and they call it puppy love...

This evening, after work, I got to do something I absolutely LOVE to do.  And no, I'm talking about coming home and finding my dogs sickness played blitzkrieg on my bedroom floor, but that happened too.  I'm talking about singing.  We had an audition this evening for the next play/musical Village Players is doing.  It's called "The Taffetas".  It's a 1950s singing group comprised of 4 sisters, trying to get on the Ed Sullivan Show.  It is really fun.  The songs are all songs we know and love from that decade.  I had to prepare a song, not in the play, but from the 50s to sing at the audition so I've been listening a lot to Connie Francis and Leslie Gore the last few days and I've noticed a few things about music from the 50s.  First off, they really like to repeat themselves.  I was listening to Sam Cooke's "You Send Me"  I realized he basically sings the same 8 lines, over and over again.  Lyrics today are so much more complicated, which sometimes means they say more, but I think it also means they some time say too much.  Songs back in the 50s where about very basic things and they didn't need to say a lot to express those things.  A friend of mine commented today, the repetitiveness was because they were all on drugs.  Probably also true.  But back in the 50s and 60s songs were written quite differently than they are today.  I heard an interview with Paul Anka not long ago and he was talking about when he started off as a songwriter.  Apparently they had a group of writers all hanging out in an office together just churning these songs out, several a day.  You have to stay simple to work that way.  And yet, somehow this group of people have written some of the best songs of that era. Another thing I noticed about songs that were written before 1985 or so, they didn't end.  Just think about it, try to think of the ending to some of your favorite songs from the 60s and 70s.  A lot of them don't have a true ending, they just fade away with the chorus.   I wonder if that has anything to do with the radio being the main means for people to hear the music.  Fading out in the end probably made it easier to go from one song to the next.  Well its getting late and I still have some bedroom floor to clean.  I'll just leave you with the words from one of my favorite songs in the show.  "Mr Sandman, someone to hold would be so peachy before we're too old so please turn on your magic beam Mr Sandman, bring us, please, please, please Mr Sandman, bring us a dream."