Bandstand--poor name & marketing? — Page 2

Gaveston. Always a pleasure. Someone who usually has answers.

I've become quite fond of Bandstand, but I wonder if I'm being too forgiving of its flaws because the young cast is so ingratiating, they worked so hard at promoting the show, and as a not much better than average trumpet player in high school I'm a little in awe of actors who can play their instruments on stage while in character.

As they say, or maybe only I say, 90 percent of selling something is marketing. Lin Manuel said nothing about swing when he tweeted "Best jazz score since either Jelly's Last Jam or City Of Angels, take your pick. INCREDIBLE score." Jazz musicians, and jazz generally, always seem to be treated with great respect, even if one doesn't care for what they are playing. Mastery of the instrument and ability to improvise.

But what is jazz and what is swing? I see Duke Ellington described as one of the originators of big band jazz. Is Billy Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train" jazz or swing? I think that most people, especially if they knew Duke Ellington's band was performing it, would call it jazz.

What about Benny Goodman? The "King of Swing" is described in bios as a jazz clarinetist. "Sing Sing Sing" seems just as worthy as 'A' Train to be labeled jazz.

Glenn Miller and "In the Mood" are most likely to be labeled swing. He was a hit machine but most of his pieces were soft or even bland compared to the Goodman and Ellington tunes.

If you look for a more technical distinction, swing can be called a form of jazz involving a larger ensemble of players improvising much less and reading music much more.

The swing era was the last great flowering of jazz before its period of harmonic experimentation. At its best, swing achieved an art of improvisation in which current harmonic conventions counterbalanced the stylistic individuality of its great creators. The swing era also coincided with the greatest popularity of dance bands in general. But when singers who began as swing stylists, such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and Sarah Vaughan, became more popular than the swing bands they sang with, the swing era came to an end. The harmonic experimentation of the late swing era, evident in, for example, the Woody Herman and Charlie Barnet bands of the early 1940s, presaged the next development in jazz: bop, or bebop.

The reason that I got into this morass was my wondering if Bandstand had been labeled "the new American jazz musical" then a lot fewer of its mailers might have not been immediately tossed, but instead the recipient would have gone on to read the rest of it.

I've heard other people complain about the show's undue focus on how Julia's husband died. I can only add: if you've ever lost a loved one, and not known how he or she spent their last hours, it's a question that can haunt you, independent of war. I lost a parent thus in the 1980s -- a missing 18 hours -- and can honestly admit it took me decades to piece together a resolution. It made sense to me that Julia needed some visualization. Perhaps the show hasn't found a way to make it persuasive.

"This is LIfe' is a lovely song, so wistful and melancholy. It's one of the numbers that will lift and work out of context. The show also uses that moment to insert that final bit of reality, a single hotel door. The rest of the final 1/4 is stylized and MGM.

My subjective response, on a second viewing: One thing I admired was the way Donny is written and played. He's flawed, he is imperfect. A hothead at times. But he's an adult. He is a grown man. Not because he's a vet (or straight and white), because he comes home and takes charge of his own life, as messed up as he necessarily is. I am weary of young men portrayed (mostly in films and TV) as perpetual adolescents. Donny is orphaned (at least since Papermill, apparently) and stands up for himself, makes his life happen. In "Right This Way," he asks only for respect, and then says "we'll make 'em give it to us." In 2017, that leaps out, not as heroic but hell, exemplary. I'm tired of Peter Pans. That he is not. Small point, but I found it telling.

Updated On: 8/28/17 at 12:42 PM

Nice sentiments, Auggie.

I've read and heard about the desire for the wife or mother to know exactly how the husband or son died. Often a buddy will go visit the widow and talk about what happened. If it were me, I'm not sure that I would want to know. Painful. And if it were friendly fire you know that you'll never be officially informed of that. Officially they all died bravely in combat defending their country.

So you think that "This is Life" might live on after the show is gone. I'm not confident that any song will hang around, although it can depend a lot on whether the right vocalist covers it. "First Steps" is a cute song. That's the first song Laura performs on the Playbill video if anyone ever figured out how to play the video.

"Love Will Come and Find Me Again" would be the obvious candidate, but, as one of the critics pointed out, it is pretty odd for a still grieving widow to be singing hopefully that she'll find a replacement.

A little sad that Bandstand will close and probably never be heard from again.

OlBlueEyes said: "Nice sentiments, Auggie.

I've read and heard about the desire for the wife or mother to know exactly how the husband or son died. Often a buddy will go visit the widow and talk about what happened. If it were me, I'm not sure that I would want to know. Painful. And if it were friendly fire you know that you'll never be officially informed of that. Officially they all died bravely in combat defending their country.

So you think that "This is Life" might live on after the show is gone. I'm not confident that any song will hang around, although it can depend a lot on whether the right vocalist covers it. "First Steps" is a cute song. That's the first song Laura performs on the Playbill video if anyone ever figured out how to play the video.

"Love Will Come and Find Me Again" would be the obvious candidate, but, as one of the critics pointed out, it is pretty odd for a still grieving widow to be singing hopefully that she'll find a replacement.

A little sad that Bandstand will close and probably never be heard from again.


"

I was watching a documentary of Princess Diana in which Harry and Diana;s sister were obsessing over the exact details of how she ended up in the back of that limo without a seatbelt and who was taking pictures of her body. Diana's death was very public and all sorts of info is out there, but they were clearly fixated on things that to them didn't make sense. For instance Diana;s sister kept insisting that Diana always wore seatbelts.

I think it's often a healthy way to displace grief. Focus on the details, and not the greater loss. Harry said that for many years he couldn't talk about it at all and still goes to therapy. So Julia's reaction isn't strange at all.

I do think that one issue is that Laura Osnes for all of her enormous singing talent isn't a very spontaneous actress. So some parts of the dialogue came across as stilted and artificial.

poisonivy2 said:"
I do think that one issue is that Laura Osnes for all of her enormous singing talent isn't a very spontaneous actress. So some parts of the dialogue came across as stilted and artificial."



See.. I thought the whole show comes off that way. Stilted and artificial.

I, as well, thought it was a juke box musical - and thought it was about a dance contest of some sort. Didn't attract me in the least.

Then I found out more about it when I joined here a few months ago, and am sort of interested in seeing it...but my schedule won't allow for it.

I agree that the title is a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if there is more confusion when The Band's Visit opens in November.

Back to the marketing, I've mentioned this before but I really, really liked this show but the marketing was so bizarre though. First the ads were all making it seem like it was this sexy show with all the dancing and the glistening skin and the smoke. Then the ads were all about "Andy Blankenbuehler of Hamilton" with his own show. Then it was about the choreography. Through it all, could you really tell what the show was about?

The marketing has definitely had a bit of an identity crisis but there are three things that won me over to getting a ticket:

-hearing snippets of the score
-the Tony Awards performance
-the sheer enthusiasm the cast displays for this show on social media

For someone who wasn't terribly excited when this show opened, it has quickly become one of the shows I'm most looking forward to next week.

I was just mentioning in the grosses thread about regarding War Paint - it's such a shame that it hasn't gained traction when new original musicals for adults seem to get fewer and farther between.

Wow. That's harsh. When you put it that way it almost seems like you are saying that your judgment of Bandstand is the correct judgment and if someone liked the show then he or she is probably a big fan of the Three Stooges as well.



Old Blue Eyes and I have found some common ground in this thread. I've been going to the theater since I was six and saw the first national of My Fair Lady. I've seen just about every major musical that opened on B'way in the past 40 years, including debut productions of, say, all Sondheim and ALW shows, here and in London (just to cite the obvious). I've worked in the entertainment industry most of my adult life. Yet it always fascinates me when people want to school me about the lack of validity in my responses. How I couldn't possibly have had the experience I enjoyed, because my inability to recognize some lack in the artistry. Invariably, evaluations can spill over into insults, if not intentional ones. What's always forgotten: many seasoned theatergoers can find satisfying emotional experiences in flawed material. Our reactions are mysterious, not always intellectualized plus and negative columns. My response to Bandstand -- the show I had the least interest in seeing this season -- is Exhibit A. It took me by surprise. I can attempt to defend its integrity, fully recognizing where it falls down, because its whole was greater than its parts for me. At the end of the day, I find it heartening when -- at this late date -- I blink back tears through a show that was off my radar. The lights dim, we never know what awaits us, or how we'll be taken in.

I had a good time at Bandstand, but I did think the songshift because of the contract wording was a bit contrived. You knew they were doing that song at some point all along...

Totally agree, by giving an accurate portrayal, they can't make it INCREDIBLY heartbreaking. At the time, nobody talked about PTSD (it didn't even have a name) so it has to be masked. They do an incredible job acting seemingly normal while also seeming to suffer internally, but it doesn't lend itself as well to grandiose theatrics.