distressing news

[Kris Groberg]

John Dunn wrote:

> Do we not all feel much better?

I feel EVER so much better!

> P.S. Who is Lawrence Welk??

I, who live and work quite near (within 300 miles or something like that) Welk's hometown of Strasburg, ND, can answer your question. He is (well, he was in life) a German-from-Russia whose family settled out here on the prairie in a community of like-minded individuals. He worked his way up to a stunningly prosaic weekly talent-show (singing and dancing, but nothing too foreign or too rock-n-rollish) of a program on the television.  It aired for YEARS (25?) and is now in continual re-runs, many of which are shown on the Public Broadcasting System in North Dakota.  Welk's music is accordion-polka type stuff for the most part (some happily distorted show tunes and misguided operatic snippets), always peppy and saccharine enough to cause the breakdown of every molecule of pancreatic juice that is anywhere near the airwaves.  It's folkish by way of a creepy kind of fake hometown good cheer that is Hollywoodized with a lot of sequins and the occasional tuxedo.  Welk laid off the
accordion and bouncily wielded the baton in his later years.  Everybody and his Gran loves Welk (the exceptions being Disenchanted Youth and Pinko professorial types like ourselves).  To go to New York City to take in a Lloyd Weber musical is considered an act of sacrilege to those who can instead take a geriatric tour bus to Branson, Missouri to see "live" (I use the term loosely) acts of the once-youthful Welk proteges is ever so much more Normal.  Everyone knows that only the copyright fees keep midwestern community theatre companies from "doing" Lloyd Weber musicals--that and the fact that they are "too long."  Why watch a rockstar Jesus dance around practically naked on Broadway when you can just turn on the television and see a grinning Welkian foursome of corn-fed forty-year-olds tap-dance through a far-shorter and much more tasteful version of "Jesus Christ Superstar"? Get real, John!

I don't think we can compare Welk to Lloyd Weber, although a comparison of their popularity statistics might be an interesting read if one were dead drunk.  Welk would never have even wanted to have known about some Russian novel that was Probably Commie Anyway and therefore most certainly Not a Fit Subject for Musical Numbers.  Lloyd Weber at least has those minions who can read around and find out about this Bukgakov person's work.

Kris Groberg

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------