Year: 2005

in 1994, henry krieger and i were invited to write a new opening number for the radio city music hall christmas spectacular which continued in the new york production until this year … as the original lyric was very specific to new york and radio city, one of my main sources of income over the past few years has been rewriting it for different cities where the christmas spectacular has toured … this year they requested a generic lyric which would work anywhere, so that ride is over — fun though it was … last year around this time i was doing a cabaret show called belters we have heard on high and included this version of the song, incorporating some of the different lines i wrote for different cities …

this lyric was written for the 1993 broadway cares/equity fights aids easter bonnet competition and was performed by laurie beechman, who sadly succumbed to cancer a few years later … that was the only performance of the song (music by henry krieger) until alicia irving sang it in the concert of my songs at the donnell library last week … chad kimball requested a copy of the lyric in memory of his cousin and so i post it here with the thought there are others to whom it may have meaning

janet hood and i explored writing a piece about 9/11 using the form of elegies for angels, punks and raging queens/spoon river anthology … we ultimately abandoned it (not finding the resonance and scope we had with the aids crisis) but i like some of the things we wrote … this is a poem/monologue which seems apt in light of the official response to katrina … as we said in our youth — “question authority!”