One of the genre of small, witty, bright and tuneful musicals that are born
far from the lights of Broadway, is this tongue-in-cheek telling of a
science-fiction story set in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley in the late
1950s. It began life as a screenplay intended as an affectionate parody. It
is a fun listen the first time you put it in your CD player, and its
infectious score bears repeated listening because it has enough substance to
remain musically satisfying. If you enjoyed Scott Warrender's Das Barbecü,
Marvin Laird's Ruthless!, Skip Kennon's
The Last Starfighter or David Nehls'
The Great American Trailer Park
Musical you will enjoy this disc. |
Storyline: A spoof of the cheap science-fiction movies of the drive-in
movie era, an invasion by people from Planet X who didn't come twenty
million miles just to say hello. They came to conquer the human race -
including the Bunsons: Fred, the father who knows best; Joyce who starts off
as the
perfectly supportive subdivision wife, and teenaged
Donna who wishes her beatnik boyfriend would do something besides recite
poetry when they go up to Mulholland
Drive on Makeout Mountain. The aliens, singing "You Can Kiss This Little
Planet Goodbye" are led by a disembodied brain whose "plan ten"
utilizes a fantastic will bender gun to control the humans. If the name Bruce Kimmel means anything to you, you know you will enjoy this
disc even before you put it on. After all, this is the man who gave show music fans uncounted hours of pleasure
with his series of recordings of songs we had never known. Lost in Boston
(volumes 1 through 5) are rescued songs cut from hit shows before they got to
Broadway. Kimmel also provided additional pleasure in volumes of songs from musicals that
never made it to Broadway, songs from made-for-TV musicals, a host of
off-Broadway and regional cast recordings and many CDs by musical theater
performers on the Varèse Sarabande, Fynsworth Alley and now Kritzerland labels.
He produced three of the four cast recordings mentioned above. He also gave
us The First Nudie Musical (don't ask).
Kimmel's score features catchy melodies and often
infectious rhythms on which genuinely inventive lyrics carry the spoof
forward. There are a number of groan-inducing puns and few songs reach for
anything profound. This isn't that kind of musical. This is a fun evening
captured in a fast hour. The title song is backed by a rhythmic phrase that
drives itself into your head while the chorus steps up the scale in a
catchy, upbeat manner. There's a Sondheim-ish vamp ("There are
saucers in the sky / and we really don't know why / all we know is / that it
can't be very good") and a tap number that is, you should pardon the
expression, a kick. It is titled, you guessed it, "The Brain Tap."
The sound here is bright, clean and close-miked. A
five piece combo plays Larry Moore's sprightly orchestrations with Kurt
Festinger providing what becomes the signature sound of the score on reeds.
Oh, and it is good to see a thank you to engineer Vinnie "X" Cirilli on a
Bruce Kimmel-produced disc once again. Those thank yous were a running
gag in Kemmel's recordings for over a decade. Fans made a point of checking
the fine print on the last page of the CD booklet to find out just what
middle name had been added for each new recording.
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