distressing news

[Jules Levin]

At 06:47 AM 9/16/2006, you wrote:

>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.

I seem to detect the aroma of Nabokov's essay on Gogol and poshlost'...
Jules Levin


>Kris Groberg
>
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