|
|
MusicSpanish FleaGrowing Pains
"Spanish Flea" was first recorded by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass on A & M Records in 1966. It has managed the leap from one generation to the next. Those who were around in the sixties will always associate it with Herb. Later, it became known as the theme song for "The Dating Game" on TV. Today's youth are familiar with it because it has been used on five episodes of "The Simpsons". You really have to hear Homer sing it to fully appreciate it. The song was covered with lyrics by artists including:
A partial list of the instrumentals follows:
Growing Pains, The Musical
The first production, in the delightful equity-waiver Room for Theatre, owned by Beverly Sanders, was in 1985. Every show was sold out for the six-week run. The L. A. Times review said, “Growing Pains is a tuneful, light-hearted…musical that could easily hold its own with the big boys.” In 1986 the show was moved to the “other side of the hill”. The production in the then Westwood Playhouse, (now the Geffen), lasted seven weeks, and starred Peter Jason, Teri Ralston and Joy Garrett. Audiences still loved the show, but alas, the costs were somewhat higher than the ticket sales. Though Mr. Blackwell said the show “will be one of those wonderful evenings in the theatre which could travel the world over and always find an audience…We loved it…”, and KCRW’s Robert Windeler wrote “…this is the freshest, most tuneful new musical I’ve seen in some time...the lyrics by Cissy Wechter and Faye Greenburg (sic) are dead-on funny and literate,” most of the critics were less kind. This time the L. A. Times sent Sylvie Drake to review the play, and though she said the show’s “best number…is the grand “Isn’t This Grand?”, she was otherwise less than impressed. A few years later, Jeremiah Morris, who directed the Westwood production and was currently Artistic Director at another small theatre in Sherman Oaks, asked to do the musical. Once again it was a sell-out |
Think Desk |