Since 2001 there has been a stream of theatrical productions inspired by the music of beloved artists and bands, starting with the Abba bio-show Mamma Mia.
A recent USA TODAY headline, “‘Jukebox Musicals’ Pull in Some Coin” says it plainly: The American public loves this genre of the lives behind the music! While the true-story aspect is sometimes compromised, the result isn't. Audiences are dancing in the aisles and jumping to their feet with standing ovations.
My wife and daughters raved about Mamma. But I saved my true excitement until the critically acclaimed Jersey Boys made it to the Big Apple and the Great White Way. Hey, my music, guys from our neighborhood, and the times of my novel, Bad News on the Doorstep! I’ve played the soundtrack hundreds of times and presented it to friends and relatives as well.
The guys from Belleville, Stephen Crane Village, and Bloomfield Avenue in Newark made it all the way to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. (In Bad News, readers know the Four Seasons as Lenny Latore and the Four Loves.)
Ring of Fire (the tribute to Johnny Cash), Movin’Out (Billy Joel’s sounds), and The Times They Are a-Changin’ (Dylan’s work) are other examples. Ms. Gardner quotes Michael Dodge of the Jersey Boys production team: Jukebox musicals "begin with music and blossom with a story.”
Well, all this has me doing some thinking. Jukebox Musicals? How about Jukebox Novels? Maybe Musivels? Hey, after a little research and checking with the King of Pop Culture, my agent, editor, and friend, Mike (“The Big Canary”) Finley, it turns out it’s not such a new idea. (see Mike’s blog at www.mfinley.com ) So he says. ["But Joe, John Dos Passos used popular music as a uniting device in his 1933 novel USA Trilogy." - MF]
Be that as it may, it still seems awfully contemporary to me! Googling led me to a fine novel by Cynthia Shearer, The Celestial Jukebox (2005, www.shoemakerhoard.com ).
The author binds her most eclectic characters in a Mississippi Delta town with American popular music. In fact, she introduces about 30 songs within the story. Blues, jazz, and dusty Delta soul songs flow out of a vintage jukebox acting as a centerpiece in some Chinese-run grocery in fictitious Madagascar, Mississippi. Sam Cook, Cash, Hank Williams, Dylan, Patsy Cline, and others live in Shearer’s worn out music machine.
So what, you say? The Celestial Jukebox and Bad News on the Doorstep seem to me to be kindred spiritual experiences in one major respect. While the Jukebox Musicals are packing them in today because of the real-life stories behind the music, Shearer’s book and mine have the music lingering hauntingly behind the real-life stories. The reminiscent wanderings of readers, when they hear a certain song behind the story, become all too sentimental, yet meaningful, if properly interpreted.
Just last week, Dr. Joe Scarpelli, our former Essex County Freeholder and Chiropractor in Nutley, told my Pastor, Anthony Ventola, that we have to turn Bad News on the Doorstep into a CD, with all of the nostalgic background music that would accentuate the emotion of the spoken words of the novel.
Thanks for that vote of confidence, Dr. Joe. But the truth is, we have to get a mass market publisher first to afford the voice-over and classic list of doo wop, rock ‘n’ roll, and ethnic music that waft in and out of our epic! But the good doctor is correct.
Can you imagine Danny Aiello doing the narration, Joe Pesci the male characters, and Connie Francis the females? Then to have the Del Vikings, Dion and the Belmonts, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Glenn Miller, Perry Como, Louie Prima, Connie herself, The Channels, The Five Satins, The Mellow Kings, Wilbur Harrison, The Danliers, Frankie Lymon, Don McLean, Sinatra, and all the others delivering their Bad News hits, … oh, what a CD that would be!
Maybe the time has come for Jukebox Novels??!! There is no question about the power of music, even in the background. Like salt, it adds life and taste, it touches the deepest caverns of our souls, and it brings color to the drab, dark, and mundane. Without being part of the dialogue or thought process, it speaks volumes, often the unspeakable because of the overflow of emotion.
Music tattoos the moment on our minds, it enhances the mood, and revitalizes the memory. The music made from heaven connects the spirit and mind with the heart. During dry seasons of our lives it refreshes like springtime rain, conjuring up a kaleidoscope of images that resurrect life. Indeed, word pictures give birth, but music nurtures and gives meaning. The lyric in its proper key links the combination of sterile letters and words with the infinite.
Music gives life beyond the written word, to provide lingering memories that allow the reader to savor the taste of the Jukebox Novel, long after it has found its grave on a shelf or in a cardboard box. In fact, does not music in the background of life depicted in novel form allow the reader to become a character in the book, albeit a silent bystander absorbing each sound and sight? Yes, with music, the commingled word written on the page will linger as long as that sound exists.
In closing, maybe the popularity of the Jukebox Musical and the imminent hit of the Jukebox Novel are due to America’s yearning for the relative simplicity of the past.
Yes, our memory blocks out a lot. But talk to Manilow and ask him “Why?” about his “Greatest Songs of the 50’s.” (See “Barry Manilow, ‘High School Musical’, Geeks Redefine Pop-Music Cool;” by Jim Farber of the NY Daily News, March 23, 2006) “Eisenhower-era revisited,” said Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke.
Are the tastes and desires of the common man changing? A surge to squeaky-clean is what the Daily News ponders. A breath of fresh air to bring back the fifties? Farber says it’s happening with tweens downloading music. Radio’s in transition.
Well, perhaps the time has come for Celestial Jukebox and Bad News on the Doorstep. In any event, put music together with a good story, and you have the most powerful force in the world, next to, oh, I don't know -- LOVE.
And if the book has love in it, too -- Hey, that sounds familiar!
Stand back, everybody, I'm thinking ..., and its Good News about Bad News ...
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