Composer extraordinaire Dennis Yurich and I have been working together since the first Vampyres gig back in 1997. I didn't know him except to have seen his band Queue Up play, and was a little nervous about telling him what I wanted. There were two songs requiring original music, I wrote the lyrics and he was to write the music.
In theater, as in a lot of art forms, you have to be very careful about flat-out telling someone what you want something to be like. "Say it like this ..." is considered the worst form of direction. It is usually the form my own direction takes, but I never said I was actor-friendly.
So I was talking around the "feeling" I wanted the first song, COME, to sound like. I wanted it to be, uh, dark ... edgy, uhm ...
"Is there any particular artist you want it to sound like?" Dennis asked, a very patient man.
"Oh," I said. "Yeah. Nine Inch Nails."
"Any particular song?"
I hesitated.
"Closer?" I said, weakly.
"Okay."
Dennis is really cool.
When the time came to compose the music for IHT, I gave Dennis a CD with everything I had going on in my head. These are songs that just made sense at the time, some that have associations that pre-date Calvin's birth, and some that don't. Seeing as I have a lot of free-time today, looking after a two year-old with a stomach flu, I thought I would share.
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Calvin's Theme (free mp3 download!)
Dennis created a short tune that is repeated a few times throughout the show, first as a distorted "voice" - to me it sounds like Calvin singing through one of the many machines Toni was hooked up to while in the hospital. The same melody is presented on guitar for moments like his memorial, and the closing, "curtain-call" music.
Hospital Themes
For all themes taking place in the hospital, I wanted electronic music. Something suggesting a fast heartbeat.
1. Everything In Its Right Place Radiohead Kid A
2. Idioteque Radiohead Kid A
3. Blame Everything But the Girl Temperamental
4. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box Radiohead Amnesiac
Released in 2000, I listened to Kid A a lot when driving back and forth from Tri-C during Bad Epitaph's production of Cloud 9. That was when Toni was first pregnant.
"Blame" is included for obvious reasons. Temperamental was released in 1999.
During fringenyc 2001 there was a coffee house in Harris' neighborhood (it was a DT-UT; Harris' old apartment was UT) I visited every morning. It seemed like all they played were Radiohead albums, all of them. The Amnesiac track was also on a mix that a co-worker played for me in New Knoxville that fall - a CD that featured the King Britt remix found below.
Kid A is also my chosen pre-show music for when IHT is performed in theaters.
Brazilian Guitar Themes
5. August Day Song Bebel Gilberto Tanto Tempo
6. August Day Song (King Britt remix) Bebel Gilberto Tanto Tempo Remixes
7. Fragile Sting Nothing Like the Sun
8. Fragilidad Sting Nada Como el Sol ...
There is a song ... it won't be included here ... I make reference to it in the scene "the Dream" ... and the very first time I heard it, in April, 2001, i just split wide open. It so entirely captured my imaginary summer of 2001, the summer I was going to have with my first-born child, the one I had not allowed myself to daydream of, and yet, it was captured there. I have listened to that song only 12 times since.
The closest thing to this theme that I could bear sharing with anyone is the King Britt remix of Bebel Gilberto's "August Day Song." I was washing dishes on a night in December, 2001 at the aforementioned housing in West Central Ohio, listening to this mix CD, and was caught entirely off-guard by the tune, I knew it but couldn't remember what it was. Toni had actually gotten me the original Tanto Tempo disc when it was released in 2000 but I hadn't listened to it that much at the time.
The Sting tracks were played at the memorial in late May. I like the Portuguese version because sometimes it's good not to hear certain things in English.
Those 70s Themes
9. Three Is a Magic Number Bob Dorough Schoolhouse Rock
10. Lonely Boy Andrew Gold What's Wrong With This Picture
11. Cat's In The Cradle Harry Chapin Verities and Balderdash
Yes, ha ha, funny. Thoughtless hold-music from a certain baby food company. A joke done much better on The Simpsons. Theses ditties in particular were chosen because of their resonance with someone who may have been a small boy between the years of 1974 and 1976.
For more piercing insight on the songs themselves, visit the IHT glossary.
Music for Crying Out Loud
12. Gymnopedie No 1/Var.1 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
13. Gymnopedie No 1/Var.3 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
14. Gnossienne No 6 Jacques Loussier Trio Satie: Gymnopédies Gnossiennes
15. Tales from the Far Side Bill Frisell Bill Frisell Quartet
16. Gutaris Breeze (6000km To Amsterdam) John Beltram Late Night Beats: the Post-Club Sound of Britain
Discovered in a shower around 4 am in late 1998 (yes, I heard it on NPR) the Loussier themes were among those that carried me through that bizarre depression I had in early 1999. Odd, that, because 1999 was one of the most successful years of my life. The other pieces are also discoveries I made that year.
The Frisell track figured heavily on the Last Words episode of This American Life, which remains my favorite episode ever. I strongly recommend anyone to check it out - you can still listen to it free with Real Audio.
The Jacques Loussier album was used as pre-show music for the original staged reading at Dobama in August, 2002. Though no more depressing than listening to Kid A before a show (how many people hear the pre-show music, think "uh-oh" and leave?) the Satie themes are too ... I don't know, they suggest something a bit too Hallmark. I wanted a sense of unease to hit people as they came in, not the sense they were about to see a staged performance of something from the Lifetime network.
And Finally...
17. Happy Families XTC She's Having a Baby
Have you got Miss Carriage? She's the girl who wants a baby that she cannot find. Strange, the ones who want to win the race are usually the ones who fall behind.
Complete lyrics. A British card game for kids. Sometimes you don't even care what the lyrics of certain songs mean ... until they start making sense.
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