Now playing on Broadway: anything but music
They say the neon lights are out on Broadway ("On Broad-way"), due to a labor dispute that started between theatre management and the Musicians Union, then spread as actors and stagehands honored their colleagues' picket lines. The union, Local 802, wanted to keep on talking; its leaders told reporters a settlement seemed near. But that hadn't happened by curtain time Friday night, so the show didn't go on.
The strike reminds me of Anything But Music, a project we tried at BigListen.com. The only rule for submission: anything but music. Brian Simpson of North Carolina took the challenge and produced the audio drama Drive: Part 1 in the privacy of his own home with tools he happened to have around the house: A Roland VS-840 digital audio workstation, a microphone, and his imagination. Sadly, Brian's day job and personal life have combined to keep him from producing any more chapters in the story so far, but it's still worth listening to, especially if you won't be going out to a Broadway show tonight after all. Brian did it all himself, even the artwork. He's also the only person we know who owns a theramin (remember the squealing sound on the Beach Boys song Good Vibrations? That's a theramin) and knows how to use it.
In other news, Ari Fleisher has admitted he was the one who decided which reporters would get to ask questions at Thursday's White House press conference, thus shutting out the most senior White House correspondent, Helen Thomas.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:41 PM
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8.3.03 |
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