It’s entitled: The Rockets’ Red Glare While a Gun Kills Many Men Before It’s Done. On the eve of the 4th of July, Freddie took time to reflect on some of the songs and writings of Americans about the land they love. .
If you feel like it, leave a comment … there … or here … or both!
Click here to see the blog at the Huffington Post site.
It’s entitled: How to Succeed by Breaking a Leg and is about The Educational Theatre Association’s 16th annual Thespian Festival in Lincoln Nebraska.
If you feel like it, leave a comment … there … or here … or both!
Click here to see the blog at the Huffington Post site.
Click here to see a reprint of the blog at InPurplish.
It’s entitled: The Secret Weapon in a Not-So-Great Depression and is about how the newspaper comic strip Annie may have just ended its 86-year run but how the musical Annie is coming back to Broadway in 2012!
If you feel like it, leave a comment … there … or here … or both!
Click here to see the blog at the Huffington Post site.
It’s entitled: Bringing Some Glee to High School Musicals and Helping Teachers Be American Idols.
If you feel like it, leave a comment … there … or here … or both!
Click here to see the blog at the Huffington Post site.
Webmaster’s Note: Freddie’s reference to school licenses were for Music Theatre International’s “Broadway Junior” productions — classic and contemporary musicals adapted into 70-minute editions for school-aged performers.
Freddie conceived MTI’s “Juniors” program in 1995 and after 3 years the first productions were being staged, Since then, more than 50,000 separate grade- and middle-school productions have been licensed and performed in American schools.
Click here for more information on how the Juniors program works and what productions are available for license.
Click here to see a real nice San Diego production announcement (courtesy of local TV Channel 6.) The show ran in March of 2010.
The best thing about going away is Sherpa’s greeting when we get back. (To see each image bigger, click on it; when done, hit browser back button to see these thumbnails again.)
Myrna & Freddie
The festival is the world’s largest musical theater festival dedicated to groups working with elementary and middle school students.
In 1995, Music Theatre International created MTI Education, the first educational division in a major musical theater licensing company. Over the past 15 years, MTI Education has transformed the marketplace for age-appropriate performance material for young performers with over 50,000 productions of “Junior” and “Kids” Broadway musicals in all 50 states.
As Chairman of MTI, I am proud of MTI Education and the Junior Theatre Festival, which is presented by Music Theatre International (and hosted and produced by iTheatrics and Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars). Young people from all over the United States with different interests work together as a creative team(s) to learn, to perform, to exchange ideas and to demonstrate their inventiveness and creativity. In turn, theater professionals encourage teachers and students to achieve their personal best by offering them musical theater vehicles modified for age-appropriateness and to illustrate techniques of producing and direction with limited resources.
The ultimate goal of the festival is to celebrate and nurture the love of musical theater in young people. We at MTI believe this will help these students perform better in all areas of school with increased attention span, reading skills and articulation. They will be our artists and audiences of the future, but as future citizens, they also learn collaboration, mutuality of respect and collegiality which are the essence of American tradition for our society and define a community.
I am honored that the festival and its awards will now carry my name.
To those terrific committed fans and friends who read Sweetie, Baby, Cookie, Honey over the past 23 years and particularly those who recently elected to reach out to me, to all of you I say ‘thank you’.
I feel validated because the common theme running through your notes, blogs, and emails IS the “epiphany,” revealing that you actually “got it!” Michael Jackson’s one more commodity to be exploited.
That’s the whole point of my 1986 “trashy novel of sex, drugs, rock and roll” (thanks for that quote, Oprah) and the “smarmy vulgarity and corruption in the underbelly of the music business” (courtesy of “Billboard’s” reviewer) and the temptations of the music industry, a greedy industry which inevitably produces psychological and creative drying out.
Pressures of an unforgiving record company demanding what they call more “product.” Pressures of unforgiving managers and promoters, (for more dates and more commission), pressures from an unforgiving demanding fickle public, pressures from ever-changing musical styles and pressures not to age in show biz ’cause that reminds us that we can age too…and do.
Aging is perceived as decaying and stars must be “glam” cryogenically frozen in time to always be stars and look like stars because we worship them. If they live long enough, “stars” are reduced to hiding, caricatures of themselves, celebrities who wear baseball caps to meld & evaporate in the supermarket or overuse cosmetics and surgical illusions as a form of self-delusion…. If they’re really lucky…they die…and die before their time…before they shrivel. But still the public wants desperately to see Farrah Fawcett as a shriveled cancer-ridden corpse, no matter how unseemly that may be. That’s the “biz” — and that’s us, folks.
There’s the “OMG” factor. Well of course it’s “sudden” but surely none of it is unexpected. What could have been unexpected about Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison or Elvis Presley? The absolute guaranteed certainty after death (even John Lennon) falls into step with what currently is happening. ALL of the deceased were worth more dead than alive.
Here’s the deal: there are two independent predictable trajectories of increasing frenzy which are interdependent.
The first is the music industry and ancillary businesses rushing to create any piece of memorabilia whether or not authentic, whether or not licensed, whether or not royalty bearing in an effort to exploit the tragedy…speaking with respect in hushed tones, but ultimately raising the level to a pitch of a Carney barker at a circus, hustling the crowds into a side show, pitching an audio time capsule of an original record, the compilation of recordings, video moments, out-takes, rehearsals, (many of which the artist themselves would never ever want the public to ever hear or see!). There’s the tickets, the scalpers, the memorials, the concert tributes, the endless additional memorials, the effort to “out do” Princess Di, the effort to “out-build” a Graceland from a Neverland, to drive the recordings into repackaged, money machines, just like the artist spent his life, being a money machine being used and exploited by others, desperately trying to surround himself with anyone with a moral compass but never knowing a difference and in the end, seeming to choose charlatans, sycophants and so called professionals, people whose prescription pads are buyable, just like their souls, for a price. Why do they do it? “Well, if I didn’t do it, someone else would”! A specious argument for acts which are indefensible.
The second trajectory are the fans (and the press) … the audience which interfaces with the industry’s greed and avarice. You have a home run when you put them together. In death, the bad guys rush to embark on a gold rush, to tap the mine, but the gold rush can not score unless there’s a market for the gold. And that’s when the global “fans” come-a-running.
Mass media exhibits, second-by-second, how the global public has a fetish, which is a necrophilia-by-proxy…loving in death someone who they never actually knew. They become emotionally wrought, suffering, crying and sobbing. In these painful economic times the “fans” are oblivious to their children’s needs, their rent or bills, but willing to max out yet another credit card on those t-shirts, posters, tickets, bus-rides and R.V. trips to camp out in nowheresville, just so they could take a telephoto, digital picture and email it to their friends standing next to the Neverland gates…while thousands around them do the same, turning the sight of the deceased’s retreat and his privacy into a modern day Lourdes.
Oh yes, this definitely is a circus, but more of the Fellini-esque, Dali-esque grotesque style, and tragic. Rock stars are definitely worth more dead than alive Sweetie, Baby, Cookie, Honey, so to those of you who got it and told me,…thank you again.
As to Mister Jackson, watch carefully.
Michael’s ever crushing debt will be eradicated. Michael already has a new value to his estate. The Internal Revenue Service will have a fascinating time. Michael’s net worth on date of his death is paltry, compared to 1 year from now! 5 years from now…..think billions…. Think of the future income stream from the records from his record royalties, the mechanical royalties, the performance royalties the synchronization licenses. Think about inflated value of anything and everything he touched at auctions!
How many so called “authentic white glove(s)” will we see auctioned at the Swiss auction houses of Sotheby’s and Christie’s in London and Dubai and Tokyo and Hong Kong and New York? Days after his death his estate’s economics were already different, otherwise surrogate mommies and sperm donors would not be descending, the caring family that had begged him for “reunions” so they too could make a buck, have all come forward lovingly.
Shame on those who only a few years ago joined the mobs & dissed this little Peter Pan, tortured creature for his lightened skin, who wrenchingly turned himself into a Madame Tussaud’s wax figure… Those of you who spoke without any caring, feeling, empathy or compassion when he stumbled…and now try to be one more TV talking head speaking reverently about him you are, each of you, a disgrace…. He was a “credit” to his race, and those hypocrites are a “debit” to the human race, rushing to get a taste of his fame and glory by reflected association.
So the answer is “NO!” To all of you who asked me, the answer is still “no.” No part II sequel, no second Sweetie, Baby, kind-off book inside of me….it ain’t necessary. I said it……TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO!!! and now you’ve, seen it, touched it, felt it, as it unfolds before you every hour, every day.
Sadly you will see this again. It is inevitable.
Webmaster’s Note: To see Freddie’s predictions coming true, click on the link: “Jackson Blog Coming True!” that appears near the top of the column on the right. It opens in a new window or tab, so just close it to return here.