be here.
R: Stay a minute.
A: I would like to.
Me and my town
Battered about
Everyone in it
Would like to get out
But me and my town,
We just want to be loved
G: I'm someone to be loved.
F: And that I learned from you.
...I don't know how I let you
So far inside my mind.
But there you are and there you will stay...
Dreams don't die so keep an eye on your dreams.
Or before you know where you are, there you are.
Roads may wind and you may find what you left behind is your dream.
It's a very short road
From the pinch and the punch
Most friends fade,
Or they don't make the grade;
New ones are quickly made
And, in a pinch, sure, they'll do.
But us, old friend—
What's to discuss, old friend?
Why discuss, make ze fuss,
Since ze West belongs to us?
My heart belongs to someone else...
I am in love, hopelessly in love,
Hopelessly in love
And am loved hopelessly in turn,
Signora.
They disappoint
In turn I fear.
Forgive, though, they won't
The more he bleeds, the more he lives:
He never forgets and he never forgives.
Perhaps today you gave a nod
To Sweeney Todd...
Not even a nod.
As if I were trees.
The ground could open.
He would still say "Please".
Never know with you, George,
Who could know with you?
The girls I'll never know
I'm too tired for
Walking off my tired feet.
Pounding Forty-Second Street
The blood is pounding take aim and ready Bang!
Twenty minutes small talk thirty at the most
Ninety minutes of Doris Day,
There was nothing to do but pray.
Stuck all week on a lady's lap
Nothing to do but yawn and nap
Now, there are two possibilities:
A, I could ravish her; B, I could nap.
Say it's the ravishment. Then we see
The option that follows, of course:
A, the deployment of charm, or B,
The adoption of physical force.
To those who find SJS's lyrics too clever by half, "Now/Soon/Later" responds by grinding the complainers into a fine paste and feeding them to their children with a sprig of rosemary. Puny mortals.
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Sep 10, 2017, 11:07 PMTo those who find SJS's lyrics too clever by half, "Now/Soon/Later" responds by grinding the complainers into a fine paste and feeding them to their children with a sprig of rosemary. Puny mortals.
I've always found the lyrics to "Now" so astoundingly clever yet so perfectly natural sounding coming from that character that I would worship Sondheim if it were the only thing he'd ever written.
The current word is "
force." Come on, people! Don't let the game stall out!
Well OK, just because it tickled me when I played it in the old game:
We could pool our resources
by joining forces from now on.
Lucky, you're a man who likes children.
That's an important sign.
Lucky, I'm a woman with children.
Small world, isn't it?
Funny, isn't it?
Small and funny and fine?
:D
I feel dizzy,
I feel sunny,
I feel fizzy and funny and fine,
And so pretty, Miss America can just resign.
See the pretty girl in that mirror there
Mirror, mirror
on the wall,
Who's the saddest gal in town?
Who's been riding
For a fall?
Whose Lothario let her down?
We shouldn't try it,
Though, 'til it's legal for two!
But a seaside wedding could be devised,
Me rumpled bedding legitimized...
Me eyelids'll flutter,
I'll turn into butter,
The moment I mutter, "I do!"
I have to do like you like,
Only because I do like
You.
Reciprocation in the end
Is why a friend
Is true.
True, you could say, "Hey, here's your hat,"
But a little thing like that
Couldn't stop me now.
Styne's music would make this song a classic in any case, but -- in contrast to my last aside about the otherworldly brilliance of "Now/Soon/Later" -- it's worth noting how delightfully SJS handles more-conventional material like this, too: breezy, deceptively simple, instantly accessible romantic banter. Any mild show-offy urges ("...how you're gonna not-at-all / get away from me") are deftly woven into the singers' immediate, universally-relatable focus: flirting. In context, "You'll Never Get Away From Me" perfectly crystallizes the dynamic that will ultimately scuttle this relationship -- its title alone practically dares us to set odds on Rose and Herbie remaining together -- but for now, it's just two grown-ups enjoying each other. The lyric supplies just the right balance of silkiness and friction to keep Styne's perky/swoony foxtrot deliciously aloft, but not lost in the clouds.
stop me
Oh, my God, I think it's happened!
Stop me quick before I sink.
One more triumph that I can't refuse
In case you didn't notice, this is my first time on TV...and my last!
No, here's the point, whatever happens
Then we'll all go have a drink...
Make 'em think you're being clever,
But, whatever happens, smile -- no matter what!
When the scenery smacks you: smile!
When a stagehand attacks you: smile!
When they boo in the gallery: smile!
When I don't pay your salary... smile!
Better than sex, better than booze,
Beating ace high with a pair of twos.
Better to win, but if you lose,
You've had your moment.
You either have it...
Or you've had it.
Hello everybody, my name's Rose -- what's yours?
Howd'ya like them eggrolls, Mr. Goldstone?
Hold your hats, and hallelujah:
Mama's gonna show it to ya...
Somebody's been listening to Gypsy
Hallelujah, praise the Lord and amen!
Schub, you've done it again!
Officer Krupke, you've done it again.
This boy don't need a job, he needs a year in the pen.
It ain't just a question of misunderstood;
Deep down inside him, he's no good!
How do you say to a child who's in flight,
"Don't slip away and I won't hold so tight"?
What can you say that, no matter how slight,
Won't be misunderstood?
What do you leave to your child when you're dead?
Only whatever you put in its head:
Things that your father and mother had said--
Which were left to them, too.
Father and mother
Get one another...
Something for everyone...
A tragedy tonight!...
I get the twins!
They get the best!
You're still the best thing that ever has happened to me.
Bullshit.
(Just because I'm not sure if there's another "Bullshit" out there; if there is, you're welcome to it!)
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And it's filled with people who are filled with shit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
Quote from: KathyB on Jul 10, 2017, 09:48 AMThe only other rule I can think of is try not to use the same song in response.
Just wondering, hypothetically, if a whole phrase repeated pretty much verbatim in a song later in the same show by the same character can really be part of a different song in the spirit of this game? Just hypothetically... :-\ ;)
Quote from: MartinG on Oct 05, 2017, 03:17 PMQuote from: KathyB on Jul 10, 2017, 09:48 AMThe only other rule I can think of is try not to use the same song in response.
Just wondering, hypothetically, if a whole phrase repeated pretty much verbatim in a song later in the same show by the same character can really be part of a different song in the spirit of this game? Just hypothetically... :-\ ;)
I don't know. I'm hypothetically confused. Is the melody the same? I'm specifically thinking of the various parts of different songs ("Poor Thing," "A Little Priest," etc.) used/quoted in the final sequence of
Sweeney Todd, and thinking that I've always personally considered them to be different songs, even though I know and recognize where the parts come from. But all the various "Ballads of Sweeney Todd" that are used throughout the show with different lyrics each time are the same song to me.
Does anyone else have an opinion?
@Bobster ?
Of course it's entirely possible
@Leighton has a different
inhabit in mind but I'm blowed if I can find it!
Aaaaaaaa. :-\ :-\ :-\
Very shady and grey area here. The three lines
@Leighton quotes are
parts of 2 songs, a
leitmotiv if you will. The tune is the same in both places and they are not what the songs are titled.
Since it is the same tune (albeit in different keys) with the same lyrics in both places, I would at first vote "no".
And yet..... :o
The
leitmotiv in "No Place Like London" ends the song while its use in "Epiphany" is in the middle and there are later lyrics.
Is that enough to vote "yes"?
There needs to be more discussion. :)
Oh
@Leighton...did you have another
inhabit?
For the purposes of this game, I vote that a lyric that's part of a recurring leitmotif can not be answered by another appearance in the same show, even if contained in a song with a different title. If I leave "roses" from "Everything's Coming Up Roses", you can't answer it with the recurrence of that line from "Rose's Turn".
Quote from: valmont on Oct 06, 2017, 07:07 PMFor the purposes of this game, I vote that a lyric that's part of a recurring leitmotif can not be answered by another appearance in the same show, even if contained in a song with a different title. If I leave "roses" from "Everything's Coming Up Roses", you can't answer it with the recurrence of that line from "Rose's Turn".
I can get behind this very easily. :)
Quote from: KathyB on Oct 07, 2017, 11:22 AMQuote from: valmont on Oct 06, 2017, 07:07 PMFor the purposes of this game, I vote that a lyric that's part of a recurring leitmotif can not be answered by another appearance in the same show, even if contained in a song with a different title. If I leave "roses" from "Everything's Coming Up Roses", you can't answer it with the recurrence of that line from "Rose's Turn".
I can get behind this very easily. :)
Me too.
I have no other inhabit!
I can easily use world instead, which should make things a little easier?
It's our time, breathe it in:
Worlds to change, and worlds to win.
Our turn -- coming through!
Me and you, pal, me and you...
Years from now,
We'll remember and we'll come back,
Buy the rooftop and hang a plaque:
"This is where we began...
Being what we can."
As Mother is getting a plaque
From the Halsingburg Arts Council
Amateur Theatre Group...
Face the facts, find the boy,
Join the group, stop the Giant -
Just get out of these woods.
We seem to have stalled. Time for a hint, maybe?
Well it's in two shows, 39 years apart.
One is in the title of a song, but that song has since departed from the current incarnation.
The other song title contains an apostrophe.
That should assist ;)
Everybody says don't get out of line
When they say that then, lady that's a sign
Nine times out of ten
That you are doing just fine.
I could tell you someone who would finally feel just fine!
Tell 'em that they ought to get together quick
Cause getting it together is the whole trick
Let me do a few tricks--
Some old and then some new tricks--
I'm very versatile!
What a wonder is a gun
What a versatile invention
First of all when you've a gun -
Everybody pays attention
Ladies and Gentlemen!
May I have your attention please?
Do you wake every morning in shame and despair
To discover your pillow is covered with hair
Wot ought not to be there?
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
From now on you can waken with ease.
Quote from: MartinG on Oct 31, 2017, 08:57 AMFrom now on
This one has your name on it, scenic
We could pool our resources
By joining forces from now on.
Lucky, you're a man who likes children—
That's an important sign.
Spider on the wall!
Signifies success
Whose success I cannot guess
Well, I guess you could leave me the house,
Leave me the flat,
Leave me the Braques and Chagalls and all that.
You could leave me the stocks for sentiment's sake
And ninety percent of the money you make
No, I like money a lot
Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm
I mean, it's better than not
Maybe you're going to fall-
But it is better than not starting at all!
Everybody says no,
Everybody says stop.
Everybody says mustn't rock the boat,
Mustn't touch a thing!
Whaddya get, stirring the pot--
Wouldn't you rather blink and squat?
Everything's gonna stay afloat
As long as you don't rock the boat.
Be-de-de-beep, be-de-de-beep,
Leave it alone and go to sleep.
Leave it alone, you're in too deep;
You gotta look before you leap.
Ed. Probably wildly illegal, but since no one's responded yet anyway, I'm changing the target word. In case anyone was biding their time with an answer to the previous target (leap), be my guest, but the new one's more fun.
This is some sort of loyalty test to show that we are true blue Sondheim fans who know every lyric, and I'm failing it miserably. :) (I don't even know where the last lyric played comes from.)
"Whaddya get, stirring the pot..." was from The Frogs.
(And I'll admit, with all due sheepishness, that I had to Google [sondheim lyric "rock the boat"] to find it).
But the solution I had in mind is less obscure. There may be one or more valid "trick" answers for be-de, in which real words are broken up to feature those letters in that order (with or without the same spacing or the hyphen). But the probably-unique answer I'm thinking of uses them in more or less the same way the Frogs clue does: as nonsense syllables (though not onomatopoetic amphibian ones). Kinda like the "bumbum"s in Sweeney ("Pretty Women"), Merrily ("Opening Doors"), and Sunday ("Color and Light").
Personally, I'd call the hyphen optional -- but for what it's worth, the Frogs lyric and the answer I'm thinking of are both, in fact, hyphenated in the "Hat" book.
And if that's still not enough of a clue, I wouldn't question the true-blue fandom of any Sondhead who opted out of be-de and chose to go with my original target word, leap, instead.
I want another clue to this be-de thing before I use leap.
I've got one without the hyphen ...
Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delicious
Tidying up the dishes,
Neat as a pin
Oh, oh, wouldn't she be delightful
Sweeping out
Sleeping in
If someone can find the hyphenated be-de feel free to go with that!
My astonishment beggars description -- I'm genuinely surprised that the previous clue didn't wheedle forth the intended solution (but kudos to Leighton for instead finding a clever "trick" answer, in Forum -- I felt fairly sure there'd be one somewhere, but was too lazy to look for it). How many uses of nonsense syllables are there in Sondheim? And can I find some excuse to use the word dumpling in this paragraph, just to clinch things?
;D
It did occur to me that, unless I'm forgetting some other "deedle" elsewhere in the oeuvre, leaving a playable clue might've been awkward for the next player. ("Deed," as in the one to Mme. Armfeldt's duchy, somehow didn't occur to me until just now). I'd been going with the assumption that it would've been legal to cram the BW's brief, agitated dialogue with Todd into an ellipsis, and then leave something from her final sung line, "Hey, don't I know you, mister...?" as the next target. Or, if we're calling "Final Sequence" one long song and we don't care about switching singers, there's certainly plenty of it left, after the BW's death, to cull from.
High in a tower -- like yours was, but higher:
A beauty asleep.
All 'round the tower, a thicket of briar
A hundred feet deep.
Agony! No frustration more keen...
In my opinion, it would not be kosher to continue past the Beggar Woman's final line, as what follows is a distinct musical number in the score, titled "The Judge's Return". However, one could use the lyrics from her lullabye, added for the London production.
Glad you said that, Darin. I'd been dithering over the BW stuff but wasn't sure I'd get away with it. :D
Cunning >:D , Dave.
Look at those eyes, cunning and keen
Look at the size of those thighs, like a mighty machine!
(There are a few plurals but one singular with which I'm familiar)
It's a very short way from the fling that's for fun
To the thigh pressing under the table
It's a very short day till you're stuck with just one
Or it has to be done on the sly
Better stop and take stock
While you're standing here stuck
On the steps of the palace
You think, what do you want?
You think, make a decision!
Why not stay and be caught?
Our inventions were unique--
Remember, darling?
I was limping for a week;
You caught the flu.
I'm sure it was...
You?
If there's anything at all
I'm sure of here and now and us together.
If only we had more than letters
Holding us together,
If we just could hold each other now,
The sunrise then could be
A thing that I could see
And merely think, "how beautiful!"
All that time wasted
Merely passing through,
Time I could have spent
So content,
Wasting time with you
...And I think to myself:
Other people are movie stars.
Why can't I be a movie star,
Like Fay Wray and George Brent?
I'd be truly content.
I needn't be a rich glamorous --
Nor a really great glamorous --
Just a simple straight glamorous
Movie star!
It's the principle that counts.
That's what counts!
Ounce by ounce
Putting it together
And they walk together past the postered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never
know.
Mrs. Lovett, how I've lived without you
All these years I'll never know--
How delectable!
Also undetectable...
Grandmother first,
Then Miss Plump...
What a delectable couple:
Utter perfection...
But the woman was perfection,
Not an action denied--
The kind of perfection
I cannot abide.
If the woman were perfection,
She'd have simply lied!
...Which would have been wonderful.
If I could have been a Duke,
For you I would have.
All the things you should have
I cannot supply you.
(...the example I have in mind isn't a million miles from another 'have been' :) )
Look at what you want,
Not at where you are,
Not at what you'll be.
Look at all the things you gave to me:
Opened up my eyes!
Taught me how to see,
Notice every tree,
Understand the light...
Concentrate on now.
I'm going back to playing game police in order to keep things moving. Anybody want to come up with a lyric for the word "concentrate"?
If my waist was thinner.
If my hips were flatter.
If my voice was warm.
If I could concentrate...
I'd be in the Follies.
I'd be in a cabaret.
Gentlemen in tall silk hats
And linen spats
Would wait with flowers.
I could make them wait for hours.
I know why nobody cares to
Take them -- I should know,
I make them! But good?? No,
The worst pies in London.
Even that's polite!
Keep away from her,
Send for Chino!
This is not the Mar-
Ia we know!
Modest and pure,
Polite and refined,
Well-bred and mature
And out of her mind!
I wish I could forget you,
Erase you from my mind.
But ever since I met you,
I find
I cannot leave the thought of you behind.
All afternoon, doing every little chore
The thought of you stays bright.
Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor
Not going left, not going right.
I dim the lights, and think about you.
Spend sleepless nights, and think about you.
You said you loved me, or were you just being kind?
Or am I losing my mind?
You said you loved me,
Above the sound and speed!
With your love,
What more do I need?
Without the Hat book handy, I can't be certain whether it's "loved" or "love" -- the interweb lists both, depending where you look. Personally, I'd say "loved" is more defensible for Follies (where I believe the past-tense is in fact used), but in "What More Do I Need?" it would make more sense to use "love".
But I remember being struck, years ago when I first heard Liz Callaway sing the latter, by the coincidence of SJS using this same line in two different contexts: one buoyantly happy (I'm sure someone has attempted a downbeat rendering of "WMDIN" by now, but overall I'd peg it as one of the sunnier songs in the Sondheim canon), and the other anguished. The coincidence stayed with me enough to suggest that, my unreliable memory of the actual lyrics notwithstanding, they are in fact probably identical.
Still, in a sense, that sharp difference in tone suggests why I actually feel like a corresponding distinction in tense would be more appropriate. Sally may seem wildly deluded in real life, but the torchy tone of her Follies number suggests she's aware that Ben only loved her -- if at all -- while he was actually saying it; his feelings might not endure for days or even hours, much less thirty years, after their utterance. Conversely, the singer of "WMDIN" seems to joyfully assume that, regardless of specifically when the words were said, the sentiment they express is ongoing, if not timeless.
Damn, I was so excited to find an Internet site that used the word "loved" that it never occurred to me to check, but Finishing the Hat does indeed say that it's "love," so I'm declaring it a bunny and reverting to Kathy's line:
the thought of you
(I also listened to Liz Callaway's live version on Spotify but, even relistening to it now, I can't tell which word she's singing.)
It's actually Martin's line, and I'm just going to take the Follies lyrics and end in a different place:
All afternoon, doing every little chore
The thought of you stays bright.
Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor
Not going left, not going right.
I dim the lights, and think about you.
Spend sleepless nights, and think about you.
Curtain up! Light the lights!
You got nothing to hit but the heights!
I can tell, wait and see.
There's the bell -- follow me!
And nothing's gonna stop us 'til we're through...
I've always thought this verse's second line must be SJS poking affectionate fun at the ebulliently striver-ish American idiom in which Rose not only speaks, but thinks. "Nothin' to hit but the heights," really? First of all, just to be obtuse: the urgent need of the moment is something to hit?, figuratively (hit the road, hit the hay, hit the nail on the head) or otherwise?* And, that being the case: literally all other hittables are either unsuitable or already spoken-for? "Nothing to x but y" is, I guess, a venerable cliché, and if "hit the heights" isn't, maybe it should be -- but how many people would think to mix them? Despite the amazingly efficient (and catchy!) mess she's made of syntax, her sense somehow shines through: "you've got no other mark to hit" but the highest one possible (no pressure or anything!), i.e., the sky's the limit. Or, perhaps, "there's nowhere to go but up" (as Charley Kringas puts it, decades later, "When you're flattened this low and you're starting from scratch, / You can only go in one direction"), so why not all the way? Either way, Rose's coinage is, like the lady herself, sort of daft and transcendent at once.
It reminds me -- by a nonsensically huge stretch, admittedly -- of a "found haiku," published in the NYPress sometime in the early 1990s, which so tickled my fancy that I promptly committed it to (apparently long-term) memory. Ostensibly barked by a sanitation worker to a resident complaining about the ever-growing pile of garbage bags in front of her building, which had been awaiting his arrival for far too long after a citywide strike: "Garbage, lady? Shit, / Garbage don't take itself out. / Garbage ain't got legs."
____________________
*Actually, if it comes to that, part of me would kinda love to stage this lyric as Rose's instant co-optation of a disconsolate Louise's having just punched the cow (https://images.app.goo.gl/9tKTieeJYfFNNhih9) in the face. :D
Ev'ry night, in the kip, when we're through our kippers,
I'll be there slippin' off your slippers!
By the sea,
With the fishies splashing!
By the sea,
Wouldn't that be smashing?
Nothing but a vast midnight,
Everybody smashed flat.
Nothing we can do
Not exactly true
We can always give her the boy
Tall and slender, moves like a dancer
But I never seem to get any answer
From the boy from Tacarembo La Tumbe Del Fuego Santa Malipas Zatatecas La Junta Del Sol Y Cruz.
I got the blueth
Why are his trousers vermillion?
Bang! The tunic opens... Bang! The trousers fall.
Bang! The foe lies helpless, back against the wall.
Bang, an hour and a quarter overall...
T: But it's six o'clock!
L: So it's six o'clock.
T: It was due to arrive at a quarter to five -
L: And it's probably already down the block!
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach
Blerg. I wanted to use Pseudolus's fantasy island-built-for-two, from "Pretty Little Picture" -- but despite devoting an entire verse (roughly a quarter of the song) to vivid description of its "smooth and sandy and pink" landscape, the word beach is never actually used.
Quote from: Chris L on Feb 10, 2018, 11:54 AMIt's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach
The target word appears in at least two Sondheim songs other than this one. One of those is from a show and a song everybody here will know. I'm sure you'll remember.
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Feb 10, 2018, 05:36 PMBlerg. I wanted to use Pseudolus's fantasy island-built-for-two, from "Pretty Little Picture" -- but despite devoting an entire verse (roughly a quarter of the song) to vivid description of its "smooth and sandy and pink" landscape, the word beach is never actually used.
And I thought the same about "By the Sea" ... alas, no
beach.
<slaps forehead>
The old deserted beach where we walked.
Remember? Remember?
The cafe in the park where we talked.
Remember? Remember?
The tenor on the boat that we chartered
Belching "The Bartered Bride"
Hopefully the game isn't case sensitive ...
Quote from: nulipp on Feb 12, 2018, 11:03 AMHopefully the game isn't case sensitive ...
@scenicdesign71 is the expert on this sort of thing, but his set of rules on the first page of this thread (toward the bottom) doesn't seem to address this. Until he chimes in, I'm going to say it's not case sensitive.
Not-case-sensitive sounds right to me. I mean, if we're allowed to mess with the spacing (and we definitely are), then surely case isn't sacred either.
Then bride it is!
Should be an easy one ...
Quote from: nulipp on Feb 12, 2018, 03:16 PMThen bride it is!
Should be an easy one ...
And it is:
Bless this
brideTotally insane
Slipping down the drain
And bless this day in
our heartsAs it starts
To rain
As our journey starts,
Behold! Our hearts
Are high!
Beyond the hills of tomorrow
Are skies more beautiful still!
Behold! Begin!
There are worlds to win!
May we come to trust
The dreams we must
Fulfill!
This has been sitting a long time. I know of a use of "trust," but not "to trust." Am I missing something obvious??
Then again, he is my father
I ought to trust -
Impossible!
Then again, with love at my age
Sometime it's just -
Impossible!
Good, you got it! ;D
Easy one to get it moving again:
"With love" seventy ways,
"To Bobby with love"
From all those good and crazy people, your friends!
Those good and crazy people, your married friends!
And that's what it's all about, isn't it?
Funny I'm a stranger myself here
Small world isn't it?
Funny, you're a man who goes travelling'
Rather than settling' down
You see, sir, a man infatuate with love:
Her ardent and eager slave!
So fetch the pomade and pumice stone
And lend me a more seductive tone --
A sprinkling, perhaps, of French cologne --
But first, sir, I think... a shave!
Determined to find something not from Sweeney, so...
Saw Bill McKinley there
In the sun.
Heard Bill McKinley say,
"Folks, have fun!
Some men have everything
And some have none,
But that's just fine...
I swear I used this lyric before, but I can't think of another just fine
I could tell you someone who is finally feeling just fine!
Juicy Lucy...
Dressy Jessie... [etc.]
Tell 'em that they out to get together quick
Cause getting it together is the whole trick!
And with this post I become a Stellar Member! Woo-hoo!
Congratulations on becoming a Stellar Member, Kathy! (That might be one of the new categories I added, but now I can't recall.)
If you're quick
For a kick
You could pick
Up a christening
(This should be easy.)
You could drive a person crazy,
You could drive a person mad.
First you make a person hazy...
First you think.
Then you comment...
[judicious murmuring]
Then you think...
Then you discuss:
[animated conversation]
Then you read.
Then you make a quip--
"All great truths begin as blasphemies!"
That's how you dance "The Shaw"!
Bump.
I was beginning to fear that the only other instance of "you dance" had scared everyone off because it's spoken in rhythm rather than sung (though I'm about 99% sure it's notated rhythmically in the score, which makes it legit for purposes of this game).
But just now I found another (and only slightly obscure) appearance of the phrase, which is legitimately sung.
Hints:
Both instances -- the better-known, rhythmically-spoken one; and the less-known, properly-sung one -- are from duets.
And in both cases, the phrase is immediately followed by a question mark.
Oh dear, I was barking up the wrong hazel tree with this for ages. Thanks for the hint Dave.
BW - Did you dance?
Is he charming? They say that he's charming.
C - We did nothing but dance.
Well done, Martin!
(And in case anyone's curious, the legit-sung option that occurred to me the other day was a different Ella, wondering "How do you dance?" in Evening Primrose).
____________________
Yes, please ignore the man-of-war
That's anchored rather near to shore.
It's nothing but a metaphor
That acts as a preventative.
Again I wasn't entirely confident that the one which leapt out at me was notated as such, though it seems to sit comfortably on the downbeat, but anyway...back to Cinderella:
B: No one acts alone.
Careful.
No one is alone.
B&C: People make mistakes.
B: Fathers...
C: Mothers...
B&C: People make mistakes,
Holding to their own,
Thinking they're alone.
Were you thinking of the same one I was (Fredrika: "Mine... acts.")?
I must admit: it didn't even occur to me to be concerned by the fact that "mine acts" is spoken rather than sung. I guess I just assumed that it must be notated in the score, because of the way it completes the rhyme, and the stanza, in such a square and sturdy way. (Indeed, the mild chuckle it elicits from some audiences is probably due not only to the words' slight unexpectedness, but also to the way they nevertheless sit in the rhyme-scheme with such solid, matter-of-fact guilelessness -- Fredrika to a T).
Just as importantly, as you point out, "acts" lands squarely on the first beat of the two-bar vamp leading into the song's next section (Desirée: "Darling, I miss you a lot," etc.) -- so the word is not only locked into the entire preceding stanza (by rhyme and meter) but also into the following one (by providing the rhythmic downbeat that launches it). Sung or not, "mine acts" is woven into the song's fabric with such precision that it almost has to be notated.
Holding
There are ships in the bay
With a letter to convey.
They're on permanent display,
And we must take some position
Or the Southern coalition
Will be soon holding sway, my lord.
And we'll all have to pay, my lord...
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Aug 17, 2018, 07:31 PMWere you thinking of the same one I was (Fredrika: "Mine... acts.")?
I was. It seemed like it had to be valid for the reasons you give, I just chickened out when I remembered the other one :)
Maybe one day I'll sell my car and buy all the scores to be certain...
Here's a further example where one possible instance may be safer than another... :-\
In a world where the kings are employers,
Where the amateur prevails
And delicacy fails
To pay,
In a world where the princes are lawyers,
What can anyone expect
Except to recollect....
Less safe: "Thanks, I don't perform, except at dinner"?
More safe:
Something's better than nothing -- yes,
But nothing's better than more, more, more!
Except all, all, all.
Except... once you have it all,
You may find, all else above,
That, though things are bliss,
There's one thing you miss...
And that's
__________
He may say in the Hat book, but I don't have it handy for a look-up: is he setting us up for "...love"? (rhymes with "all else above" -- I guess "love" would be the ostensibly-expected sweet "moral" ending, unceremoniously rejected in favor of yet-more "mores" Charleston'd for eight more bars in manic defiance of both sentiment and rhyme)?
Wherever it was that I heard that, it has never quite satisfied me. Which is unfortunate, because I love so much else about the song -- particularly the Lewis Carroll-worthy aphorism "more is better than nothing, true, but nothing's better than more," springing, no less, from a stanza that has already managed to make the shotgun wedding of Gershwin and "Material Girl" look like a match made in heaven:
I got rhythm, music too;
Just as much as before.
Got my guy and my sky of blue--
Now, however, I own the view.
More is better than nothing, true...
But, re: the ending: he takes the exact opposite tack in "The Worst Pies In London," giving Mrs. Lovett a completed rhyme which doesn't follow from where the line seems to be heading, but rather, in this case, from her decorous self-censorship:
Is that just revolting--
All greasy and gritty?
It looks like it's moulting,
And tastes like... well, pity
A woman alone...
Never mind that the resulting smooth adherence to the established rhyme-scheme and meter (even if she extends the pause a bit, she literally doesn't miss a beat) flatly contradicts what Mrs. L., if not SJS himself, clearly wants her listener to believe is an ad-lib retreat in the name of good taste.
I've always wanted to know exactly what it is that that pie does "taste like" -- in her unsparingly self-critical opinion -- that can't be broached in polite company. And furthermore, if rhyme suggests an orderly and intelligent mind, as SJS has said, I want this apparently unspeakable analogy to also end in -ity, so that the joke becomes about swapping out the rudely distasteful rhyme we expect (whatever that might be -- "shitty" comes to mind, but only with some effort, and it's a woefully imperfect fit grammatically) in favor of the polite evasion ("well, pity...") which miraculously saves both the rhyme and the audience's innocent ears.
But then, a decade on, he steers Madonna completely off the rhyme-scheme for the sake of a "surprise" ending that, to be honest, never surprised me until years later because the supposedly "expected" one ("love"), if that's what it is, hadn't even occurred to me. (For one thing, the tempo at that point has become so free, not to say sluggish, that I was no longer necessarily keeping "...all else above" in mind as the presumptive source of a final rhyme).
It also might not be helping matters that there are an awful lot of subordinate clauses stacked, not especially gracefully, into that final verse of "More" -- again, in marked contrast to the crisp diction that prevails elsewhere in the lyric.
But that's just me. And I hasten to add that I'm only picking the lyric apart this mercilessly because I adore it so: this song ranks pretty high on my personal list of favorite examples of SJS at his most devastatingly clever.
you miss
I've always assumed Mrs. Lovett was going to say that the pie tasted "shitty" and that the joke is her avoidance of that word, but the "like" has always bothered me. The only thing that fits the meter is "tastes like it's shitty," but absolutely no one ever says that. It's a cheap joke that only works if you don't think about it too much. I suppose even Sondheim nods.
you miss
An example of a completed rhyme which I've always found oddly disturbing is in Opening Doors:
Who wants to live in New York?
I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise.
But ever since I met you, I...
....Listen, boys...
There are of course hundreds of instances of a different character completing a rhyme, but here the fact that Charley is demonstrating a diegetic lyric, for which Joe appears to anticipate the rhyme in the 'mimetic' (I think) sense, seems illogical.
Well, anyway...
Chances that you miss.
Ignore.
Ignorance is bliss...
Quote from: MartinG on Aug 24, 2018, 01:08 AMAn example of a completed rhyme which I've always found oddly disturbing is in Opening Doors:
Who wants to live in New York?
I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise.
But ever since I met you, I...
....Listen, boys...
There are of course hundreds of instances of a different character completing a rhyme, but here the fact that Charley is demonstrating a diegetic lyric, for which Joe appears to anticipate the rhyme in the 'mimetic' (I think) sense, seems illogical.
Yep! :-\
In this case, entirely apart from the rhyme, I'm again tempted to wonder just what the end of Charley's lyric-within-the-lyric would have been. But, to be honest, I've always kinda loved the dopey efficiency with which "But ever since I met you, I..." converts this quirky, unpolished but appealingly unpredictable song into a rote romantic cliché -- even without completing the rhyme (or, indeed, the thought, which hardly needs completing). Ironically, if Joe had had the patience to hear it out, the rest of Charley's lyric would likely have redeemed Frank's insistently-arty "wrong notes" and slightly spastic syncopation with -- surprise! -- a highly commercial, i.e., safely insipid, "June-moon" denouement.
I'm surely not the first to observe that if, per SJS, "Opening Doors" is the only autobiographical song in any of his shows, then "Who Wants To Live In New York?" seems like self-parody -- somehow both affectionate and honed to razor-sharpness -- specifically of his own charming early effort, "What More Do I Need?"
bliss
@AmyG and I have talked more than once about how "Who Wants to Live in New York?" is clearly based on "What More Do I Need?" Sondheim has said that "Opening Doors" is the only autobiographical piece in his entire body of work and it's easy to see how that song fits into his songbook. Musically, the two songs sound quite different, but both fit the general theme of "New York Is for Lovers."
How would the lyric have finished? We should turn that into a contest: Complete the song fragment.
"Who wants to live in New York.
I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise
But ever since I met you
I've..."
The RhymeZone online rhyming dictionary lists these rhymes for "noise":
1 syllable:
bhoys, blois, boies, boy's, boyes, boys, boys', boyz, cloys, crois, croise, croix's, croys, dj noize, hoise, joy's, joys, moise, moyes, noyes, ploys, poise, poize, roy's, roys, toise, toy's, toys, toys', troise, troyes, troys, whois
2 syllables:
alloys, aloise, aloys, annoys, apoise, b-boys, bolshoi's, brunoise, busboys, chinoise, convoys, cowboy's, cowboys, cowboys', deploys, destroys, elois, eloise, employes, employs, enjoys, galois, hanoi's, homeboys, mccoys, outnoise, playboy's, popejoy's, savoys, schoolboys, tolstoy's
It's hard to find anything there that makes sense, much less fits the song. I don't even know what "popejoys" is (and am too lazy to look it up), but "boys," "joys," "poise," "toys," "employs," "enjoys," "employs," "enjoys" and maybe even "cowboys," "destroys" and "Tolstoy's" all sound like that they'd be candidates for the final word of the missing line. However, there are only three syllables left to complete the thought and it's difficult to imagine how any of them could be made to fit without sounding hopelessly forced.
Not to turn this into a game within a game, but can anybody think of something? "I've learned life's joys"? Um, maybe not.
Chances that
you miss.
Ignore.
Ignorance is
bliss...
Quote from: Chris L on Aug 24, 2018, 08:57 PM@AmyG and I have talked more than once about how "Who Wants to Live in New York?" is clearly based on "What More Do I Need?" Sondheim has said that "Opening Doors" is the only autobiographical piece in his entire body of work and it's easy to see how that song fits into his songbook. Musically, the two songs sound quite different, but both fit the general theme of "New York Is for Lovers."
...and the nod to
Manhattan can't be ignored in either song of course. Whether he was also having another mischievous dig at Hart we can only guess.
Quote from: Chris L on Aug 24, 2018, 08:57 PMHow would the lyric have finished? We should turn that into a contest: Complete the song fragment.
"Who wants to live in New York.
I always hated the dirt, the heat, the noise
But ever since I met you
I've..."
As you say
@Chris L , it's impossible not to sound awkwardly contrived (though Charley admits with the 'cork' line that the song's unpolished), but there are a couple of handy get-outs:
a) the line (according to
Hat) ends "I..." instead of "I've...", which opens more lyrical doors.
b) as it's the final stanza, we might assume that Frank actually finished the melody along the lines of
Good Thing Going, into which it eventually morphed, so the rhyme for 'noise' doesn't necessarily have to complete the sentence.
However it's hard to settle on anything less eggy than 'boys' in the context of a romantic young swain, so for example:
Who wants to live in New York?
I always hated the dirt,
The heat, the noise.
But ever since I met you,
I told the boys:
"Forget the grime, the gritty - :(
Forget the crime and vice!"
You make the city
Pretty
Paradise"
Far from satisfactory but a foothold.
Bliss
Twisted minds think alike: as I was posting above, I thought, "there should be a contest to finish that lyric" -- perhaps not even just that line, but continuing all the way through Joe's "...hummable melody," resetting his lyrics with new ones that become
a part of "Who Wants To Live In New York?" instead of commenting on it.
But I love your version,
@MartinG ! And continuing along the lines of "Good Thing Going" makes even better sense -- bravo!
And then of course, as a fully-fleshed-out song, one could always break "Who Wants...?" apart again and mash it up with "What More Do I Need?" for cabaret purposes (though they're actually so similar in thrust that one might want to stir in a third song for contrast -- "Another Hundred People" or "Epiphany"[!] or something).
Quote from: Chris L on Aug 24, 2018, 08:57 PMMusically, the two songs sound quite different, but both fit the general theme of "New York Is for Lovers."
Well, and the tonally specific sub-theme of "...They're The Only Ones Who Can Stand This Place": both songs arrive at "New York Is For Lovers" only by way of enumerating, for most of their respective lengths, all the nuisances, cacophonies and chaos of city living for those who
lack love's rose-colored glasses. Their "happy endings" don't exactly arrive as a radical twist -- they're hinted at in "WMDIN"'s first line ("Once I hated this city," implying a change of heart at some point since) and "WWTLINY"'s verse structure ("Who wants...? / Suddenly, I do!"). But unlike even "Manhattan," which explicitly announces the (literal) honeymoon up-front, and keeps that sentiment running steadily in tandem with description of the city's humbler "joys," both of Sondheim's songs are structured around delaying or minimizing the acknowledgement of just what has inspired this newfound love for the city, meantime teasing the listener with contrasts between the ugliness of the landscape and the singer's downright puzzling enthusiasm for it -- variations on "I adore this shithole" requiring explanation which, when it arrives, is succinct and plain-spoken compared to the florid cooing with which Hart laces "Manhattan" throughout.
It might also be worth noting that, where Hart's lyric is sung from a confidently plural viewpoint -- "
We'll have Manhattan" -- SJS's contributions to the genre are both decidedly personal: "love" has wrought this transformation, generally speaking, yes; but more specifically, "you" have inspired it in "me," and the singer isn't yet making any long-term plans -- or even necessarily assuming that his/her lover shares this delightful new perspective. (By contrast, "Manhattan," aside from its uptown/downtown humor, seems at times almost like an urbane forerunner of Rodgers and
Hammerstein's "When The Children Are Asleep"). It's harder to picture either of the Sondheim songs ever being performed as a duet, with the happy couple alternating verses, whereas their Rodgers and Hart prototype lends itself naturally (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIgQdOoEV0) to this treatment. One gets the sense that, for the singers of "WMDIN" and "WWTLINY," having found love is cause for astonishment verging on incredulity, whereas for those of "Manhattan" and "WTCAA" it's simply the cozily inevitable natural order of things.
Also, I wouldn't say the two Sondheim songs sound
so different from one another; obviously their melodies aren't the same, but they both have vaguely restless chord structures and share a similar tempo. On both of these counts, "Who Wants...?" may be a wee bit jazzier and more angular than "What More...?"; but it was their "same-general-world" musical styles -- just as much as the fact that their lyrics tell essentially the same story by strikingly-similar means -- that made me wonder, above, whether combining the two songs into a concert or cabaret medley mightn't be almost
too spot-on.
Chances that you miss,
Ignore.
Ignorance is
bliss...
One more souvenir of bliss--
Knowing, though, that this
One must be the last!
Oh well, I've scoured both books determined to find a less obvious example but I'm beaten :):
It's the last midnight,
It's the boom-
Splat!
Nothing but a vast midnight.
Everybody smashed flat!
Nothing we can do.
Not exactly true:
We can always give her the boy...
No?
No, of course what really matters
Is the blame...
I mean, I don't understand completely...
(I'm not surprised.)
But he combines all these different trends.
(I'm not surprised.)
You can't divide art today into categories, neatly--
(Oh?)
What matters is the means, not the ends.
(I'm not surprised.)
That is the state of the art, my dear,
That is the state of the art.
(Such was my dazzlement at SITPWG's embarrassment of riches, when I first encountered it in my teens, that it took me several hearings to register the fact that the art-world chatter of "Putting It Together" is a restatement of the Celestes' prurient "Gossip" a century before -- this despite the identical pose of worldly knowingness ["I'm not surprised"] adopted, equally unconvincingly, by both Celeste #2 and Harriet's boy-toy Billy. Plus ça change... Seemingly one of SJS's more offhanded nuggets of brilliance, that echo between the two acts/centuries still brings a sort of breath-catch followed by an astonished chuckle: like the doubling of George's deconstruction of Spot ["If the head were smaller..."] and Dot's cool self-appraisal ["If my legs were longer..."] -- with their parallel ways of seeing, of course she instinctively appreciates his work as no one else does -- it's so unexpected and yet so unmistakably right.)
Please hello, no seaports on the West.
United States too near to Czar,
Is tempting fates, is go too far
(Don't touch the coat!)
...Keeping house, but clutching a copy of Life,
Just to keep in touch.
The ones who follow the rules
And meet themselves at the schools,
Too busy to know that they're fools --
Aren't they a gem?
A confession: while "clutching a copy of Life, just to keep in touch" has to be one of Sondheim's more coruscating "zingers" (even in a song packed with them), for years I somehow missed the Life line's obvious double edge. "A copy of Life [magazine]" seemed clear enough in its laser-sharp contempt for a certain slice of the American middle class c.1970. Oddly, it was the simpler, more abstract meaning that managed to escape me until someone pointed it out: "clutching a copy of life," a haunting, almost Stepford-ish image of suburbanites clinging to their simulacra of living -- their lifestyle, to use a period buzzword that would surely make Joanne snort in derision -- even as they slowly suffocate.
Not coincidentally, the person who finally pointed this out to me was herself both an occasional poet and a former suburban homemaker of roughly this period (a decade younger than Stritch, or exactly Bobby's age, 35, in 1970), who seemed to regard this song with a mixture of writerly awe and real dread at the savage precision with which Joanne/SJS pretty well eviscerates her entire midcentury cohort.
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on Feb 01, 2019, 05:17 PM"clutching a copy of life" -- a haunting, almost Stepford-ish image of suburbanites clinging to their simulacra of living even as they slowly suffocate.
It's certainly up there with some of the most jaw-dropping moments of crystalline lyrical perfection in his canon. We're always warned to resist the temptation to hunt for autobiographical clues, but it does make you wonder to what extent his observation of Foxy's social ambitions at close range may have influenced the shocking depth of acrimony in the song.Some men have tender souls
And worthy goals
They keep fulfilling.
Some men ignore the rules,
Are rogues and
fools,
And thrilling.
Honey,
If he had the
slightest sense of shame,
It would be a shame.
Sorry, off-topic and probably already discussed somewhere else long since, but speaking of "The Ladies Who Lunch": does anyone know whether SJS ever rewrote the "copy of
Life" line for "updated" productions of
Company (notably the one currently running in the West End)? Tragically, for the line's double-effectiveness,
Life magazine,
Quote from: Wikipediapublished weekly until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000
...has for quite some time now been indisputably a period artifact: wholly irrelevant, if not literally meaningless, to modern 'burb-dwellers (or pretty much anyone else) in their daily lives. (The magazine's "golden age," hence its real currency re: housewives "clutching a copy, just to keep in touch," would've ended pretty conclusively just two years after
Company was written). I suppose you could argue that Joanne's cultural frame of reference dates from her younger years, but by now even that doesn't necessarily make
Life magazine a very plausible touchstone: at 69, LuPone may be the last major Joanne for whom the lyric could make even a shadow of sense in a contemporary setting.
But I'm doubtful whether even Steve Himself could ever come up with a rewrite in the same breathtaking league as the original line. (As brilliant as the references to Op Art and the wearing of hats, etc., are in their original context, they seem relatively easily-rewritable in comparison). And of course, the "copy of life" sense -- lowercase, life itself, not the magazine -- will never become dated. Still, it seems a fearful shame to lose the doubleness of the line's original meaning. A small argument, perhaps, for keeping
Company in its original 1970 setting. (And yet, I have to admit, notwithstanding that or any of the myriad other arguments for keeping the show a period piece, the current gender-switched London update intrigues me more than almost any other Sondheim-related news in years).
There's a discussion bubbling on the FB FTC in which I've tagged you Dave. Some interesting comments.
You move just a finger,
Say the slightest word,
Something's bound to linger,
Be heard.
J: Oh, dear! Was that a noise?
A: A plan!
J: I think I heard a noise!
A: A plan!
J: It couldn't be!
He's in court,
He's in court today,
Still that was a noise...
Wasn't that a noise?
You must have heard that?
Pardon me, is everybody here? Because if everybody's
Here, I want to thank you all for coming to the wedding. I'd
Appreciate your going even more -- I mean, you must have lots of
Better things to do -- and not a word of it to Paul! Remember
Paul? You know, the man I'm gonna marry (but I'm not, because I
Wouldn't ruin anyone as wonderful as he is!)? So I
Thank you all for the gifts and the flowers!
Thank you all, now it's back to the showers!
And don't tell Paul, but I'm not getting married
Today!
It occurred to me at some point that the absolute-fastest possible tempo is, at least in one way, a singer's best hope for making it through this song: obviously enunciation becomes a challenge -- and woe betide the performer who stumbles mid-lyric, even for a fraction of a second (though SJS does claim that the flow of consonant and vowel sounds is arranged to roll off the tongue with relative ease) -- but the faster you spit these words out, the sooner you can finally breathe.
In your quoted stanza the earliest chance to breathe is presumably after flowers, which seems to be about three times longer than the equivalent point in Modern Major General. Sadistic! :))
Today
The minutes seem like hours,
The hours go so slowly...
Voices glide by, let them pass
Let them float in their words
'Til they slowly drown
Don't they know, don't they, what they want?
Silly, silly people:
Patient and polite
C: ...Spend a weekend in the country.
A: We'll accept it!
C: I'd a feeling you would.
Both: A weekend in the country -
A: Yes, it's only polite that we should.
C: Good.
C-M: Well?
C: I've an intriguing little social item -
C-M: Well?
C: Out of the Armfeldt family manse.
Just to be an annoying pedant: I believe Carl-Magnus's second question, after "Well?", is "What?"
(So that his sequence, alternating with Charlotte's lines, goes: "Well?", followed by "What?", and finally "Well, what?")
Also, I think her intriguing little social item is out at the Armfeldt family manse (where it will occur), not out of it (whence she heard about it, which would only be indirectly true anyway, since she heard the news from Anne, not from anyone directly connected with the Armfeldts).
[/pedantry]
What's as intriguing--
(Or half so fatiguing--)
As what's out of reach?
Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate,
Passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome,
And heir to a throne?
Quote from: scenicdesign71 on May 01, 2019, 11:48 AMJust to be an annoying pedant: I believe Carl-Magnus's second question, after "Well?", is "What?"
(So that his sequence, alternating with Charlotte's lines, goes: "Well?", followed by "What?", and finally "Well, what?")
Also, I think her intriguing little social item is out at the Armfeldt family manse (where it will occur), not out of it (whence she heard about it, which would only be indirectly true anyway, since she heard the news from Anne, not from anyone directly connected with the Armfeldts).
[/pedantry]
Greatly obliged to my learned friend. If only I'd taken the trouble to walk the approx. 9 paces to my copy of
Hat instead of winging it with increasingly iffy memory... Even more mortifying that it's one of my favourite songs! ???
F: And some day elections will be unknown -
B: 'Cause each of our kids will ascend the
throne -
C: And their kids have more kids with kids of their own -
F: It's sort of a family
knack.
While he "creates,"
We scrape their plates
And dust their knick-knacks, hundreds to the shelf.
Work is what you do for others, liebchen;
Art is what you do for yourself.
I know songs in musicals are supposed to be structured like one-act plays. But could anyone but the Master cram an entire parable about class and creativity into a single, gleamingly-perfect stanza? While typing the above quote, it occurred to me that it tells you everything you need to know about the singer (a domestic servant, apparently German-speaking), the person to whom they're singing (family member, significant other -- someone close enough to be addressed as liebchen, at any rate; and possibly co-worker, if "we" is taken to include the person being addressed), their situation (working for an artist, or at least holding him- or herself in sharp contrast to one, as regards the concept of "work"), and their attitude toward that situation (resentful but cynically resigned), which further suggests quite a bit about the singer's worldview more generally (class-conscious, perhaps proto-Marxist?). It does all this in just thirty words*, the latter fifteen honed to a sharp, epigrammatic clarity which, in turn, tells us even more (the singer has a way with words, and has devoted enough thought to their plight to distill it into a sort of sardonic credo).
And while wringing at least a hundred of my own words (I won't even do an actual word-count of the above paragraph: too many, is the point) out of SJS's thirty makes it all sound terribly labored, that's the miracle: au contraire, the lyric is a model of conversational simplicity, almost doggerel, transmitting all of that information to the listener effortlessly. And the subtext would come through even to someone who'd never heard of SITPWG, if you played them that verse alone.
____________________
*Which might not be so impressive, if the singer/situation/attitude etc. in question were of a standard, shorthand configuration like "spurned lover," say, or "starry-eyed naïf longing for adventure". Lacking such well-worn generic subject matter, these thirty words have a whole lot more ground to cover.
You're all liars and theives,
Like his father,
Like his son will be, too -
Oh, why bother?
You'll just do what you do.
It's the last midnight,
So, goodbye all.
Coming at you fast, midnight -
Soon you'll see the sky fall.
Here, you want a bean?
Have another bean.
Beans were made for making you rich!
Plant them and they soar -
Here, you want some more?
Would you like some more grass?
Mmmmm...
Ruff! Ruff!
Thanks, the week has been
Rough!
When you're stuck for life on a garbage scow
Only forty feet long from stern to prow
And a crackpot in the bow... wow... RUFF!
...I telephoned my analyst about it and he said to see him Monday,
But by Monday I'll be floating in the Hudson with the other garbage.
I'm not well, so I'm not getting married!
You've been swell, but I'm not getting married.
Clear the hall, 'cause I'm not getting married.
Thank you all, but I'm not getting married--
And don't tell Paul, but I'm not getting married
Today!
Oh, Momma, get married today!
If Momma was married,
There wouldn't be any more
"Let me entertain you,
Let me make you smile,
I will do some kicks--"
Tob: If you've got a kick, sir -
Mob: What about the money?
You could leave me the stocks, for sentiment's sake.
And ninety percent of the money you make.
And the rugs. And the cooks.
Darling, you keep the drugs; angel, you keep the books.
Honey, I'll take the grand; sugar, you keep the spinet
And all of our friends, and -- just wait a goddamn minute!
M: Gold!
Sitting there and glistening!
Gold just
Lying around!
W: Gold dust
Glittering and littering the goddamn ground!
...
M: Oh, go on, Addie,
The two of you together--!
What fun!
(Anticipating a quibble, this is the lyrical allocation from the recording, if not the version printed in Look...Hat. However the equivalent phrase from the book can also be found in the same place I'm thinking of ;) )
^ Is this a Woodsy issue of switching between verses, or perhaps versions, from "It Takes Two [of you]" to "...two of us" (or vice versa; I'm too lazy to look it up)?
Or was the anticipated quibble to do with Bounce/Road Show?
I'm confused, so I'ma just sidestep the whole issue and go with Kukla, Fran and Ollie, for whom SJS wrote a whole song entitled "The Two of You," the phrase appearing in practically every other line:
I want no one else in lieu of you:
I prefer the two of you.
And I'd like to take the two of you
To tea!
Come spend a day!
Oh, what lovely sights we'll see --
But nothing's sweeter than the view of you.
So stay, the two of you,
With me.
aargh—this took me long enough to figure out.
[quote from memory]
Got my guy and my sky of blue,
Now, however, I own the view,
More is better than nothing, true,
But nothing's better than more
For an extra challenge, there should be a game where you have to try to find instances in which SJS has used not just the same word but the same rhymed pair of words in different contexts.
Maybe a bit more challenging in his case than it would be with that of the average lyricist, given SJS's aversion to repeating himself. (For the sake of practicality -- meaning, in order to keep such a game going for any significant length, and without every second or third turn being a "bunny" -- it might have to become an all-lyricists game rather than Sondheim alone).
Still, even just within his oeuvre, there have been a few duplicated rhymes over the years -- though almost always simple, innocuous ones like "view/true":
We sit inside the screens
And contemplate the view
That's painted on the screens:
More beautiful than true.
(...)
And no one presses in
And no one glances out
And kings are burning somewhere...
Not here.
"You yearn for the women,
Long for the money,
Envy the famous
Benjamin Stones.
You take your road,
The decades fly,"
Ha! My phone didn't go to the last page! Let me try again
Not quite right but at least in the ballpark this time-
The girls of summer get burned
They start the summer unconcerned
They get undone by a touch of sun in June
Plus a touch of the moon
Love that song!
Maybe he thinks that I'll come through for him
Maybe the moon is cheese!
And yet maybe
Maybe
Something real is happening here
C:-) C:-) Game Police stepping in here...
Unfortunately, in this game you can't respond to burning with burned. If Scenic had left burning as the target word, then burned would be fine, but in this game you need to find the entire target word, not variations of it, and not parts of it.
So, we're back to burning, and no, I don't know where to find it, although it will probably come to me as I'm drifting off to sleep, as a couple others have...
burning
To be fair, this isn't an easy one: I had to Google to be sure there was another instance of burning, and finally found one -- five or six pages into the search results. There may be more, or maybe not: it's conceivable the word makes only two appearances in the entire oeuvre.
I take "kings are burning" as poetic metaphor, not necessarily meaning that there are monarchs out there who are literally dying in flames -- though it's such an oddly distinctive and compelling image (well worth the several repetitions SJS gives it throughout "Advantages") that I've never been 100% sure.
The other instance (perhaps the only other instance, though again, I wouldn't swear to it) is unambiguously figure-of-speechy, describing a specific character but not referring to actual physical combustion. The song in which it occurs is a ballad.
Of course—
Sweeney was sharp, Sweeney was burning,
Sweeney began the engines turning.
[a lot of overlapping lines here, but this is what the script says:]
Sweeney's problems went up in smoke
All resolved and completely solved
With a single stroke
By Sweeney!
It's the greatest — !
It's the single — !
It's the only — !
It's the perfect — !
It's the —
Hi!
Dreadful!
Fabulous!
Well, Beadle calls on her, all polite,
Poor thing, poor thing.
The Judge, he tells her, is all contrite,
He blames himself for her dreadful plight,
She must come straight to his house tonight!
Poor thing, poor thing.
Of course, when she goes there,
Poor thing, poor thing,
They're havin' this ball all in masks.
| The king is giving a Festival! | | |
| More than life, | |
| | I wish... |
| I wish to go to the Festival... | | |
| More than riches, | |
| ...and the Ball, | | |
| | I wish my |
| | Cow would give us some milk. |
| More than anything! | More than anything, | |
| I wish we had a child! | |
| | Please, pal... |
| I want a child... | |
| | Squeeze, pal... |
And all you have to do is
Squeeze your little finger,
Ease your little finger back,
You can change the world
Whatever else is true, you
Trust your little finger,
Just a single little finger can
Change the world
Yes, you told me, I know:
You'll be ready to go
When you pound the floor--
Will you trust me??
Will you trust me??
I'll be waiting below
For the whistle to blow...
You got talent to blow
And you're making a name
And that song you wrote's a national treasure.
The British feel these latest dealings verge on immorality
The element of precedent imperils our neutrality
We're rather vexed, your giving extraterritoriality
We must insist you offer this to every nationality!
Dutch Admiral:
We want the same
What the Russkies claim!
Why you let them came?
Dirty rotten shame!
I thought I knew what love was!
I thought it was no more than a name for yearning.
I thought it was what kindness became. / I'm learning...
I thought where there was love, there was shame...
...That with you, / But with you, there's just happiness.
Endless happiness...
DUH. This just came to me after a couple days of milling it over.
Oh, moon, grow bright
And make this endless day endless night...
I'm counting on you to be there
Tonight...
When Diesel wins it fair and square
Tonight...
...Still, I'll stick it till
I'm on a bill all over Times Square!
Someday, maybe,
If I stick it long enough,
I may get to strut my stuff
Working for a nice man
Like a Ziegfeld or a Weissman
In a great big
Broadway show!
We've got a surefire genuine
Walk-away blockbuster
Lines down to Broadway
Boffola sensational
Box office lalapalooza gargantuan—!
[spelling and punctuation quoted directly from Finishing the Hat]
I knew there had to be something from Merrily, but I couldn't remember it to save my life! (And it's a tricky thing to Google, since the search results understandably all tend to associate "Sondheim," "lyric" and/or "Merrily" with Broadway regardless, and in every possible context other than the word "Broadway" actually appearing in a Sondheim lyric from Merrily).
So my safety-option was the only other instance I could think of, namely Dainty June and her Farmboys ("Broadway! Broadway! How great you are!").
Glad you found the Merrily one -- it was like a gnat buzzing around in the back of my mind!
H: This girl from the office-
W: My niece from Ohio-
It'll just be the four of us-
You'll looooooooooooooooooove her!
L: Have I got a girl for you? Wait till you meet her!
(The one I have in mind hardly leaves many options to follow, sorry!)
| Ta-ta, goodbye, you'll find us at Tony's-- | |
| Wait till you hear the band! |
| You told us Tony's, that we'd go to Tony's. | I told you Tony's? |
| Then Ben mentioned Tony's. Well, someone said Tony's! | I never said Tony's! When's Ben mentioned Tony's? |
| There's dancing at Tony's -- all right, then, | It's ritzy at Tony's -- all right, then, |
| We'll go... | We'll go... |
| |
As much fun as it always is to quote that daredevil verse of "Uptown/Downtown" (preferably in its entirety), leaving "ritz" would've seemed too easy. But in lieu of that gift, here are some fun facts about the word:"Ritzy" is derived, of course, from the eponymous luxury hotspots created by hotelier César Ritz (1850-1918). But Ritz himself apparently didn't quite live to see his name become an adjective: according to Merriam-Webster, "ritzy" entered the language in 1920 -- right around the peak of the Follies years (Ziegfeld or Weissman), and roughly when Sondheim and Goldman's central Four would have been born. Irving Berlin wrote "Puttin' On The Ritz" in 1927, and the film of the same name -- which did not
feature Fred Astaire -- was released in 1930, the first of many films to use the song. Nabisco introduced Ritz crackers in 1934, and Astaire's iconic performance of the Berlin song appeared in Blue Skies
(1940), suggesting that the name's use as a generic synonym for luxurious elegance remained not only current (as it more or less remains today) but still reasonably hip by 1941 when Ben and Buddy characterize Tony's as "ritzy," calculating that the damage to their wallets will be compensated by their improved chances with "the girls": "all right, then...".
Carl-Magnus:
Charlotte!
Charlotte:
All right, then.
Both:
We're off on our way,
What a beautiful day for...
ALL:
A weekend in the country,
How amusing,
How delightfully droll,
A weekend in the country
While we're losing our control.
A weekend in the country,
How enchanting
On the manicured lawns.
A weekend in the country,
With the panting and the yawns.
With the crickets and the pheasants
And the orchards and the hay,
With the servants and the peasants,
We'll be laying our plans
While we're playing croquet
Ba-do-be-da-ba-do-be-do--
...Peasants!
(Blechh!)
A lady has responsibilities,
Responsibilities
--To try to be popular
With the populace!
She's unpopular with the populace.
Unpopular with the populace,
Unpopular with the populace...
Everyone here hates me at length.
Probably lynch me, if they had the strength.
But me and my town,
Me and me town...
We just want to be loved!
We just want to be loved,
We just want to be loved--
Just loved!
Fosca:
I'm someone to be loved.
Giorgio:
I'm someone to be loved.
Fosca:
And that I learned from you.
Company:
I don't know how I let you
So far inside my mind,
But there you are, and there you will stay.
How could I ever wish it away?
I see now I was blind.
What's the good of being good
If everyone is blind,
And you're always left behind?
Never mind, Cinderella,
Kind Cinderella,
Nice good nice
Kind good nice--
I'll confess I looked this one up, out of sheer laziness. But I'm glad I did, because I'd never really paid close attention to this passage before, and it just struck me for the very first time that not only does it prefigure later struggles pitting the "good" against the merely "nice" (Little Red: they're crucially "different"; the Witch: they're finally irrelevant -- "right" trumps both), but it also carries a delightfully nasty premonition of the wicked Steps' later blinding by the same birds who, in this early moment, are about to help Cindy attain her first (initially unpromising) victory against their petty abuse. (Or worse-than-petty abuse, judging by the viciously loud smack that cuts off the passage quoted above, on the OBCR at least). "We were blind," the Stepmother and her daughters admit ruefully during "Ever After," calling back to this early plaint from Cinderella; but "then we went into the woods to get our wish, and now we're really blind."
It's that kind of a neighborhood, [sic]
That kind of a neighborhood.
Fair Brooklyn,
Pride of the port of New York!
(Delinquents would have been much too easy.)
And the years filled with joy,
And my heart filled with pride
Just to know Ariadne was there at my side.
Then she died...
Being mortal, she died.
And you know that you're immortal--
And you'll always be remembered--
Even if they never see you--
And you're listening to drivel--
And you're part of your companion--
And your glasses have been stolen--
And you're bored beyond endurance--
[It really is hot up here.] >:D
I know, honey, you don't agree,
But this is our family tree...
Just wait 'til we're there and you'll see.
Listen to me,
Mama was smart.
Listen to Mama:
Children and art,
Children and art...
Do your best
(Meaning do your worst),
Let me rest,
And remember, Schubchen,
Women and children / first!
I have gone to Moscow. It's very gay -
Well, anyway,
On the first of May.
I have seen Rangoon and Soho,
And I like them more than so-so.
But when there's a moon,
Goodbye, Rangoon -
Hello, Montmartre, hello!
Peking has rickshaws, New Orleans jazz.
But ah! Paree!
Beirut has sunshine - that's all it has,
But ah! Paree!
Constantinople has Turkish baths
And Athens that lovely debris.
Whence comes this melody, constantly flowing?
Is it rejoicing, or merely hullo-ing?
Are you discussing, or fussing,
Or simply dreaming?
Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?
I found it in a stage direction in Follies. Does that count? :))
Just posting this to let everyone know I haven't forgotten this game. Now I'm off to scrutinize the Hat books.
City on fire!
Hunchbacks kissing!
Stirring in the graves
And the screaming of giant winds!
Watch out! Look!
Crawling on the chimneys,
Great black crows screeching at the
City on fire!
City on fire!
City on fire!
[I was thinking of leaving "crow," which would lead us back to where we came from, into a nice little circle.]
Rain
Gathering,
Winding into streams
Like the roads to Boston.
Your turn.
Faced with an iffy "your turn" (to wit: the spoken scuffle between Czolgosz and Hinckley near the beginning of Assassins: "You, wait your turn! / It is my turn!", probably notated rhythmically in the score, but I don't own a copy to check) -- I instead decided to go with Boston, though I can only find one other instance: a bit of SJS arcana from a short-lived show to which he contributed only a couple of songs which are credited as collaborative efforts, making precise attribution of the "Boston" line difficult).
Even so, the song in question still gets performed often enough in Sondheim-specific contexts (concerts and cabarets, etc.) that I felt it would probably be legit to use in this game, if it really does turn out to be the only other use of the word in SJS's oeuvre.
But it's possible there are others; it's one of those things that's hard to Google, since you end up with pages of search results related to, e.g., local Boston productions of Sondheim shows.
I think I found it - in "Don't Laugh (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDn7TLZc-fI)" from Hot Spot :)
Show me the latest dance step,
I'll show you the latest fall.
Show me the train to Boston,
I'll show you St. Paul.
Show me a hundred lighters,
I'll show you the one that won't.
Show me a priceless vase -
No, don't!
Made me smile how the intro is faintly reminiscent of the one for "Love, I Hear". ;)
Just when I stopped
Opening doors
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.
Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear,
I thought that you'd want what I want
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
I hear drums in the air.
I see clowns in the square.
I see marchers marching,
Tossing hats at the sky!
Did you hear? Did you see?
Was a parade in town?
Were there drums — without me?
Was a parade in town?
'Cause I'm dressed at last,
At my best, and my banners are high!
Tell me, while I was getting ready,
Did a parade go by?
Did it go by so quickly?
Really, it seems a crime.
But thank you so much
For something between
Ridiculous and sublime.
This is ridiculous!
What am I doing here?
I'm in the wrong story...
[GEORGE]
I want to make things that count
Things that will be new...
[DOT]
I did what I had to do...
[GEORGE]
What am I to do?
[DOT]
Move on...
Stop worrying where you're going
Move on
If you can know where you're going
You've gone
Just keep moving on
You're gonna love tomorrow.
Mm-hm.
You're gonna be with me.
Mm-hm.
You're gonna love tomorrow,
I'm giving you my personal
guarantee.
Bring me these before the chime
Of midnight in three days' time,
And you shall have, I guarantee,
A child as perfect as child can be.
Go to the wood!
I never noticed the "chime/time" rhyme until just now -- it's one of several instances in the so-called "Witch's Rap" where a shift into declamatory "speech" tends to obscure the fact that the lines being spoken are still very much tied metrically into the staccato, quasi-hip-hop rhyme scheme of the lyric. The other instances include "I should-have-laid-a spell on him right there: / Could've turned-him-into-stone, or-a dog or-a chair" and "I laid-a-little-spell-on-them -- you too, son: / That your fam'ly-tree-would-always-be-a barren one." Even if the rhyme itself doesn't slip by unnoticed, the periodic shift into a slower, freer conversational tempo has always seemed to me to prevent this song from taking off: once her garden's been inventoried (to reliably amusing effect), I've yet to see a Witch who succeeded in mining real fireworks from this lengthy exposition-delivery. Perhaps the information itself was regarded, understandably, as too crucial to risk burying under rhythmic speed or complexity.
But in the above example ("Bring me these..."), the rhyme and rhythm get blurred not by a shift in tempo per se, but by the scansion itself: the second line seems to want an extra syllable -- as it might be, "Of midnight in just three days' time" -- without which the meter feels off (or would, if the line were delivered in a way that still felt governed by meter). We're also not prepared for these two couplets to rhyme, since the preceding four lines -- the list of objects to be brought -- are completely unrhymed. You'd think the list itself might be a perfect place for rhyme-as-mnemonic aid, but again, I guess an argument could be made that you don't want to distract the listener from this crucial setup of the evening's entire plot with easy-to-tune-out-from, unrelieved singsong delivery.
Still, I've always found the Witch's Rap just a teensy bit wishy-washy both as genre pastiche and as starter-gun for the story. I don't know much about rap, but it seems to me that clarifying points by slowing down and simplifying, as per SJS's own credo, might represent a basic misapprehension of the genre he's half-heartedly adopting here: I may be wrong, but it seems to me that in hip-hop, key points are emphasized by, if anything, speeding up and hammering at them repeatedly from as many different angles as possible. (The Baker's sterility, for instance, could've occasioned a machine-gun spray of verbal shade from the Witch, rather than an abrupt, weirdly lengthy pause to cackle and randomly levitate). I'd love to hear Lin-Manuel take a serious crack at revising this lyric, just to see what he'd come up with.
Go to the
Here's a lyric I didn't even know existed until I went searching.
Bobby, there's a concert on Tuesday.
Hank and Mary get into town tomorrow.
How about some Scrabble on Sunday?
Why don't we all go to the beach?
Bob, we're having people in Saturday night.
Next weekend?
Bobby...
Bobby...
Bobby, baby...
Whatcha doing Thursday?
Bobby...
Angel...
Bobby bubi...
Time we got together, is Wednesday all right?
Darling, you keep the drugs.
Angel, you keep the books,
Honey, I'll take the grand,
Sugar you keep the spinet...
(There's only one instance I've identified and it's from a revised lyric omitted from FTH...)
Quote from: MartinG on Sep 07, 2019, 02:43 AM(There's only one instance I've identified and it's from a revised lyric omitted from FTH...)
This has been sitting for six months, and nobody has guessed, and I'd really like to get this game going again. I have no idea where it is, but the only lyric I could think of that was omitted from Sondheim's lyric books was the song that Meryl Streep sang in the
Into the Woods movie that was cut. I searched out that scene on the DVD and played it, and "sugar" wasn't there. :( But I feel I did my due diligence in search of the lyric.
Can we possibly have another hint?
According to genius.com (https://genius.com/Stephen-sondheim-company-lyrics), there is a single "sugar" buried in Company's opening number, among the many terms of endearment addressed to Bobby (this one by Susan, apparently -- a quasi-Southernism?) -- but I don't have any reason to suppose that it was a later revision, and it does appear in Finishing The Hat.
Meanwhile, that contrapuntal insanity is such a shitshow to sort out (even FTH throws up its hands, opts for saving a few trees, and just lists whole chunks of it as simply being sung by "Others") that I'm not even gonna try to transcribe its context here,
[etc.] Sugar [etc.]
except to say that it is at some point followed by
...How have you been?
Stop by on your way home! [more
contrapuntal
Bobby, gack
We've been thinking of you! happening
here]
Drop by anytime!
Bobby, there's a concert on Tuesday...
...Which, for extra fun, purely coincidentally circles right back around to the beginning of the last lyric you played (https://sondheimforum.com/index.php?topic=85.msg4975#msg4975), Kathy (and bless you for having the patience to get yours all down word by word).
(But I am still curious as to what Martin's revised-but-omitted-from-FTH "sugar" was. :-\ )
Not as curious as I am! :-[ I've spent the past day racking my brains to recall the obscure nugget I'd evidently unearthed back in September (on my wedding anniversary, I note! :o ), but to no avail. :(
Sincere apologies for sending you on a wild goose chase I can't currently substantiate, Kathy. I'll keep trying to track down whatever I had in mind, but thank goodness Dave came across the other legitimate example (which I'd actually stumbled on too, earlier today when trying to retrace my steps), and things can move on...
"Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain."
"Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?"
"Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain."
And another hundred people just got off of the train.
It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
You must hear a waltz!
Even strangers are dancing now,
An old lady is waltzing in her flat,
Waltzing with her cat.
Quote from: KathyB on Mar 30, 2020, 04:41 AMYou must hear a waltz!
Even strangers are dancing now,
An old lady is waltzing in her flat,
Waltzing with her cat.
At my tiny flat it's just my
catA bed and a
chair
I should have laid a spell on him right there --
Could've turned him into stone, or a dog, or a chair.
But I let him have the rampion; I'd lots to spare.
In return, however, I said, "fair is fair:
You can let me have the baby that your wife will bear!
...And we'll call it square."
The bride is slightly square,
The groom is slightly cynical
A little vino—
They're gonna be all right.
All right, George.
As long as it's your night, George...
You know it's in the room, George:
Another Chromolume, George.
It's time to get to work...
And now to test
This best of barber chairs...
It's time...
It's time...
Psst...
Excuse me?
Psst...
Dear, see to the customers.
Psst...
Yes, what, love?
Quick, now!
Me heart's aflutter.
And the years filled with joy
And my heart filled with pride,
Just to know Ariadne was there at my side.
Then she died.
Being mortal, she died...
She was young, she was shy,
Ariadne...
She was young, as was I,
Surely, she was much too young to die.
So I flung her crown high into the sky,
In a rage,
With a cry:
"Ariadne!... Ariadne!..."
And its jewels broke free
And they never came down,
But they stayed there as stars
In the shape of a crown.
And they're there every night
As a sign of our love,
And it fills me with joy
And it fills me with pain.
Cheer them
In their glory,
Diamonds and pearls,
Dazzling jewels
By the score.
This is what beauty can be,
Beauty celestial, the best, you'll agree:
All for you,
These beautiful girls!
Best thing that ever could have happened...
Right, we'll do a new show--
No, we'll do a whole batch!
When it's over with, I'll cut the connection!
You gotta have endings,
Or there wouldn't be beginnings... right?
When you're flattened this low
And you're starting from scratch,
You can only go in one direction--
The side is retired,
But there still are lots of innings... right!
Now's your inning,
Stand the world on its ear!
Set it spinning,
That'll be just the beginning!
Curtain up!
Light the lights!
You got nothing to hit but the heights!
A spark
To pierce the dark
From Battery Park
To Washington Heights!
Someday maybe
All my dreams will be repaid.
Heck, I'd even play the maid
To be in a show.
I needed you to tell my troubles to,
The heck, babe,
Let's neck, babe,
Hey, Margie, you wanna go dancing,
Or driving, or something
I'm playing this lyric even though both the Follies libretto and Finishing the Hat have the "Broadway Baby" lyric as "Hell, I'd even play the maid" (these being the two sources I would count as "official")--but then Elaine Stritch sings "Heck" in Follies in Concert, it's "Heck" in both the London and Broadway versions of Side By Side by Sondheim, and it's "Heck" in the 2011 revival of Follies. (It's also "Heck" in the one random online lyrics site I checked--ST Lyrics--although Sondheim sings "Hell" on Sondheim Sings, Vol. 1) So, my guess it that it got changed from "Hell" to "Heck" during Side by Side by Sondheim and never got changed back. I did a lot of listening to different versions yesterday, and I admit that I like "Heck" better than "Hell."
Thanks, Kathy! Now that you mention it, I know I've encountered "Hell" before, but apparently rarely enough for it to have slipped my mind completely until reading your post just now. (Follies in Concert was my original exposure to the show, and probably remains my unconscious touchstone). But since you've got me thinking about it, I like "Heck" better too; it sounds more period somehow, and more innocent.
Then again, that may be a misapprehension on my part, unconsciously pasting postwar, Hayes Code notions of both propriety and purity onto a song that ostensibly dates from the Depression years. Surely "Hell" wouldn't have been off-limits in a theatrical genre built largely around the frank glorification of female nudity. And while the singer's starry-eyed persona may strike modern (post-1960s?) audiences as comically quaint, to 1930s eyes Hattie's charm might have stemmed as much from her moxie -- look, she swears! -- as from her supposed naïveté, if not more so: she could easily be played as more Anytime Annie than Peggy Sawyer. (That analogy is imprecise, but Stritch, for one -- simply by being Stritch -- took the song's tone right past "spunky" and into "hard-bitten" even without using the stronger expletive).
Friday nights, with him all in tails,
We'll have dancing.
Meanwhile...
It's a rip in the bustle
And a rustle in the hay
And I'll pitch the quick fantastic...
The collar is damp,
Beginning to pinch,
The bustle's slipping--
I won't budge one inch!
Who was at the zoo, George?
Who was at the zoo?
The monkeys and who, George?
The monkeys and who?
Artists are bizarre, fixed, cold.
That's you, George, you're bizarre, fixed, cold.
In Cairo you find bizarre bazaars.
In London—pip pip!—you sip tea.
But when it comes to love,
None of the above
Compares, compris?
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
That aroma enriching the breeze
Is like nothing compared to its succulent source,
As the gourmets among you will tell you, of course.
Ladies and gentlemen,
You can't imagine the rapture in store—
Just inside of this door!
The child is so sweet,
And the girls are so rapturous.
Isn't it lovely
How artists can capture us?
I'm lovely,
All I am is lovely,
Lovely is the one thing I can do.
Winsome,
What I am is winsome,
Radiant as in some
Dream come true.
Everybody ought to have a maid:
Someone who, in fetching you your slipper, will
Be winsome as a whippoorwill,
And graceful as a grouse!
Of the few SJS productions I've managed to work on, Forum is the only one I've designed twice (a decade apart, in 1997 and 2007). But I've wondered, as time went on, whether some of the show's humor has permanently passed its sell-by date. My first time, as part of a summer-stock residency, I remember the intern company performing "...Maid" at our season-opening "meet the company" Straw Hat Revue a month before the actual Forum production -- and, even back then, with the altogether traditional 1996 revival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9IuUMsMnzk) still running on Broadway, the show's early-1960s gender politics seemed due for tweaking. Our revue's director brought on the female company members midway through the song, dressed as maids or at least carrying suitable props, to observe the libidinal antics of the male singers with eye-rolling disdain, before thrusting their feather-dusters, mops, etc. into the men's hands near the end of the number -- how 'bout you flitter down your own damn hallway, buster? -- turning the tables while, in effect, adding their own triumphant final flourish to the men's tableau of gleefully asinine self-emasculation. If I recall correctly, the ladies may even have "buttoned" the number by giving the guys an aggressive swat on the ass.
Disgraceful! What's become of them?
Some of them
Hardly pay their shoddy way.
What once was a rare champagne
Is now just an amiable hock,
What once was a villa at least
Is "digs."
Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock.
But I'm here.
Top billing Monday, Tuesday you're touring in stock.
But I'm here.
First you're another sloe-eyed vamp.
Then someone's mother; then you're camp.
Then you career from career to career.
I'm almost through my memoirs, and I'm here.
I first heard "I'm Still Here" some 35 years ago, but I think I may have somehow missed the rhyme of another with mother until just this very minute (though one day and Monday had not similarly escaped me). It's one of those instances, freakishly common with SJS, where the language is so coruscatingly brilliant -- this would be astonishing writing even if it didn't rhyme at all -- that to find an extra, perfect but un-showy internalish one tucked in there, modestly overshadowed by the more specific and pointed hock/stock and vamp/camp, not to mention the sheer delirium of career from career to career... it's just unearthly.
Goodbye, despoilers of beauty,
Ruin another career.
When you wake up with one genius less--
If you can find me, I'm here.
And I'm free,
Free as a bird in a tree,
Free as the slippers I wear
I am in a tree. I am ten.
I am in a tree.
(I was younger then.)
In between the eaves I can see...
(Tell me what I see!)
I was only ten.
Come, little birds,
Down from the eaves
And the leaves
Over fields,
Out of castles and ponds...
Ahhhhhhh......
Quick, little birds,
Flick through the ashes,
Pick and peck but swiftly
Sift through the ashes
With finer textures, ash looks fairer,
Which makes it rare, but flaxen's rarer--
(No, no! The flaxen's cheaper!)
--Yes, yes, I know: cheaper, not rarer...
This is one of those rarely-mentioned Sondheim gems that eschews any especially-flashy rhyming to instead dazzle the ear with its sheer fluency. I don't know whether he researched this stuff -- is, or was, "golden saffron" really a thing? is ash-blonde hair truly rarer, and therefore pricier, than "flaxen"? -- but his catechism of colors and textures, rattled off at speed, sounds so consummately knowledgeable that we can't help but feel renewed admiration for Sweeney's (not to mention Sondheim's) mastery of his craft. Something similar happens in Road Show with Addison's flamboyant gift for architecture and decor, unfurled in language that impresses the listener less with showy rhyme than with sheer breadth and precision, and -- again like "Wigmaker Sequence" -- with its just-so scansion and the effortless speed at which it appears to tumble from Addison's brain -- all without sounding stilted or artificial.
Wherever we sleep--
If prices are steep--
We'll always sleep cheaper together.
Whatever the boat I row, you row--
A duo!
Everybody says no, everybody says stop,
Everybody says: mustn't rock the boat!
Mustn't touch a thing!
Everybody says don't, everybody says wait!
Everybody says: can't fight City Hall,
Can't upset the cart.
Can't laugh at the king!
The King is giving a festival.
More than life...
I wish...
I wish to go to the festival--
More than riches...
--And the ball...
I wish my cow would give us some milk.
We all take the bow
(Including the cow),
Though business is lou-
Sy and slow...
Life is slow but it seems exciting
'Cause Buddy's there.
Gourmet cooking and letter writing
And knowing Buddy's there.
Pretty women
At their mirrors,
In their gardens,
Letter writing,
Flower picking,
Weather watching--
How they make a man sing!
Proof of heaven
As you're living:
Pretty women!
Another of those rhymes that's deployed so casually that it's easy to miss on first hearing -- partly, in this case, because it's spread across three stanzas (revenge can't be taken in haste, after all) before being clinched in the third: "glancing/dancing/man sing". Have any of the musicologists managed to link the murderous eroticism of "My Friends" with that of "Pretty Women"? If I really tried, I might be able to dredge up some music theory from my remote past -- I'm too lazy and unconfident to do so right now, but it wouldn't surprise me if the two songs were somehow harmonically related (beyond the brief reappearance of the former in the intro to the latter, that is: "Now then, my friends, / Now to your purpose...", etc.).
Heaven knows I try, sir!
Ick!
But there's no one comes in even to inhale—
Tsk!
Right you are, sir. Would you like a drop of ale?
Mind you, I can't hardly blame them—
These are probably the worst pies in London.
It's the best — !
It's the first — !
It's the finest — !
It's the latest — !
It's the least — !
It's the worst — !
It's the absolutely lowest — !
He'd never...
Therefore they haven't...
Which makes the question
Absolutely--
Could she?
She daren't...
Therefore I mustn't...
What utter rot!
Mutter mutter mutter mutter
"Yes, Jerome" mutter
"No, Jerome" mutter
Mutter mutter mutter (that's his
Lawyer, Jerome) mutter
Mutter mutter mutter mutter
"Do it, Jerome!" -- click! --
Sorry, Charley.
So if you wanna see me faint,
I'll do it happily,
But wouldn't it be funnier
To go and watch a funeral?
So thank you for the
Twenty-seven dinner plates and
Thirty-seven butter knives and
Forty-seven paperweights and
Fifty-seven candleholders...
Not to fetch your pills again
Every day at five?
Not to give those dinners for ten
Elderly men
From the U.N.?
How could I survive??
Who is to say, old friends,
How an old friendship survives?
One day chums
Having a laugh a minute,
One day comes
And they're a part of your lives.
Think how snug it'll be
Underneath our flannel
When it's just you and me
And the English Channel
In our cozy retreat
Kept all neat and tidy
We'll have chums over every Friday
Friday nights, for a bit of fun,
We'll go dancing.
Meanwhile...
First I hear a creak and a thump.
Now I hear a clink.
Then they talk a bit...
Many times they shout when they speak.
Other times they think.
Or they argue it...
You can gripe all you like,
You can sneer, "Where are the heroes?"
You can shout about how
Everything's a lie.
Then that flag goes by...
Not a day goes by
Not a single day
But you're somewhere a part of my life
And it looks like you'll stay
If it's a Saturday night and you are single,
You sit with a paper and fight
The urge to mingle.
I remember leaves:
Green as spearmint. Crisp as paper.
I remember trees:
Bare as coatracks, spread like broken
Umbrellas.
I wear a bowler hat.
They send me wine.
The house is far too grand.
I bought a new umbrella stand.
Today I visited the church beside the shrine.
Here is the church,
Here is the steeple;
Open the doors
And see all the crazy married people...
There are heroes in the world,
Princes and heroes in the world,
And one of them will save us!
Wait and see!
Wait and see!
There won't be trumpets or bolts of fire
To say he's coming,
No Roman candles, no angels' choir,
No sound of distant drumming.
If you wanna make it,
Twinkle while you shake it.
If you wanna grind it,
Wait 'til you've refined it.
If you wanna bump it,
Bump it with a trumpet.
Get yourself a gimmick
And you too can be a star!
A moment of silence for the irreplaceable Faith Dane (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/faith-broadway-bugler-and-9-time-candidate-for-dc-mayor-dies-at-96/2020/04/13/b2725c92-7c3d-11ea-a130-df573469f094_story.html) (1923-2020). (Read the linked obit for the description of her Gypsy audition, stay for the genius wildlife-conservation scheme that understandably captured the heart of her eventual soulmate).
But I had to include the lyrical summations of all three ladies in the quote above, because -- while Mazeppa's inevitably tends to register as the payoff, the topper -- you've gotta admit, these pro tips are all words to live by.
Someone to need you too much,
Someone to know you too well,
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell...
Everybody dumps on Hades -
People yelling, "Go to hell!"
Well,
Let me tell you, life in Hades
Is just swell.
It's got flash! It's got flair!
It's got spectacle to spare!
People come from everywhere,
Like it or not.....
....You're not afraid of time rushing by.
Not afraid of oceans running dry,
All because you're not afraid to die,
Once you're dead.
Streams are flying,
Use the motion.
Next!
Streams are drying,
Mix a potion.
Streams are dying,
Try the ocean--
Brilliant notion!
Next...
(This song is the capstone, lyric-wise, in a show already overflowing with some of SJS's most astonishing poetry. Which is why it's been very disappointing that, in at least the two larger productions I've seen -- the 2004 B'way revival and the Japanese TV recording of the 1976 B'way original -- its lyric has been difficult, at best, to make out. Rather than blame these productions' respective sound designers, I chalk this down to the simple fact of its being sung by a large chorus with a lot of energetic dancing happening at the same time; I seem to recall John Doyle's much smaller 2017 staging sounding beautifully crystalline overall, though I can't remember if that held true for the finale specifically. If not, it's a real problem; there's already a lot to take in at this crucial juncture in the show, but I've yet to be convinced that dance and spectacle, no matter how sharp, subtle or intelligently deployed, can outshine the brilliance of this lyric. They can illustrate or comment on it; they might even significantly heighten the words' effect by emphasis and/or contrast. But if we can't hear those words, clearly, from beginning to end (their effect is cumulative), then the visuals become, at best, a kind of clumsy translation -- or, at worst, a bewildering distraction).
Mrs. Lovett,
What a charming notion--
Eminently practical and yet
Appropriate as always,
Mrs. Lovett,
How I've lived without you all these years
I'll never know!
How delectable!
Also undetectable!
Grandmother first, then Miss Plump...
What a delectable couple!
Utter perfection: one brittle, one supple--
One moment, my dear...!
She was grand, bland,
Brave or brisk or brittle,
Anything required,
Both concerned and
Strictly non-committal -
And a little tired.
She was deftly deferential,
Or so they wrote on her wreath.
No one ever glimpsed her
Potential,
But when stripped -
Down to the essential -
Mind you, this is -
Confidential -
Way down underneath...
One more kiss to melt the heart!
One more glimpse of the past...
One more souvenir of bliss,
Knowing well that this
One must be the last.
Pardon me, ma'am, what's that awful stench?
Are we standing near an open trench?
Must be standing near an open trench.
Buy Pirell's Miracle Elixir:
Anything wot's slick, sir,
Soon sprouts curls.
Try Pirelli's!
When they see how thick, sir,
You can have your pick, sir,
Of the girls!
Then see the pretty girls
Smiling everywhere from the ads
And the TV set...
And why should you sweat?
What do you get?
One day of grateful
For six of regret?
If you stick with this game long enough, everything starts looking familiar, e.g. you start to wonder not only whether the lyric you're leaving has already been used previously, perhaps for the very word you're targeting, and perhaps even in response to the same clue, but whether entire sequences of plays might even have cropped up in the same order before.
Feeling a little of that déja-vu just now, I used the "Search/This topic" box and discovered that, while this is the third instance of "regret" that has popped up on this thread, there have not been any duplications among those -- and there are at least two additional instances that haven't been cited yet. ("Girls," meanwhile, has shown up numerous times, but never before as a target-word, until Kathy left it in "Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" just now).
So my déja-vu was -- as is the way of such things -- entirely false. But in case anyone cares, the "regret"s that have been played previously are from "The Road You Didn't Take" ("One has regrets, / Which one forgets"), "Sorry-Grateful" ("...regretful-happy"), and "Happily Ever After" (above).
Okay, now you know,
Now forget it.
Don't fall apart at the seams.
It's called letting go your illusions,
And don't confuse them with dreams.
Yes sir, quite a blow ?
Don't regret it,
And don't let's go to extremes.
It's called what's your choice?
It's called count to ten.
It's called burn your bridges, start again.
You should burn them every now and then
Or you'll never grow!
(I quoted both stanzas to flag the rhyme with forget, which may be one of the most frequent couplings in the canon - but I'm happy to be corrected. It's certainly used in three instances I can recall. This is another factor which could contribute to the undeniable sense of déjà vu.
I've mentioned before how maybe the most frequent is hours/flowers. I've never yet got round to testing this with a gargantuan spreadsheet, but it's on my bucket list ;D )
After nearly five months, I give up. Any hints?
Everybody's got the right to be... different.
(If you want to be / different...)
Even though at times they go to extremes.
(Go to extremes...)
Anybody can prevail;
Everybody's free to fail.
No one can be put in jail for their dreams.
I feared you'd never come,
That you'd been called away,
That you'd been killed,
Had the plague,
Were in debtor's jail,
Trampled by a horse,
Gone to sea again,
Arrested by the--
Kiss me!
Of course!
Quickly!
You're sure?
Kiss me!
I shall!
Kiss me!
Oh, sir...
Most friends fade,
Or they don't make the grade.
New ones are quickly made--
Some of them worth something, too!
But us, old friends?
What's to discuss, old friends?
Tell you something:
Lucy wants to be classy,
Jessie wants to be Lassie.
If Lucy and Jessie could only combine,
I could tell you someone
Who would finally feel just fine.
Now if you see Lucy X,
Youthful, truthful Lucy X,
Let her know she's better than she suspects.
Now if you see Jessie Y,
Faded, jaded Jessie Y,
Tell her that she's sweller than apple pie.
If she'd only been faded,
If she'd only been fat...
If she'd only been jaded
And bursting with chat;
If she'd only been perfectly awful,
It would have been wonderful.
Today was perfectly perfect,
You say.
Well, don't go away,
Cause if you think you liked today,
You're gonna love tomorrow.
Mm-hm.
You stick around and see.
...And how you're always turning back too late
From the grass or the stick or the dog or the light;
How the kind of woman willing to wait's
Not the kind that you want to find waiting
To return you to the night,
Dizzy from the height...
Coming from the hat.
I feel dizzy,
I feel sunny,
I feel fizzy and funny and fine,
And so pretty,
Miss America can just resign.
I know there's another lyric with "funny and fine" but I am positive we've used that lyric in this game, so I thought I'd go for something that might yield a different lyric.
Czolgosz, working man
Born in the middle of Michigan,
Woke with a thought, and away he ran
To the Pan-American Exposition
In Buffalo.
So you should support the competition,
Try to set aside your own ambition,
Even while you jockey for position.
If you feel a sense of coalition,
Then you never really stand alone.
Love is just sand. You can feel it shifting:
Soon as you stand, you begin to sink.
Everything's planned, then it gets to drifting --
Never to where you think.
What do you think?
Who can it be?
Even the ink--
No here, let me...
"Your presence--"
Just think of it, Petra!
"Is kindly--"
It's at a chateau!
"Requested--"
Etcet'ra, etcetera...
With a smile and a will
But with more thought,
I acquired a chateau
Extravagantly o-
Verstaffed.
Too many people muddle sex with mere desire,
And when emotion intervenes, the nets descend.
It should on no account perplex -- or worse, inspire!
It's but a pleasurable means to a measurable end.
It's been a while since I took a look at this song's sick rhyme-scheme. It's typical that "pleasurable/measurable" is just a freebie layered onto (and, at four syllables, a flashy distraction from) the main rhyme structure: the metrically-relevant rhymes in that last line are actually the seemingly innocuous means (from intervenes) and end (from descend). I'd almost call "pleasurable/measurable" mere embroidery, were it not for the deliciously precise way SJS uses them to modify the idiom "a means to an end". And that's not to mention the "comprehend/trend" that follows, or the whole preceding stanza -- "Where is style? Where is skill?" etc. -- that ties into "With a smile and a will" etc. -- or, for that matter, the other 80% of the song that I'm not even touching on here.
It's insane how he's able to build all this earthquake-proof rhyme architecture on the foundation of Leonora's idiosyncratic (but totally character-specific) diction and formidable intelligence: its apotheosis, "raisins/liaisons", may elicit a groan from some, but its laugh-out-loud inevitability is built not on SJS reaching for a rhyme but on Leonora finding exactly the right word to express her disdain -- even if it ultimately means compromising her French to do so (which is not, one feels, a minor consideration for her; one could even imagine her deliberately flattening liaisons, in this one instance, as a sardonic swipe at these classless young dilettantes who probably don't even have any French). In any case, the whole sequence has been reverse-engineered so securely that the sketchy pronunciation, by the time it arrives, has already been more than earned by the acidulous perfection that is "No, not even figs... raisins" -- just as a statement, irrespective of rhyme -- and the drolly ineluctable logic by which it arose.
Ther are rights and wrongs
And in-betweens
No one waits
When fortune intervenes.
And maybe they're really magic,
Who knows?
Wait a minute,
Magic beans for a cow so old
That you had to tell a lie to sell it,
Which you told!
Were they worthless beans?
Were they oversold?
Oh, and tell us who persuaded you
To steal that gold!
I was trying to find another instance of the word and was surprised not to find it in A Little Night Music. I did find out that Solange Lafitte has a cologne called Magic that she's trying to introduce to the world in Follies.
Gold!
Grab the opportunity...
Gold!
Two musketeers...
Gold!
Part of a community
Of pioneers!
One thing I remember from seeing Bounce was how often SJS used the word "pioneer" in the score. (The Pioneers were also my college mascot.)
I'm sure there's another one out there that's not in Bounce/Wise Guys/Road Show, but this is the one that keeps getting stuck in my mind.
Come and see
The new frontier!
Come and be
A pioneer!
You'll agree,
Tomorrow's here
Today!
Boca Raton!
(It's a little hard to tell, but you'll agree is the next phrase.)
This is what beauty can be,
Beauty celestial -- the best, you'll agree.
All for you,
These beautiful girls!
(Same deal here: all for you is the target).
I'm all for you, whatever happens,
My dreams are yours to share.
Sometimes, it's true, my words are bitter,
But that's because I care.
If I get mad when I think you're wrong,
Maybe I am wrong, too.
But good or bad, everything I do
Is all for love of you.
There is a flower
Which offers nectar at the top,
Delicious nectar at the top,
And bitter poison underneath.
The butterfly who stays too long
And drinks too deep
Is doomed to die...
I read to fly; to skim.
I do not read to swim.
I must think calm, comforting things:
Butterfly wings,
Emerald rings,
Or a murmuring brook,
Murmuring, murmuring, murmuring...
Look:
I'm calm, I'm calm,
I haven't a qualm,
I'm utterly under control.
He'd never... therefore they haven't...
Which makes the question absolutely...! --Could she?
She daren't... therefore I mustn't... what utter rot!
Fidelity is more than mere display,
It's what a man expects from life:
Fidelity, like mine to Desirée
And Charlotte, my devoted wife.
Once again, it's so easy to be dazzled by the elegant economy of expression here that one could miss the unusual, casually seamless rhyme of display with Desirée.
This is the first thing I thought of. I don't know if there is another one, deeper into the catalog, maybe referring to the city?
Anyway:
C-M: Charlotte?
C: I'm thinking it out.
C-M: Charlotte!
C: There's no need to shout.
C-M: Charlotte!
C: All right, then.
Both:
We're off on our way,
What a beautiful day
It's possible there's another Charlotte somewhere in the catalog, but my first thought was the same as yours.
Beautiful day has me stumped, though... :-\
I did look to make sure there was another beautiful day before I posted it, and I was very happy when I found one. It's toward the end of a song, so there aren't too many lyrics after it to leave a target word.
A hint: think early Sondheim.
And it's one wonderful day,
One marvelous day,
One beautiful day,
One glorious day,
One wonderful day all year long!
Thanks for the hint, Kathy! I'm not so familiar with Saturday Night: it may be SJS's second-least familiar score to me (after Do I Hear A Waltz, of which I know practically nothing; Road Show might bring up third place, though I did listen to Bounce a lot at one point, so I'm at least somewhat familiar with the lyrics that survived from that incarnation). But after following your clue to the Hat book, where this lyric rates a self-critical footnote, I'm inclined to agree with SJS: the pile-up of "adjectival padding" would've sounded trite even coming from a lyricist of his mentor's generation. (He approvingly cites Ocky sticking with a single adjective in "Oh, what a beautiful mornin'/ Oh, what a beautiful day, I got a beautiful feelin'..." rather than riffling pointlessly through the deck of overused syllabically-equivalent synonyms). Still, I'd counter that, because Saturday Night is set among ordinary young people of precisely that generation, a certain quaint banality is sort of appropriate.
1960...
It's 1960...
And, gosh, what a swall year it's been...
:)) :)) :))
(I guess not.)
I'm looking. And thinking.
There are three other "all year"s that I can think of. Though they have little else in common (sung by very different characters in very different situations and shows), I suppose all three might be described as songs of persuasion -- whether in the form of studious self-deception, sexual courtship, or outright hucksterism.
Duh...
Pretty lady, you're the cleanest thing I seen all year.
I sailed the world for you.
Pretty lady, you're enough to make me glad I'm here.
Live in your barbarous jungle
Screaming for ways to get clear.
When all the screaming has died away
Come and visit my hideaway
I will be glad t provide a way
If you can find me
I'm here
As far as I know, we need to go forward in lyrics, not backward, but it's easy enough to end up with the same target word by going forward:
When you wake up with one genius less
If you can find me I'm here
And I'm free
Free as a bird in a tree
Free as the slippers I wear
Free with a year's warranty
Free as air
All of these products and me
All that I ask is a chair that tilts
Books to read
Light refreshment before I proceed
And a blazer or maybe a tweed
The barest essentials a poet would need
Live in your barbarous jungle
Screaming for ways to get clear
When all the screaming has died away
And here's the next lyric:
Are you screaming?
Ringdove and robinet,
Is it for wages
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it's safer in cages
Singing when you're told?
My cage has many rooms,
Damask and dark,
Nothing there sings
Not even my lark
Once -- yes! Once, for a lark!
Twice, though... loses the spark.
One must never deny it;
But after you try it,
You vary the diet.
In case anyone's wondering (perhaps not for the first time) where I'm getting all this punctuation from... One of my favorite things about this game is the excuse to creatively punctuate the lyrics, irrespective of how they appear in the scores, the libretti, or the Hat books -- but guided, I like to think, by His own principles to emphasize their conversational flow and cadence in the way a playwright or a novelist might. Granted, principle-wise, He trounces me in the less-is-more department.
vary
Make me confused,
Mock me with praise,
Let me be used,
Vary my days,
But alone is alone, not alive.
Mrs. Lovett,
You're a bloody wonder -- eminently practical
And yet appropriate, as always.
As you've said repeatedly, there's little point in dwelling
On the past!
No, come here, my love...
Not a thing to fear, my love:
What's dead
Is dead.
The history of the world, my pet,
Is "learn forgiveness and try to forget."
And life is for the alive, my love,
So let's keep living it!
Just keep living it,
Really living it... |
Do you mean it? Everything I did, I swear I thought
Was only for the best --
Believe me!
Can we
Still be
Married?
Oh, Mr. Todd, ooh, Mr. Todd, leave it to me...
By the sea, Mr. Todd, we'll be comfy-cozy
By the sea, Mr. Todd, where there's no one nosy--
Just keep living it,
Really living it... |
Granted, three lines of Todd's would have sufficed for the gameplay, but I couldn't resist. This is just such a devastatingly well-wrought scene: starting even earlier, from Todd keening over his dead Lucy, while Mrs. Lovett grasps at spluttering echoes of "Poor Thing" to defend her duplicity; then lurching into the reprise of the "Little Priest" waltz (plus Mrs. L.'s pitiful rush of "By The Sea", with too many words crammed desperately into an inappositely square rhythm, badly hobbling the music's triumphant lilt -- until Todd, steamrolling ahead without missing a beat, bodily forces
her back into the dance tempo)... it's just diabolically effective dramatic writing. Todd's lethally straight-faced parody of the actually-moral position here is what makes it so terrifying; by the time his homily arrives at "What's dead is dead" (as they literally waltz around his wife's corpse), one can only laugh in horror at Nellie's simultaneous plea "Can we still be married?". We may at first be as thrown-for-a-loop by Todd's spooky volatility as she is; but when she ends up, seconds later, engulfed in flames inside an oversize iron coffin, it's a double-whammy for the audience: absolute shock and -- after this excruciating buildup -- absolute inevitability. This is one of those passages that should be invoked, near the top of the list imho, by anyone seeking to analyze Sondheim as an unparalleled dramatist (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/theater/stephen-sondheim-playwright.html)
, as distinct from his brilliance as composer and lyricist ("Barcelona," whatever its virtues, actually strikes me as a relatively wan example on which to build this case, though Green isn't the first to have done so anyway). The story beats, the general pace, the vertiginous irony and perhaps even some of the specific devices (schizoid tonal shifts? creepy callbacks to happier times?) might possibly have been provided, in some form; I can't remember Bond's original script well enough to say, and of course I don't know exactly what Wheeler, in the process of adapting it, may have given SJS to build upon. But God is in the details, and Sondheim's execution of these particular details just takes your breath away.
There's a just keep in "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs," but, in my opinion, the one in "Move On" has better choices for a target word after it:
Just keep moving on,
I chose and my world was shaken,
So what?
That choice may have been mistaken,
The choosing was not.
You have to more on.
"Move On" was the one I had in mind ("Just keep your shirts on!" from "WFTGU" never occurred to me, but it's a great catch!). But I'm tickled you chose my favorite stanza; some centuries ago, I actually picked "I chose, and my world was shaken -- so what? / The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not." as a favorite quote for my senior-year high-school yearbook photo. Sounding both pretentious and portentous in that context, the lines actually held no specific personal meaning except as generically-appealing Words To Live By -- but, exquisitely versified by my idol (even with the mildly questionable rhyme of "what" and "not") in my favorite show, they sounded mighty profound to me.
Which is why I'm gonna be an annoying pedant and point out that it is in fact "The choice," not "That choice". There's a trim little parallelism in there, focusing the distinction between "choice" and "choosing" onto those two words alone, which goes just the tiniest bit soft if the article also changes. "The/The" makes us listen harder to what's being said, while "That/The" arguably overexplains.
I was half convinced I'd waken,
Satisfied enough to dream you.
Happily I was mistaken,
Johanna...
I'll steal you, Johanna,
I'll steal you.
Do they think that walls could hide you?
Even now, I'm at your window.
I am in the dark beside you,
Buried sweetly in your yellow hair...
In the old days of this game we had an acronym, QFM, which stood for "Quote from memory." I should have used that with my lyric. (By the way, I do realize it's "The," but my fingers obviously didn't. Or I should have just checked the lyric before typing it, which I understand would not necessarily stop my fingers from typing the wrong word anyway. :) )
Even now
(now I can't get Barry Manilow out of my mind)
(Typed directly from Finishing the Hat)
Even now,
When you're close and we touch
And you're kissing my brow,
I don't mind it too much.
And if I wanted too much,
Was that such a mistake
At the time?
You never wanted enough.
All right, tough -- I don't make
That a crime.
On first hearing, "I don't make that a crime" sounded ever so slightly faux-conversational to me: it gets its meaning across, but I'm not 100% convinced it's how most people would verbalize that idea, and the obvious explanation is that it's being condensed, so efficiently as to become almost too concise, for the sake of the rhyme. Still, if it's not altogether effortless, it comes closer than such a feat of compression has any right to, and the result is a model of elegant simplicity, if not of absolute conversational realism: six lines, three interlocked but decidedly modest rhymes (much/such, mistake/make, enough/tough), and not a five-dollar word anywhere to be seen. (Nor, conversely, a stumble into the pop banality or tortured syntax for which a lesser lyricist might have settled in the well-trod arena of the bittersweet-breakup song). And of course, leave it to SJS to make Charley's lyric -- the song that ends up "opening doors" for Shepard & Kringas -- track the dynamics of their eventual professional "breakup" with poignant specificity shadowed by ambiguity: who "wanted too much," and who "not enough"? Artistically, commercially, interpersonally?
I've been trying to find this for two months. Any hints?
don't make
Mama said, "Darling,
don't make such a drama.
A little less thinking,
a little more feeling"
I'm just quoting Mama!
No more feelings.
Time to shut the door.
Just – no more.
I like this song too much to mangle it by trying to quote from memory.
Maybe it shows--
She's had clues,
Which she chose to ignore.
Maybe, though, she knows,
And just wants to go on as before--
As a friend, nothing more.
So she closes the door.
Well, if she does,
Those are the dues.
Once the words are spoken,
Something may be broken--
Still, you love her,
What can you lose?
A false alarm.
A broken arm.
An imitation Hitler, and with littler charm --
But oh, can that boy foxtrot!
I have not forgotten about this game.
I also have not found the lyric. :(
I checked Into the Woods, thinking it sounded like something Jack's Mother would say. I also thought it sounded like Mrs. Lovett, possibly, so I checked Sweeney Todd. And Follies, and Night Music and Company.
I am waiting for inspiration to strike, even though it hasn't yet in two months.
Quote from: KathyB on Feb 15, 2023, 04:19 PMI have not forgotten about this game. ... I am waiting for inspiration to strike, even though it hasn't yet in two months.
Ah, but
forgetting might actually help hasten inspiration... or I could just
find another target word.
A boy like that who'd kill your brother,
Forget that boy and find another,
One of your own kind.
Stick to your own kind!
A boy like that will give you sorrow.
You'll meet another boy tomorrow,
One of your own kind.
Stick to your own kind!
Oh, DUH. [facepalm] double DUH. :-[ :-[ :-[
Say toodle-oo to sorrow.
Mm-hmm...
And fare-thee-well, ennui,
Bye-bye...
You're gonna love tomorrow,
As long as your tomorrow is spent with me.
Today was perfectly perfect, you say,
Well, don't go away,
'Cause if you think you liked today...
I'm calm. I'm calm.
I'm perfectly calm.
I'm utterly under control.
I haven't a worry:
Where others would hurry,
I stroll.
People strolling through the trees
Of a small suburban park
On an island in the river
On an ordinary Sunday...
In the ocean an island waits,
Smooth and sandy and pink.
Filled with lemons and nuts and dates.
Pretty little picture?
Think:
We'll have a little pink boy,
Then a little pink girl,
Then another.
A little snub nose
And a little spit curl
Like her mother.
I don't even know where that last lyric comes from. :-[
QFM, so I don't know if I'm getting all the punctuation accurate:
I've some business
With her mother.
See, it's business!
Oh, no doubt!
But the business
With her mother
Would be hardly the business I'd worry about.
Your punctuation looks A-1 to me.
The snub-nosed, spit-curled pink babies were from "Who Could Be Blue?/Little White House" (https://genius.com/Suzanne-henry-and-craig-lucas-who-could-be-blue-little-white-house-lyrics), originally sung by one of the young Follies couples, IIRC, as a sticky-sentimental first pass at what later became the perkier, more upbeat four-part counterpoint of "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow"/"Love Will See Us Through".
After being cut from Follies, the original duet was later featured in the 1980 revue Marry Me A Little (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDFpXkOEKgI) and preserved on its original cast album (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGJ_YYHkzXs). Later still, that track was included on the 1985 multi-disc compilation A Collector's Sondheim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS7Yt_s9uDQ), which is where I became aware of it.
There's also a lovely version on the Papermill Follies as a bonus track; it's one of my favourite melodies, and I sing it all the time.
And still you're sorry,
And still you're grateful,
And still you wonder,
And still you doubt.
Then she goes out.
Everything's different,
Nothing's changed.
Only maybe slightly
Rearranged.
Nothing's gonna harm you,
No, sir,
Not while I'm around.
Demons are prowling
Everywhere
Nowadays.
I'll send 'em howling,
I don't care--
I got ways.
No one's gonna hurt you,
No one's gonna dare.
Others can desert you--
Not to worry,
Whistle, I'll be there.
(It only took me a little over six months!)
The old deserted beach that we walked — remember?
Remember?
The café in the park where we talked — remember?
Remember?
The tenor on the boat that we chartered,
Belching The Bartered Bride —
Ah, how we laughed!
Ah, how we cried!
Ah, how you promised
And, ah — how I lied.
[FUN INTERNET WORMHOLE]: The Bartered Bride's performance history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bartered_Bride#Reception_and_performance_history) suggests that — after flopping at its 1865 premiere in Prague, being performed only a scant handful of times over the next quarter-century (still without notable success), and achieving broad popularity only after a much-reworked 1892 revival (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27944908) in Vienna — its score wouldn't have been widely-known until very late in the century. Technically, this should place the boat ride remembered by Mr. Lindquist no more than eight years before A Little Night Music's dramatic date of around 1900 — unless the tenor in question happened to be a (literal) Bohemian, introducing the Swedes to a little-known musical curiosity from his homeland.
I thought this would take a couple of months, but it just came to me, and I didn't even need to change shows!
It's a very short road
To the ten-thousandth lunch
And the belch and the grouch
And the sigh.
In the meanwhile,
There are mouths to be kissed
Before mouths to be fed
And a lot in between in the meanwhile,
And a girl ought to celebrate what passes by.
There are rights and wrongs and in-betweens.
No one waits when fortune intervenes!
And maybe they're really magic — who knows?
Why you do what you do: that's the point.
All the rest of it is chatter.
(Look at her. She's crying!)
If the thing you do is pure in intent, if it's meant,
And it's just a little bent, does it matter?
(Yes.)
No, what matters is that everyone tells tiny lies!
What's important, really, is the size.
At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara
I acquired some position
Plus a tiny Titian...
Liaisons! What's happened to them?
Liaisons today.
To see them--indiscriminate
Women, it
Pains me more than I can say,
The lack of taste that they display.
Where is style?
Where is skill?
Where is forethought?
[ 'nother wormhole:] Boris Aronson's original design (https://twitter.com/kevinddaly/status/1364614109153615873) for Mme. Armfeldt's dining room was of course predicated on the joke of there being no "tiny" Titians. (Which isn't necessarily true (https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/portrait-of-a-young-man), but never mind). SJS seems to have done his homework, sort of: the Venetian painter was in fact associated (https://www.wga.hu/html_m/t/tiziano/08a/index.html) with the palace (https://www.webexhibits.org/feast/context/palace.html) of the sixteenth-century Duke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_I_d%27Este) of Ferrara — though there would no longer have been anyone of that title (which no longer existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Ferrara), and hadn't for more than two centuries) by the mid-nineteenth when Leonora supposedly "acquired some position" there.
This is how Samson was shorn;
Each in her style a Delilah reborn!
Each a gem, a beautiful
Diadem of beautiful —
Welcome them, these beautiful
Girls!
I was hoping that Dionysos's wedding gift to Ariadne, mentioned in the song (https://genius.com/Nathan-lane-and-roger-bart-araidne-lyrics) from The Frogs that is named for her, might have occasioned another instance of the word "diadem". But no: in keeping with the song's mood of bittersweet simplicity — and perhaps emphasizing the gift's intended function as a power accessory ("if you look like a goddess, you'll feel like a goddess") — Dionysos only ever refers to it, three times altogether, as a "crown". While I haven't scoured the books, I'm feeling fairly confident that "Beautiful Girls" features the only appearance of "diadem" in SJS's oeuvre.
Hence: welcome.
You, sir, too, sir,
Welcome to the grave.
I will have vengeance,
I will have salvation!
Who, sir? You, sir?
No one's in the chair--
Come on, come on,
Sweeney's waiting,
I want you bleeders!
The more he bleeds, the more he lives:
He never forgets and he never forgives.
The razor-sharp writing (no pun intended) in this final "Ballad" reprise always makes me gasp. The entire quatrain just after the couplet quoted above, with its present-tense callback to the Prologue's "Sweeney heard music that nobody heard," compresses the character's raging heart into such spellbinding poetry that I can't resist transcribing it here:
Sweeney wishes the world away,
Sweeney's weeping for yesterday —
Hugging the blade, waiting the years,
Hearing the music that nobody hears.
But, as usual, the effect of the words is inextricable from their musical setting; their chilling nursery-rhyme simplicity on the page is sharpened and pointed by the shape of the melody: rising lyrically over the first line, falling jaggedly on "yesterday," obsessively worrying just two notes for the second half of the stanza (with the slightest jump to prick our ears, just as in the Prologue, on "music that"). For all its speed and urgency, the words compel active listening rather than letting us glide along; while I ended up settling on the punctuation above, part of me wanted to emphasize the staccato stabs of information, as well as of melody, by replacing all of it with full-stop periods. The emotion being described isn't misunderstood-goth yearning; it's spluttering, unquenchable fury.
One has regrets
Which one forgets,
And as the years go on,
The road you didn't take
Hardly comes to mind,
Does it?
The door you didn't try,
Where could it have led?
The choice you didn't make
Never was defined,
Was it?
Dreams you didn't dare
Are dead.
Were they ever there?
Who said?
I almost went with "hardly" and then I realized how many times SJS uses that word just in A Little Night Music. It's probably used as often as "miracle."
He'd never... therefore they haven't...
Which makes the question absolutely... could she?
She daren't... therefore I mustn't...
What utter rot!
Fidelity is more than mere display,
It's what a man expects from life:
Fidelity, like mine to Desirée
And Charlotte, my devoted wife.
To see them—indiscriminate
Women, it
Pains me more than I can say,
The lack of taste that they display.
Where is style?
Where is skill?
Where is forethought?
Where's discretion of the heart,
Where's passion in the art,
Where's craft?
She wasn't no match for such craft, you see,
And everyone thought it so droll!
They figured she had to be daft, you see,
So all of them stood there and laughed, you see—
Poor soul!
Poor thing!
Perpetual anticipation is
Good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
It's good for practicing self-control.
It's very good for morals
But bad for morale.
The British feel these latest deal-
ings verge on immorality.
The element of precedent
imperils our neutrality!
We're rather vexed you're giving ext-
raterritoriality—
We must insist you offer this t-
o every nationality.
If she'd only been willful...
If she'd only have fled...
Or a little less skillful...
Insulted, insisting...
In bed...
The bread, George.
I mean, the bread, George.
And then in bed, George...
I mean, he kneads me.
I mean, like dough, George.
Hello, George...?
Apparently painters aren't the only ones prone to objectifying their partners, even unconsciously, as mere accessories to their creative calling — to an artist, everyone's a model; to a baker, everything's dough? But then again, as the lady says: the bread (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d3w5eL7WOY)... We should all have such agonizing choices, but despite "Everybody Loves Louis"'s charm and humor, one does feel the acute bind she's in, and it's not just an abstract emotional question of true love versus second-best expedience.
Eating in a greasy spoon
To save on my dough.
At
My tiny flat,
There's just my cat,
A bed and a chair.
Still,
I'll stick it till
I'm on a bill
All over Times Square.
Saw Bill McKinley there in the sun.
Heard Bill McKinley say, "Folks, have fun!
Some men have everything and some have none—
But that's just fine!
In the U.S.A., you can work your way
To the head of the line!"
If I were a pedant, I might point out that "some men have everything and some have none" suggests a parallelism it doesn't deliver, swerving from the syntax of everything/nothing to that of all/none for the sake of a rhyme which is thereby rendered just a mite awkward, if you ill-advisedly stop to think about it. Then again, if I were a pedant, I might also idiotically complain that the first two lines are fragments, built on verbs with no subjects. The Balladeer sings throughout in a unique idiolect that successfully combines Sondheimian fluency and crispness with the kind of studied folk-Americana "simplicity" that had SJS self-consciously droppin' his g's as a teenager.
The less achievement,
The less defeat.
What's the point of shovin'
Your way to the top?
Live 'n' laugh 'n' love 'n'
You're never a flop.
So, when the walls are crumbling...
This is the world I meant. Couldn't you listen?
Couldn't you stay content, safe behind walls
As I could not?
And though I cannot love you,
I wish that I could love you.
For now I'm seeing love like none I've ever known.
A love as pure as breath, as permanent as death.
Implacable as stone.
You're either a poet
Or you're a lover
Or you're the famous
Benjamin Stone.
You take one road,
You try one door,
There isn't time for any more.
One's life consists of either/or.
One has regrets
Which one forgets,
And as the years go on...