Theatre Review - Curtains

Over the weekend my wife and I went to see our local high school put on their spring musical. They were presenting the relatively new show "Curtains." I had heard a couple of songs from the play before and knew the very high level premise but didn't know a whole lot about it.

The basic idea is that we're watching the backstage goings on of a musical being produced in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Our play starts during the finale of the opening night in Boston. After the final number, the cast takes their bows…and the leading lady drops to the floor in a heap. A scene or two later, a detective appears on the scene and lets the entire cast and crew know that they are all suspects in a homicide investigation. The detective lets them know that nobody is allowed to leave the theatre until the mystery is solved. He also lets them know that "the show must go on" and he doesn't want to interfere with rehearsals or preparations. In fact quite the contrary, he reveals himself to be an avid lover of musical theatre and wants to help them with the show in any way he can.

The play is a witty comedy filled with lots of excellent writing and situational comedy. There are multiple love triangles or secret romances throughout the cast. Eventually things turn darker as blackmail is uncovered and more murders occur. A lot of the humor comes in the strange balancing act of getting the murder mystery solved while also trying to revise the show to make it a success. Especially funny is the way the detective alternates between his desire to solve the crime and his stronger desire to improve on the show and be a part of show business.

This High School production was well cast, well directed, well choreographed and well produced. The show was directed by Jim Christian the theatre professor from a local university. Jim has written and directed shows all over the country and he does a fabulous job. The local High School directors, producers, choreographers and other adult talent also did an excellent job as shown in the overall quality of the show.

Movie Review - Pitch Perfect

When we first saw the trailer for Pitch Perfect last summer, my wife and I both chuckled. It looked like a super cheesy concept with some decent writing and one-liners. It wasn't appealing enough to warrant a visit to the theater, but now that it's on DVD, we made a rental.

I honestly wasn't expecting too much from this movie. I'm a fan of music performed well. I'm even a fan of acapella music and have a number of CDs from various acapella groups and have been to a couple of concerts. They have a cool sound and it amazes me to see the kind of vocal talent people have. I just wasn't sure the "college acapella circuit" was something that could sustain a full movie.

The movie starts with a scene at the collegiate acapella national championships. You get to see some vocal talent but more than that, you quickly get a feel for the tone of the show. The groups are over-the-top cheesy. Acapella is their entire life and meaning for existence. They are ultra competitive and snarky to one another. The "sportscasters" are hilariously tongue-in-cheek and 'unintentionally' risqué with their comments. And then, to put the icing on the cake, the championship ends with a literal explosion of disgusting hilarity. It caught me unawares and certainly showed that this was going to be an irreverent comedy.

Returning to the college campus, we catch up with the "outsider" who will be our main character. Beca is a music lover who spends her hours mixing music with the dream of being a DJ or music executive in charge of putting together the sickest tracks imaginable. She's caught somewhere between grungy and preppy but definitely leaning towards the loaner side. In spite of all the other clubs and groups out there, she soon finds herself drawn into the acapella crowd. At first it seems she's very reluctantly joining in just as "something to do" to appease her father who insists that she must get involved on campus.

With a new season of acapella competition beginning, the groups hold auditions and it's readily apparent that the choices are limited. There are plenty of people trying out but everybody comes with quirks and eccentricities that come together to create a very ragtag group of singers.

A Question of Music

I have a conundrum and would love your feedback…Just for fun, I'm going to take a trip down memory lane and explore how my current music collection was created. (Skip down to the bottom of the post for my conundrum if you don't want to read the lengthy history).

I love music. All kinds of music. My varied collection includes soft rock, hard rock, country, classical, kids music, disney soundtracks, latin, easy listening, religious, showtunes, alternative, pop, top 40, classic rock, and on and on. While I certainly don't have the "most" eclectic tastes around, I will gladly give any genre of music a chance and have found winners (and losers) all around. I have a moderately large collection of music purchased over the years and continue to buy music a few times a year (not nearly as often as I used to).

I enjoy and applaud technological advancements in music creation and distribution. But I've recently hit a conundrum.

As a kid, we only had one record store in town (and yes, they did sell records, though most of their product was Cassettes by then) and they were hideously overpriced. Add to that the fact that I was just a ~10 year old kid with minimal income opportunities and I figured I'd need to look at other venues.

So I discovered "record clubs." The older readers may remember these…in the back of a magazine or in a newspaper or tucked among the junk mail you'd find a sheet of paper showing off 50-100 albums. Your job was to pick anywhere from 4-10 (depending on the club) that you wanted for "free" (sometimes totally free, other times "just 1 penny" and other times pay for shipping and handling). They'd send you those albums (originally I got these on Cassette Tapes…then eventually moved to CDs) and you agreed to purchase some number of albums from them in the next 1-3 years.

I budgeted my money (cutting back on other less vital expenses like Garbage Pail Kids cards, toys, trips to the arcade and other fun stuff) to make sure I could by a couple of albums each year to fulfill my membership requirement…then I canceled, waited a few months and signed up again. Within a year, my music collection had exploded and I was on my way. I had dozens and dozens of tapes. I found that there were some times that I liked every song on the tape, but that was the exception. Most of the time I liked the single I'd heard on the radio (which had prompted the purchase) and maybe 3-4 other songs, but the rest of the tape I only listened to once and then skipped over after that.

Since I was getting the music pretty cheap (all things considered, I probably ended up averaging ~$20 for 6-8 albums) I didn't worry too much about it…but I did devote some money to buying blank cassettes and always keeping one in my tape recorder so I could quickly record songs off the radio rather than buying a full album blind.

As time went on, the blank cassette method took over for the record clubs and, while I still did record clubs from time to time, I mostly began recording songs from the radio or "dubbing" tape-to-tape recordings borrowed from friends and family. The mix tape was born. I held onto the original cassettes (in case of catastrophic eating of tape) but went ahead and transferred the songs I liked onto a few single tapes and tucked away the yawners. My collection continued to grow through radio recordings and borrowing from friends…I still purchased but now instead of 10-20/yr, I probably only purchased 4-5 tapes a year.

And then came the CD. I was a fairly early adopter…not first year, but probably a second year Christmas wish was for a CD player. I was bummed to find the cost of CDs ~30% more than tapes. But they were the new thing and they did sound good…plus it was cool not having to "rewind" or "fast forward" to find the song I wanted. I wired together my CD player and my tape deck to allow for continuing to create my own tapes. But as CDs became more and more prolific, I realized CDs were the way to go…so I hopped back into the Record Clubs and before long I had dozens of CDs. I was now into my teens so I had a "real" job and could afford to purchase albums at retail price (I still tried to avoid the overpriced record store in my hometown but sometimes the convenience won out).

Anyway, over the 20+ years of building my music collection, I've transitioned "mostly" away from cassettes (I still have a few dozen tapes tucked away that I haven't had time or inkling to transfer to CD) and have a few hundred CDs. Music stores began selling USED music and created a trade-in program. Most of the time the trade in value isn't great, but it allows me to get some new "use" out of those stinker albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs. I'd transfer my favorite songs to tape, trade in the disk and pick up something new (or new to me). I still purchased many albums blind but was able to extend the value thanks to trade-ins.

Naturally, the world continues to change and a decade or so back, MP3s became "the thing" for music. I admit to spending some time on Napster but I didn't have a CD burner or an MP3 player at the time so most of my newly acquired tunes from the early MP3 days vanished when various computer hard drives/systems died. Eventually I did get a CD burner but I still didn't have an MP3 player, so most of my music stayed on the computer…although I did create some backup disks with a bunch of MP3s and even burned a few "mix tapes" to CD.

I now have an iPod (actually a couple of iPods in the house plus a little Sony MP3 player) and I have (finally) "ripped" all of my CDs into digital format. I've even converted a number of favorite cassettes to digital. I haven't gotten around to transferring my records (yes, I have ~50 records) to digital format yet, but that's an eventual goal.


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Begin Conundrum

So that's my basic history of music collecting/buying…and now we arrive at my conundrum. I still frequent music stores that offer trade-ins and used music purchases…but if I'm buying new, I usually hit up the big box stores like Target, Walmart or Costco. I've generally stayed away from digital purchases for a couple of reasons: 1) I enjoy the album art and having a tangible element to my purchase. 2) I'm worried about losing my digital purchase due to computer failure (which has happened before).

I'm not as worried about the album art and tangible content anymore since I find that I seldom look at them anymore. And I'm less worried about the second issue because I have pretty robust backup in place on my computer and many/most of the digital outlets (amazon, itunes, etc) will let you re-download purchases.

Up until this year, I've only digitally purchased a few random songs here and there…songs I've heard on the radio or at a friends house or whatever. But this year, I had a pretty big credit balance on my iTunes account so I bought 2 full albums from a couple of artists that I generally enjoy. The price of the albums was comparable to what I might have found at a big box store…I probably saved $1/album by going digital. And one of the albums included an "enhanced digital book" that let me look at the album art/insert digitally.

Over the next few days, I listened to both of the albums. Both generally kept with the same style and presence of the artist…but neither album was what I'd call "great." There were a couple of songs that I moderately liked, but none that I'd add to a 'favorites' playlist. Even more sadly, as I listened, I found myself "not liking" the first album much at all. While it stayed mostly true to the artist's general style, she has taken a few steps in a direction that I'm not really keen on…and it made me sad.

My conundrum now is that I've purchased these digitally and completely lost out on any value extension. Had I paid the extra $1 to buy the physical copy at Target, I could take it down to the music store and trade it in and pick up something else. Yes I would lose a couple of bucks and it's possible that I wouldn't like everything on whatever new disk I got…but I'd get to continue the process and stretch my dollar. Instead, I'm out $8 and have no recourse but to just not listen anymore.

I suppose I could've or should've done more due-dilligence on my own and tried to find a place online where I could've listened to the entire album before purchasing blind. But since these were both new releases, it's possible I might not have been able to find the entire album online. I did listen to the "previews" in iTunes prior to buying, but those 15 second clips only really portrayed that it was the same style…they didn't show the turn towards the explicit (which is what turned me off).


OK…so that's my conundrum and my soap box. Over the years, I've loved buying music and finding a gem of a song buried in some deep cut of an album…something you'd never find unless you picked up the whole album. I've run across some stinkers but have been able to trade them in or otherwise extend the value. With the digital age, I can get "better deals" online but there's no way to extend the value on something that I purchase and decide I don't like. I can't "trade in" a digital purchase. Sure, I can go around just buying singles I've heard on the radio, but that doesn't expand my musical horizons or knowledge of an artist. Furthermore, if I feel like there's a chance I'll like a number of the songs on the album, it's usually cheaper to buy the whole album than to buy one song at a time after I've heard them…but I don't usually hear them all at once or haven't heard them all by the time I feel like buying.

I guess part of the answer may be to be a more active participant on music websites…listen to streaming media that helps mitigate purchasing garbage and leads me towards the singles I want. I've streamed from Pandora radio and hang out at a few artist websites from time to time, but I'm not sure of the best way to adequately find new music and to vet out an entire purchase prior to buying it.

Is there anyplace that gives a "listen before you buy" model? Something that in a 'kindle-esque' mode lets you "check out" an album and listen to it for a while and then buy it if you like it? I'd prefer the "check out" mode because I'd rather listen on my iPod than have to sit at my computer and play via a browser.


What do you guys do when you buy music? Do you still buy physical copies primarily? If you've gone digital, how do you reconcile buying garbage from time to time…or do you only buy songs you know you like? And if you buy entire albums digitally, how do you know you'll like the whole thing? Or do you just risk it and hope for the best?

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