{"id":471,"date":"2006-04-26T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-26T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=471"},"modified":"2006-04-26T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-26T08:05:00","slug":"the_jersey_boys_conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2006\/04\/the_jersey_boys_conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jersey Boys Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay much attention to rock and roll revival musicals because I avoid rock and roll, to the limited extent possible in a world saturated with it. Paul Paolicelli is an author, fellow journalist and former jazz trumpeter just enough younger than I to have been a part of the first rock generation. He sent a charming essay concerning the Broadway show called Jersey Boys<\/em><\/a>. I had never heard of it and had to look it up. It is about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I liked Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little story and asked him if I could share it with you. Here it is.<\/p>\n

A Question Of Time?<\/strong>
\nI put the Jersey Boys <\/em>CD into the deck in my car\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s radio. As it happens, another CD I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d loaded earlier that week was a Johnny Hartman\/John Coltrane<\/a> compilation. It made for an interesting juxtaposition and ride to the other side of town.
\n(I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what gets into these producers’ heads when they do these sorts of things. Within the first five minutes of the Jersey Boys <\/em>CD I was treated to four letter words in dialogue a couple of times. More to the point, my soon-to-be ten year old in the back seat was also so enlightened. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t these people understand that sharing music with your children is part of the fun? Why do they have to put the PG rating on everything?)
\nBut language is, I think, of the essence here. I talked with my daughter about the social relevance of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Tried to explain to her how pervasive and inescapable popular music had been in that time period, my time period, my youth. Told her of how I had been a music student and couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been less interested in this form of music, yet heard it often. Reminisced about how, in the army, you heard music everyday and, if you were a purist (and a bit of a snob) as I was, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter. You heard popular music. And that the truly surprising thing about it was that it now held a certain warm place in memory, a nostalgia that overwhelmed poetical or compositional inadequacies.
\nI played \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sherry\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for my daughter. Asked her what she thought.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.
\nThen I played Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane doing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My One and Only Love,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Robert Mellin and Guy Wood. What did she think?
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, damning it with faint praise.
\nI wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let it go. Listen to the lyrics, I said. Listen to the difference in approach, in tone, in complexity. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6scan these lines:
\nSherry, Sherry baby
\nSherry, Sherry baby
\nShe – e – e-e-e-e-ry baby
\nShe – e – rry, can you come out tonight
\nShe – e – e-e-e-e-ry baby
\nShe – e – rry, can you come out tonight?<\/em>
\nOkay? Now compare those lyrics with these\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nThe very thought of you makes my heart sing
\nlike an April breeze on the wings of spring.
\nAnd you appear in all your splendor,
\nMy one and only love.<\/em>
\nDo you see the difference? Can you see why a hopeful musician in my generation would want the sophistication and delicacy of a well crafted lyric? Why we thought popular lyrics and chord structures were silly, immature, superficial.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s splendor?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asked.
\nI remember two of the most magnificent teachers I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever had, Bass and Helen Hutchinson who ran the Newport Beach Jazz Workshop in which I was privileged to play. Some years later, in an interview, Bass was asked what he had tried to accomplish in working with kids all those years. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really fairly simple,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were trying to teach these kids the difference between artistry and noise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThe difference between artistry and noise.
\nIn my youth, in my arrogance, I was convinced I knew the difference. Now I was trying to pass that wisdom along to my daughter.
\nSo how does that explain the extraordinary success of Jersey Boys<\/em> on Broadway? Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the really funny thing; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m enjoying the music. Despite my sensitive, overactive, formally educated brain, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something in those simplistic lyrics and uncomplicated chords that is downright toe-tapping and head-bouncing. Something that captures the energy and spirit of that generation in a way that literature or graphic arts never did. Something that delves into the dynamics of a generation raised in the contradictions of a childhood in Eisenhower lethargy, a manhood and adulthood in Southeast Asian violence and Reganonomics. There is something in this music that expands beyond its structure. Is it nostalgia? Is it the fundamental human instinct to look back with fondness for what can never be again?
\nThe shadows fall and spread their mystic charms
\nIn the hush of night while you are in my arms.
\nI feel you lips so warm and tender,
\nMy one and only love.<\/em>
\nLush and well-crafted words. Romantic poetry. The level of artistry I wanted to reach. Something haunting, beautiful, ineffable in the song and in the solos. Both men masters of their craft. Polished and evocative lyrical and musical statements.
\nAnd then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s:
\n(Why don’t you come out) to my twist party
\n(Come out) Where the bright moon shines
\n(Come out) We’ll dance the night away
\nI’m gonna make-a you mi-yi-yi-yine<\/em>
\nSimplistic twaddle sung in unbelievable falsetto. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wanna\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dance and make you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mi-yi-yi-yine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I was so beyond and above that then.
\nSo why is my foot tapping? Why can I still remember those semi-moronic words? Why am I sharing this with my daughter? On the cut, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Take My Eyes Off of You,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m singing the lead trumpet part, remembering a tour of Germany with a sextet when we\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsoldiers all\u00e2\u20ac\u201dplayed that song, so simplistic in its rhyme scheme, but so much fun in its syncopation and brass licks. Downright joyous in a way. And my daughter, for the first time, sees a young musician in her old man.
\nOkay,
\n I give myself in sweet surrender\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nSherry, can you come out tonight?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Paul Paolicelli is the author of Dances with Luigi <\/em><\/a>and Under the Southern Sun<\/em><\/a>)
\nNow, with permission, here is one critic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view of Jersey Boys<\/em>. The critic is our artsjournal.com next-door neighbor Terry Teachout<\/a>. His review was for The Wall Street Journal<\/em>.
\nSeasons Bleatings<\/strong><\/p>\n

YET ANOTHER jukebox musical has come to town, and this time I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like arguing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmuch. For reasons not obvious to me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not only giving pleasure to paying theatergoers (that part I get) but has also passed muster with certain critics who should know better. Contrary to anything you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read elsewhere, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing more than 32 songs performed on a cheap-looking set by a high-priced lounge band, strung together like dimestore pearls on the most vapid of all-tell-no-show books.
\nSo why is this un-musical selling tickets by the carload? Because, judging by da accents I hoid in da lobby, New Jersey is full of boomers who grew up with such ditties as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Girls Do-Hon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Ka-Rie-Yie-Yie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and are flocking to Broadway to fondle their memories. They clearly don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Jersey Boys\u00e2\u20ac\u009d borders on the plotless: for them, a plot would be a distraction. What they like are the songs, the Joisey jokes and the gangster jokes, not necessarily in that order.
\nNo doubt I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the wrong person to review this show, seeing as how the hyped-up falsetto yelps of Mr. Valli (convincingly simulated here by John Lloyd Young) give me hi-yie-yives. All I can say is that it would be a lot simpler for everyone involved if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just move the whole thing to Newark.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dTerry Teachout<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay much attention to rock and roll revival musicals because I avoid rock and roll, to the limited extent possible in a world saturated with it. Paul Paolicelli is an author, fellow journalist and former jazz trumpeter just enough younger than I to have been a part of the first rock generation. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}