American Idyll

Making bad music is hard.

Outta Sync is, as you may recall, about a brand-new boy band comprised of middle-aged geezers like me. The footage we saw at the party was delightful, and it included a rough cut of the music video that the boys made. That we made. But for music, we've only ever had the ragged demo that Bill Robens cut, ages ago. When we shot the video that's what we were all singing to, and no one had ever given any thought to whether there would be solo lines or any of that, so we all just sang everything.

Well, now there are solo lines--based mostly on who happens to be front-and-center in a given shot. (Has there ever been a case where the video was made before the song?) The tempo can't change without also having to futz around with film speeds; and if Bill comes up with a great new line, well too bad, we just can't change the song at this point. You might think that none of this really matters, because the song and the video are supposed to be bad, so why not just slap something together and let it be what it is?

To answer that, let me tell you a brief story.

Several years ago, freshly arrived in Chicago, Marc Rosenbush cast me in a one-act he was directing. (We knew each other at Emerson and didn't much care for each other; then happened to move to Chicago on the same weekend and he needed an actor but didn't know anyone, so that's the start of that.) It was a play called "cont(r)act," written by our friend Max Burbank (who may be a distant relative, since my grandmother was a Burbank). In it, there were these dance interludes where the girl (Suzanne Carney) dances elegantly and I dance comically. Easy enough for Suzanne, who is an actual dancer. Me, I tried very hard to dance comically. After only a couple rounds of this, Marc took me to one side. "Just dance the best you can. Trust me, it'll be funny." So I did, and it was, because I am not a dancer and my best efforts are just plain comical.

The lesson, of course, is that you can't just slap something together and hope it'll work. You have to work very hard to get the result you want, and if that result is supposed to be a bad song, then you achieve it by treating the song exactly as if it were a cut for Sgt. Pepper. And last night, we met for our first rehearsal.

There are all the usual problems: Doug Clayton is directing a play and had call-backs tonight so he couldn't be there; Ezra was cutting film all day and was wiped out so he couldn't be there, even though he's the only true tenor in the group; and future rehearsals are still tenuous because Bill Robens and Dan Wingard are starting a show at Theatre of NOTE. I wish the phrase "herding cats" hadn't become such a cliché, because that's exactly what it's like trying to coordinate actors' schedules.

Now bear in mind, I am not musical. I love music, but I am not a musician. I love to sing, but I am not a singer. My pitch can wander if I don't pay careful attention, and my sense of rhythm is not what you'd call accurate. I took music theory in college and didn't do very well, not because the teacher was bad (in fact Tony Tommasini is now one of the music critics for the New York Times), but because I just couldn't wrap my head around the mathematical complexities of music.

With that said, I still have certain minor gifts that enable me to get along. I have a decent voice with a decent range, and my time singing madrigals taught me how to listen. But with this song, "2BX2U," much of what I learned with the madrigals is working against me: I learned to blend, but now they want our voices to compete; I learned to sing prettily, but now they want us rough; and of course I learned to sing in Latin, but now we sing of "Like a Roman in a roamin' region" for no good reason at all.

Nonetheless, there were moments. The guy who cowrote the song, Bill Newlin, would lead each of us through our individual melodies then we would put it all together--and suddenly, out would come this big great chord, and even with two voices missing we would all suddenly get very excited about the work we were doing.

Because it feels good to make a really good bad song. Remember that when you hear the final product, and please, forgive us for it.