show tunes never die

There's something magical about buying a book full of music. Today I bopped into Watermelon Music, as I have a tendency to do every couple months or so, and found my usual two musicals, one book of church music and, new for me, a how-to guitar learning book. We'll see if that results in anything... I really want to learn the guitar, but right before finals is probably not the best time to start that. Maybe over the summer. We'll see.

Anyway, I love playing through arrangements of musicals. I have about thirty of these, and my favorite thing to do recently is flip through the books to the songs that truly express how I'm feeling, any given day. Sometimes I sing along, sometimes I don't. But it's a nice positive way to express myself, even if I'm a bit down.

So this time around I bought "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" and "Hans Christian Anderson". There are inevitable memories that bubble to the surface when I buy musicals... memories of shows past, present and sometimes even future, if I'm buying a show to familiarize myself with the music before playing or seeing it performed. Today was no different. My friends (you know who you are) and I used to spend endless hours in junior high and high school singing through certain musicals, of which "How To" was a top hit and a favorite. We all swooned when the cute boy sang "I Believe In You", we loved chanting the "coffee break" song and we certainly weren't going to be secretary toys for any man to play with. It is a great musical, and quite possibly the first musical I saw professionally performed, at the B Street Theater in Sac.

Less known by me is "Hans Christian Anderson". I have only seen it once, when DMTC's YPT did it when I was about eleven years old. Yet playing through the music contains with it an odd familiarity. Could I have learned the songs, the tunes, so well that playing them now I still remember them? Just from seeing the show that one time? Only four of the six or seven songs in the book seem familiar, but given the fact that I haven't seen it for years, wasn't in the show and haven't seen it since, it was an eery type of deja vu to tinkle the tunes out on my beautiful upright here at home.

It's funny. I have been collecting arrangements of musical theater shows since junior high, when I first became able to play them. I don't need them anymore. A good fake book and a good keyboard, and I'll play anything but Sondheim and make it snazzy. But there's something in having those notes in front of me, of playing through all the well-known tunes from a show, that I'm addicted to. I love making up arrangements, but to have a book containing a show... to pick a show from a stack of books... it's just satisfaction for me. I can't really explain why, but I love it. Maybe it's because it's easier to sing along if I'm not making up the accompaniment. Maybe it's because the fake books never have all the good songs. Maybe it's because I like taking other people's arrangements and adding to them. Whatever it is, I love going through the broadway shows at Watermelon looking for that one musical I don't own yet... and even more than finding it, I love sitting it down at my Packard and plunking through it. Whatever it is, it makes me happy. And that, in this world, is no small thing.