Meg and Billy

Meg and Billy
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The Great Plotnik usually takes the day off on Sunday. He knows he should be posting Blogmaid's fabulous photos of Ryan with the Unicorn and Curly Fries, but first he wants to alert all of you to 'From Ballads to Blues,' playing at the N.C. T.C. theater on Van Ness and Market. Meg Mackay and Billy Philadelphia have put the show together, culling through more than 400 songs written by the immortal Chaim Arluck, who changed his name first to Hyman Arluck, and then, remembering the reason he was changing his name in the first place, to Harold Arlen.

Arlen composed the songs that are among the most beloved in the Great American Songbook -- songs composed for theatre and film in the 1920s-1960s. We may not all be familiar with Harold Arlen, but we all know 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' Plotnik's Number One favorite song of all time (also voted the Number One Song of the Twentieth Century by Billboard). Most of us also know 'That Old Black Magic,' and 'Come Rain or Come Shine' and 'Stormy Weather' and '(Throw off your Troubles, Come on) Get Happy,' and 'Blues in the Night' and 'One for My Baby (and One for the Road),' and 'The Man That Got Away.'

Those who have labored in Arlen's compositional shadow, like your own Great Plotnik, look at songwriting differently than other people. They hear a song and think Form. They think Inspiration. They think Reciprocity (between music and lyrics). They think Range. They think all kinds of stuff, and then they hear

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Some day I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where troubles melt like lemondrops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

...and say, well, OK. So Number One is out of reach. Let's all just shoot for Number Two.

Do go see 'From Ballads to Blues.' It's in the tiny 45 seat Theater Three at N.C.T.C., where there is little but a grand piano and a mike and five rows of seats, so you're practically sitting right on the piano stool next to Meg and Billy. They're funny, and good, and the two hours fly by like little birds on chimney tops.

Yeah, the Plotzers won yesterday. Yeah, RR looks as cute as cute gets, and yeah, those fries should be kept off airplanes because of the threat of grease fires. Looking for a place to take Mom and Dad? This is it. You've got a month.