After the roaring success of The ‘Spill, the movie, they’ve decided to take things to Broadway, as they do. We’ll need a lot of reworking though… to return to life as ‘SPILL! the musical.
1) The plot… what’s the story? Remember that we need to shoehorn some songs in. (But we’re all fairly good at that at this point!)
2) The libretto. Give us an example of the lyrics. Could be a couplet, a verse, a rousing chorus or a whole damn song. Whatever your time and creative energy permits.
3) The composer. Who will we trust to write our music? What will it sound like?
4) The cast. Who will play whom?
5) The sets & costumes. Give us a brief description of the set design, and tell us what everybody will be wearing.
and…
***** JAZZ HANDS ******
I apologize if this went up too close to the weekly song challenge. There’s just too much going on these days!!
Great idea Steen! Gonna need some time to think this one through! Will be back.
RR the musical might work:
I Have A Theme (sung by Jon Dennis to the tune of ABBA’s I Have A Dream)
March of the MFFers
I’ve got a lovely bunch of tangenitals
Rise of the rubrik pedants
Oh where has my Spotify gone?
Flouncing song
Non-musical interlude: from P Ubu (contains farting).
Ding dong dond
(Thank you for my) ding dong dond (reprise)
Off topic waffle
The unveiling of the picks
Flouncing song (reprise)
We didn’t start the RR (Cast) (Music W. Joel)
(Curtain)
(Theatre closes down for good)
Flouncing Song (reprise) will be the Flamenco version, OK?
Shoey I laughed out loud on the playground, sitting by myself. Thanks.
Well, if they can get away with this, why not?
Perhaps The Flouncing Song should be renamed Whinge & Flounce to the tune made famous by Lulu?
&, for balance “I love this theme, I love this tune” sung by Steen accompanied by Sakura on koto.
How do we do this? Taking it in turns, scene by scene? In that case…
We’d better start with a big choral number, representing Readers Recommend before the ‘Spill was created – a chaotic melange of voices, styles, rhythms, the Midnight Feeding Frenzy brought to life in something resembling the Liberation Music Orchestra’s Circus ’68 ’69. We will then, I guess, gradually fade everyone else out, leaving one solitary figure under the spotlight, musing to himself somewhere in Fife…
I’ve spent all day invigilating exams and marking scripts, and have now had two beers, so am fresh out of inspiration for the lyrics for said choral number, but obviously it needs to feature both solo lines and big unison choruses…
ALL: We need a song… Think of a song…
TREEFROGDEMON: Tom Petty’s Learning to Fly.
JAPANTHER: I Choose Horses by Mogwai .
RIPTHISOINT: Let’s Spend the Night Together.
NILPFERD: Always Take the Weather…
DARCEYSDAD: Lights Out by UFO.
ALL: And don’t forget the old familiar Ode to Billie Joe…
I demand a lengthy monologue by JAP!
Debby, or maybe lots of leotard clad dancers leaping around the stage yelling out song titles. THROBBING GRISTLE!
Well ‘list songs’ are a staple of musical theatre. I’m hearing something in a Gilbert & Sullivan vein…
The set for the opening scene. As the curtain (a facsimile of a black and white page from out favourite British daily) rises we see a long table of tired old style journos bashing away at rickety typewriters more or less rhythmically in a stuffy, ill lit office. The music is sad, languid and uninspiring (one of my noms, no doubt!). Our hero(ine) strides into the office and puts a new fangled laptop thingy down on the table. The lighting so far has only been dim and from above. As the laptop is opened light shoots out onto a backdrop where the first ever Spill post is seen. Cracks appear in the walls and around the skirting boards and the tops of the walls. Light and colour invade the stage as, to the strains of Looking for Lewis and Clark, the journos are replaced by ‘Spillers past and present who laptop, pc, mac or smartphone in hand start zapping their increasingly bizarre and personal outpourings onto the ever more frantic and colourful backdrop. Fintan is heard to observe: WTF are you guys up to?
Time to tell our story people…
Don’t … have … time … must … resist …
An innocent, fresh faced young man (played by me) stands on a darkened stage, a single spotlight reveals he is clutching a copy of an obscure Taiwanese punk record in his had.
From the shadows a disreputable looking man in a grubby raincoat approaches and says
“You like music , son ? Then come with me…”
The young lad follows as the man darts down a greasy alley, the chorus sings “Don’t go” ( Yazzoo) while for the alley can be heard the sound of “Step inside love” ( Cilla) being played on a tinny jukebox.
Hands reach out and grab the young man pulling him into the blackness as evil , cackling laughter erupts from the dark shadows. “No escape” ( the Seeds) plays and the young man blacks out.
He comes to alone one the stage seated at a computer desk with a laptop open in front of him. He tries to rise but finds himself shackled to the chair and his hands cuffed. “The name of the game”( Abba) plays. A large neon sign suddenly illuminates the darkness above his head, flashing random words “Birthdays” “Weddings” “Cheese”
The disreputable man appears and pokes the prisoner with a stick. “NOM !” he shouts “NOM !”
A gaggle of malformed and hunched denizens appear and poke at the young fellow too.
“DOND !” they scream “DOND !”….he types furiously, faster and faster until, once more he collapses…….
Spill the Musical!!!
Well, I think it should be a romantic story! I think it should be a love story about our Guru JD! I think he should meet and fall in love with a beautiful Japanese girl, called Amami (it means Beautiful sky – if i am lucky enough one day to have a daughter I will call her this) and she shows him how great Jpop is. He discovers she is a wonderful singer and becomes her manger, and she becomes really successful, but she has a terrible secret, she is going deaf and will soon lose her ability to sing, so she breaks up with him and goes to live in a tiny village in the mountains because she thinks he only loves her for her voice
JD is terribly upset and so he turns against Jpop, but one day he finds out from a friendly tree frog demon that the Amami is living in the mountains and goes to visit her, but on the way he has a terrible accident and then he is in a coma, while he is in a coma he sees the shirogami (death god) called Pairubu who says that if he can make Amami happy he will not take him to the underworld. So Sloopy makes the promise and he is saved.
He finds Amami who is happy to see him and they find the great doctor called Rocking Mitch who can perform an operation to save Amami hearing. So using the latest Precision Bass Surgery technique from the USA he operates on Amami . The operation is a success but as a result of the operation Amami looses her memory and does not know who JD is. He is very upset and so he goes travelling to different places and even goes to Spain where he meets the great flamenco singer Makinavaja who teaches him a magical song which will restore the memory.
So he goes back to Japan and meets Amami again and he sing the song and her memory is restored and she sees him and remembers him and they live happily ever after and have four beautiful daughters, Suzi, BOK and Amylee and Alimunday who form a Jpop idol group called Sloopy Musume and have great chart success with their cheerful Jpop songs.
Libretto: Shirogami Pairubu to Sloopy
This face that you see
Is really me
Who looks in my eye
They always die
But there is key
If you love Amami
Then you have a chance
To escape the death dance
The music will be written by singer song writer Yui!! (my favourite!!!) Also she does great romantic ballards!!!
Sets and costumes…..Well I think it should be done as a bollywood musical and Chinny will design all the costumes and sets!!!
Damn ! I never get the part I wanted.
I auditioned for Amami.
Controversy, that’s what gets bums on seats. I propose Jimi Hendrix – King Of Metal, with chinny in the title role performing air guitar pyrotechnics.
Webcore leads the pickets outside the theatre.
(Yes it’s strictly an RR not a Spill musical)
This is so awesome!
I know this is TFD territory, but hope she will take this as a compliment and tribute, if I suggest that there is a Tom Petty (who?!!!) song that is appropriate for the MFF section, so I am proposing the following amendments to some of the lyrics of Anything That’s Rock N’ Roll.
Some friends of mine and me stayed up all through the night
Nommin’ pretty steady til l the sky went light
I didn’t go to bed, didn’t go to work
I picked up the telephone, told the boss he was a jerk
We told the newbies to remember to hit All
Then use Control-Shift-F to see what’s gone before
Gotta use links to paste from the tube
And maybe you should justify your noms, dude
So come on baby, let’s go, don’t you hear the rock n roll
playing on the radio; it sounds so right
You better grab a song, you better find a tune
Anything that’s rock n roll is fine
I would also like to propose a short newbie’s chorus nicked from Jesus Christ Superstar of “Try not to get worried, etc” might be a good filler for any awkward silences.
And of course the word ‘rockabilly’ is NEVER used as a substitute for ‘rock’n'roll’…
I think the original scans better, mind
*ducks*
Another verse:
My fam’ly don’t like it when I hang around with you
They say I never talk to them – I gotta say it’s true
Don’t dig them, don’t dig chores
Compared to all my ‘Spiller friends they’re just a lot of bores
PS You are all completely certifiable.
Yes, SpottedRichard! That’s why we love weach other, as my son would say. And you fit RIGHT IN!!!
Thank you!
Can we have a solo spoken word interval from Japanther called “The For Vinyl, er, Monologues” with the sound of record surface noise and some deliberating about which Digital Hardcore 12″ to play next?
5.
Costume: 5′ foot squared avatar pictures.
Stage: a really hard to get onto stage that is made from pressed and glued dictionary pages.
These ideas are all so wonderful. I’m sitting here giggling, but luckily only Steenbeck the dog can see, and she thinks I’m crazy anyway.
Who’s our Guffman? JonD?
It was the first of June
The new theme was still a day away
Maki’s cooking tapas, steenbeck’s rapping with ejay
Treefrogdemon’s doing up the guest room for AliMunday
And she’s blowing up the airbed too in case a Mr Petty comes to stay
Shoey said to debby(m), “I got a playlist going up tomorrow night,
Carole’s intro quiz went up and DarceysDad ain’t gotten one thing right.”
Goneforeign met Desmond Dekker and told him ’bout the Israelites
Then tincanman told us all about the news that gave him such a fright
He said there’d been an accident in the kitchen of a University college
And now Blimpy, shane and Sakura got locked in Abahachi’s fridge
———
Or something along those lines