Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
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Monday, November 29, 2010
We would congratulate PROFESSOR SONDHEIM for a signal public service except that as we know he thinks himself superior to every one of the lyricists he dissects; but then we think of the anecdote in Hugh Fordin's biography of OCKIE (who is now certainly his pupil's inferior -- note the huffing condescension, not for the first time) about something he wrote with Sigmund Romberg -- "When I grow too old to dream,/I'll have you to remember": when his publisher (I believe Max Dreyfus) asked him what it meant Ockie confessed he hadn't the foggiest idea. To be sure the PROFESSOR can't see the forest of the songs from the tree of the words; nonetheless in his defense we will say he does force us to listen to lyrics more carefully, and he is quite right in that, and on that score exposes rock mu-SICK cri-TICS as totally deaf.
(Via the usual AHTSJournal)
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