Try to Remember the Kind of September...

...and follow, follow, follow, follow, follow.
Julies Andrews: Try to Remember

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I always thought this was a beautiful lyric, but I wonder what Sondheim thinks of it. :)

That song is from THE JULIE ANDREWS SHOW, which is an NBC special, shown on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, 1965. It was such a tremendous ratings' success for NBC, they rebroadcast it on March 23, 1966, to equal success.

amen.

Sometimes I try to remember. And sometimes I try not to remember.

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It's strange how huge events create ripples that gradually change the course of people's fates. The events of 9/11 started a chain reaction that gradually reached my small town, and indirectly set the spark that led me into the theatre.

I was a young tween, pulled out of school when all the local private schools were briefly shut down due to our proximity to the field in Somerset where one of the planes went down. During the aftermath, my father, still shaken up but kind of in awe of what was going on, brought me into the living room to show me how the music world had come together to raise money and support the first responders. The "Concert for New York City" blew my mind- especially the performances of Billy Joel and The Who, who I had heard snatches of on the radio, but never gave serious thought to.

The way this fat old guy at the piano, and these three grizzled British men managed to squeeze passion, energy and a very real sense of drama and storytelling out of their music, while still rocking pretty hard, blew my mind. I had been no big music fan- I found it pleasant in its way but it didn't engage me. Suddenly, I saw something I hadn't seen before- music that was more than words with a tune. Music that said something, from a point of view and with an IDEA behind it. Music that was, in a sense, theatrical, without being "theatre music."

My next birthday saw the arrival of lots of albums by The Who, including "Tommy" and my favorite, "Quadrophenia." Music as storytelling as well as performance touched a chord in me, a young kind who aspired to be a writer and a storyteller, who played piano because his parents told him "it's good for you." When I discovered that "Tommy" had become a movie musical, and then a stage show, I launched a rather unsuccessful attempt to get my seventh-grade musical to be "Tommy." Instead, it was "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown." I decided to audition anyway, and played Schroeder.

My whole journey with the theatre has been a result of the willingness of The Who, Billy Joel and their colleagues to come together and do good with their music. I suppose that's the moral of this story: despite the massive acts of evil, and the equally massive acts of apathy, that plague our world, a single act of good can stand as a beacon to others to do good, live more, and bring some amount of light into the world.

Updated On: 9/11/13 at 12:11 PM

<3

Thanks for bumping.

I love this song. It's so poignant now...

(On a lighter note, I was at an open mic one time where someone was trying to sing this song...they couldn't remember the lyrics.)

1960s recording...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYA5se5niI0

And this is how Jerry Orbach sang it in 1962 --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPoxZ1NPBY