A jukebox musical, whatever its dramatic blueprint, is first and foremost a delivery vehicle for nostalgia. This is a popular thing and to a great extent a good one. It is no easy trick, though. Almost every song tells some sort of story. The stories in most songs, even the simplest ones, imply surprisingly extensive contexts, and taken together, these contexts tangle rapidly. There exist only a few possible fundamental ways to minimize those tangles.
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(I Know) I'm Losing You,
Achilles,
Ain't Misbehavin',
Ain't Too Proud to Beg,
Ala Jay Lerner,
Another One Bites The Dust,
Arsenal,
August Wilson Theatre,
Baby I Need Your Loving,
Beatles,
Beehive,
Ben Elton,
Berry Gordy,
Berry Gordy Jr.,
Bob Crewe,
Bob Gaudio,
Bohemian Rhapsody,
Bourbon Club,
Bourbon Room,
Brian Holland,
Britney Spears,
cabaret,
Can't Take My Eyes Off You,
Catherine Zeta-Jones,
CDs,
Chris Arienzo,
Chris Rock,
Christy Keagy,
Cole Porter,
compact discs,
Corleone family,
Cry for Me,
Diana Ross,
Four Seasons,
Four Tops,
fourth wall,
Frank Sinatra,
Frankie Valli,
Fred Buscaglione,
Galileo Figaro,
Gerald Postner,
Globalsoft,
Graceland,
Helen Hayes THeatre,
high school graduation parties,
History Plays,
Hit Me With Your Best Shot,
Hitsville,
Hitsville U.S.A.,
I Can't Get Next To You,
I Can't Help Myself,
I Wanna Rock,
IRS,
Jersey Boys,
Joe Louis,
Joe Pesci,
Johnny Fontane,
Jon Bon Jovi,
juke box,
juke box musicals,
jukebox,
Kansas,
KElly Keagy,
Killer Queen,
Las Vegas,
Los Angeles,
Love is a Battlefield,
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre,
Marshall Brickman,
Martha and the Vandellas,
Martha Reeves,
Martin Luther King's Birthday,
Marvin Gaye,
Mary Wells,
Max Schmelling,
Michael Jackson,
Motown,
Motown Music Money Sex and Power,
Motown the Musical,
MTV,
New Jersey,
New York,
Night Ranger,
nostalgia,
Oh Sherrie,
oldies,
Oscar Hammerstein,
Papa Was A Rolling Stone,
parody,
Pat Benatar,
Plantagenets,
Queen Freddie Mercury,
Radio Ga Ga,
Rain,
Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand,
Reach Out I'll Be There,
revue,
Rick Elice,
Rick James,
Rock of Ages,
Scaramouche,
Shakespeare,
Sister Christian,
sports arenas,
Starship,
Stephen Sondheim,
Steve Perry,
Stevie Wonder,
Styx,
Sugar Pie Honey Bunch,
Sunday in the Park with George,
Sunset Strip,
Supremes,
The Four Seasons,
The Four Tops,
Tommy DeVito,
Tudors,
Twisted Sister,
Vandellas,
We Are The Champions,
We Built This City,
We Will Rock You,
We're Not Gonna Take It,
Wembley Stadium,
Whiskey a Go Go,
William Shakespeare,
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Perhaps a lot of us sing loudly of feelings that are not quite our own, assert kinships and allegiances we do not exactly feel, try to feel familiar and comfortable in places where we are not thoroughly welcomed.
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1743,
1967,
1967 War,
1971,
1972,
A Simple Song,
Alan Titus,
Alexander Pope,
Art Garfunkle,
Beatles,
C.S. Lewis,
Cardinal Newman,
Catholicism,
Celebrant,
Colley Cibber,
Dominicans,
Egypt,
Existentialism,
Fr. Macek,
G.K. Chesterton,
Hilaire Bellow,
Hugh Halton,
hymn,
intermarriage,
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Jerusalem of Gold,
John Henry Newman,
Judaism,
Kennedy Center,
Leonard Bernstein,
Leonard Bernstein's Mass,
Newman Center,
Nowhere Man,
Paul Simon,
pedophilia,
priest,
Psalm,
Quakerism,
rabbi,
Ran Eliran,
religious faith,
Roman Catholoicism,
Sartre,
second-class citizenship,
Sharm el Sheikh,
Simon & Garfunkle,
Simple Song,
Sounds of Silence,
The Beatles,
The Dunciad,
Unitarian,
Vatican Bank,
Vienna,
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I’m glad to say that neither my dad nor Tom ever lost a penny by this rickety arrangement. But it was a harbinger of the generally lawless lifestyle we were to pursue at 2209. We started with that fraud (though we meant and did no harm to anyone by it), and went on from there. It wasn’t just that we were drinking underage or having sex without benefit of clergy. Kids, don’t try this in your home: LSD was literally kept in the fridge for consumption by – one or more of us – but let me hasten to say it wasn’t me.
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1969,
2209 Rittenhouse Square,
34th Street,
Abbey Road,
Babe,
Barnard College,
Beatles,
Beginnings,
Bob Dylan,
Chicago,
Chicago Transit Authority,
Come Together,
Concert for Bangladesh,
Danny Seraphine,
drugs,
Firesign Theatre,
George Wallace,
How Can You Be In Two Places At Once,
Ian MacDonald,
Introduction,
James Joyce,
John L. Sullivan,
John Lennon,
LSD,
Molly Bloom,
Penn Central Railroad,
President Richard Nixon,
psychedelic patterns,
Ralph Spoilsport,
Ralph Williams,
Revolution in the Head,
Richard Nixon,
Rittenhouse Square,
Robert Lamm,
the Daily Pennsylvanian,
the Doors,
the Draft,
The Firesign Theatre,
the Rolling Stones,
Ulysses,
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Those who were paying any kind of attention to Sgt. Pepper on that hot afternoon knew that they’d have to pay a lot more attention, later on, that we’d all have to listen to it several times to get out of it a reasonable helping of what the album had to offer. But hey, we had the time. That was the beauty of the moment for us. We had the time.
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1967,
A. A. Milne,
bad habits,
Beatles,
commencement,
Die Meistersinger,
diverticulitis,
Fab Four,
graduation,
Grim Reaper,
Ian MacDonald,
Laurel and Hardy,
leaving home,
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,
Marlene Dietrich,
Oscar Wilde,
Revolution in the Head,
scarlet fever,
Sgt. Pepper,
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
The House at Poor Corner,
Vernor's Ginger Ale,
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Theme Songs Page | Previous Theme Song | Next Theme Song Someone’s Hopeless Romance Elusive Butterfly, by Bob Lind (1965), encountered 1966 Buy it here | See it here and here | Lyrics here | Sheet music here There are going to be a few times in these music memories when I can’t tell the […]