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Aloha. This week's contestant is Steven Buchtal from Honolulu, Hawaii. I think it's gettable. The song is nicely hidden, but well-known and becomes fairly recognizable. The composer style should be clear, because of the piece of music it's based on, though whether people know who wrote it is another matter...
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It's been a quiet week. Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church celebrates All Saints' Day and Clint Bunsen gives up deer hunting.
This week's contestant is Wiley Newbold from Morgantown, West Virginia. It's a very lovely piece, and the style will be familiar, though I wasn't able to get the specific composer. And I had not idea what the hiddden song was, even though it turned out to be well-known enough. Even knowing what the song was, I had a hard time picking it out when Bruce Adolph played it through a second time, though I could hear the sensibility.
It's been a quiet week. Cold weather returns to Lake Wobegon, advice on leaving Minnesota, and why jokes are a bridge between people who disagree with each other.
This week's contestant is Tim Kellogg from Citrus Heights, California. The song will likely sound like you should know it at first, but what is it?? And then it will become clear. The composer though is more a style from which you might have a few to choose from. I guessed wrong, but it probably should have been my first guess...
As I've noted in the past, particularly with this video here, Seth MacFarland is not only a very talented singer, but someone who clearly loves Broadway musicals. And for the opening of the 2007 Emmy Awards, he showed both those skills doing both voices for Brian and Stewie from his show, The Family Guy. It's an amusing, entertaining number (along with the reactions of the audiences members because joked about -- in particular a reference to The Sopranos), which I like for a completely separate reason. Which I'll explain in a moment. But first, the opening number -- The reason I especially like this is because the music they use for the number is from a little-remembered Broadway show (that had a respectable run of 448 performances), and one of its even more less-known songs. The show is Take Me Along, which I've written about several times -- including here and here -- with a score by Bob Merrill, based on the play, Ah, Wilderness written by that ever-popular musical comedy man, Eugene O'Neill. The song it's using is "Volunteer Fireman Picnic." No doubt you've heard of it and sing it all the time... (Or, okay, not.)
Because the song is so especially-obscure, that's why I wouldn't be surprised if MacFarland himself might have been involved with the writing of the number. He's a writer, after all, and has often shown a great love of Broadway musicals. And Take Me Along isn't a show or especially a song that trips off the tongue of most people. You'd really have to know and love musicals. And particularly love it to know this song. Maybe he wasn't involved, but if I had to guess, he was. The song was performed in the show by the stars Jackie Gleason and Walter Pidgeon, along with the Townspeople. And here it is, in the original form. |
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 
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