Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Here's why there's something slightly sickening about The Second Coming of Comden and Green: we may forgive youthful enthusiasm in youth, but it's hard to forgive it in fortysomethings who merely look like Comden and Green (or rather Comden and Oscar Levant, who played a Green-like figure in The Band Wagon). And the quite lyrical excerpt points to another problem:

Farmin' the land is the life for me

It calls me and I cain't say no

But I'd gladly forsake any shovel or rake

I'm in love with a wonderful hoe!

Oh, What [sic] beautiful corn! etc., etc., ETC.

It's very keeyute -- the kind of stuff Comden and Green could wiz off in a flash at a party with Lenny Bernstein. (The resemblance to "I Said Good Morning" is palpable, though not especially palatable.) But the Golden Age songwriters didn't get by on being keeyute. While The Second Coming of Comden and Green have evidently spent much of their career writing catch-as-catch-can chuckle lyrics to (no doubt) pastiche melodies, those long-deceased deathless masters had already written trunks full of songs, memorable songs, enduring songs. There is a difference between having connections and being inspired. Leaving aside that (as the article notes) the very industry structure that nurtured the Golden Age artists was dismantled long ago, neither Comden II and Green II nor any other would-be Broadway songwriter of our time will ever get anywhere because none of them has the slightest INSPIRATION.