Oct
23
Romancing the tone
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Honolulu Pops maestro Matt Catingub has turned a festival into a franchise, while exploring new artistic territory.
In recent days Catingub has released “Back to Romance,” a sequel to last year’s “Return to Romance,” fresh recordings of great romantic tunes by excellent artists, mostly local.
He also announced plans for the 2008 Hawaii Romance Festival, itself a sequel to this year’s successful concert series. Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and Aaron Neville have signed to sing.
The new album sits before me, still in its plastic wrapper. Since Jeff Peterson played at my wedding (a Filipina romance) I’m eager to hear his “Spanish Romance,” and who knows what Jake Shimabukuro has done with “Moonglow.”
Catingub likes to change things. He likes to perform a well-known song in a different tempo — Pops patrons have heard him sing the little-known words to the “I Love Lucy” theme as a ballad; it worked. For these romance albums he has mischievously assigned artists to repertory with which they are not associated.
Last year I was allowed to be a fly on the wall when Raiatea Helm sang “My Romance” in a key so low that it took her awhile to find her bottom note. The result was a torch song, as intimate as a kiss, from an artist you associate with kani kapila falsetto.
This year Catingub offers Hapa performing the Beatles song “Something,” while Jimmy Borges, so known for his jazz, reaches into the Fifties for “My Special Angel.” (You remember the Four Freshmen version of 1969 but Bobby Helm recorded it in 1957 and two years later it was covered by Keely Smith, the woman who sang those hilarious duets with Louie Prima.)
Catingub himself does “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” — the 1972 tune from one-hit wonder Hurricane Smith. (Catingub, appearing on “Sunrise,” was surprised that I remembered it, but then surprised me with the information that Smith had been the recording engineer for the early Beatles albums.)
Probably the first track I’ll sample at home will be Robert Cazimero’s rendition of “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
Note: All the performers on “Back to Romance” are male. I mention this because it telegraphs what Catingub probably intends for next year’s release. Now you can look forward to it for 12 months!
Oct
22
NEXT year’s Gridiron
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It’s the Monday after Gridiron and time to start thinking about… next year’s Gridiron.
One of the few sensibilities I retain from my years of living in Washington, D.C., is that the measure of a city’s sophistication is the ability of its most important persons to laugh at themselves. The nation’s capital has a Gridiron show that is reserved for officials and the media, and it also has Hexagon, a public show like Honolulu’s Gridiron, whose producers, writers and performers, drawn from both the media and from government (mostly staff aides on Capitol Hill.) It was a great privilege to do some Hexagon “news breaks” before moving here, but I prefer the Honolulu experience, where officials tend to truly enjoy getting needled. (In D.C. it is sometimes a pretense.)
So: what issues and events are likely to be Gridiron fodder next year? We’d better start thinking about it now:
- Superferry by then could be either out of business or sailing.
- Oahu’s south shore ferry will be renewed or not.
- go! could be out of business or flying.
- There will be an election campaign in full roar, or bore.
- We’ll be in the middle of a war of health food stores.
- A place we like will close forever. (This happens every year.)
- Ethanol plants will be delayed. (Another perennial, perhaps.)
What am I leaving out? Your crystal ball has as good a chance of being right as mine.
If you missed this year’s Gridiron — Friday and Saturday nights at Diamond Head Theatre — you missed Donalyn Dela Cruz’s return as Colleen Hanabusa, and the Night of a Thousand Lingles, starring everyone we could fit on stage for our Lindapalooza. On Friday night you missed our Mufi song with the actual Mufi in the audience.
And there was Catherine Toth’s racy video about Duke Aiona (this is weird, but I went to high school in Maryland with a Cathy Toth who, who pronounced her name with a hard “o” and was a haole but otherwise looked a lot like our kama’aina version. What are the chances of that?)
The management of the Gridiron show has emailed the rest of us that the show was a financial success, which means there will be more editorial interns at various newspapers and broadcast outlets in Hawaii next year. The Society of Professional Journalists is pleased to take responsibility for producing home-grown media talent so you don’t have to get all your news from people who arrived here not knowing what lomi salmon is.
Oct
17
Girding for Gridiron
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Every year, the Hawaii chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists raises money for paid internships by putting on a show. Gridiron, as it’s called, stages a satirical revue on Friday and Saturday night at Diamond Head Theatre.
It may be sold out already — the SBJ website said Wednesday morning that ”only a few” tickets were available for Saturday, but SPJ also sells tickets to the Thursday night dress rehearsal. The number to call is 550-TIKS.
Journalists from local TV, radio and newspapers take part. Some sing and dance; the rest of us, less gifted, are restricted to skits or introducing acts. Some are people I see only at Gridiron rehearsals and performances because we compete on rival channels. We’re all friends, though, and we’re working together to create more of our tribe. A few of the regulars actually got their start from SPJ internships, so this is a very personal cause for them.
Basically we write satirical lyrics to songs you know (although the word “lyrics” may be going too far in the case of one song this year) that reward your careful keeping up with local news events by riffing off of the wackiest stories of the past year.
Last year the sewage spill in the Ala Wai turned “Tainted Blood” into “Tainted Flood” (”and now I’m suing you/’cause I surfed in poo.”) In a previous year the theft of giant clams from the Waikiki Aquarium led to “Clams on the Run,” and before that a man who smuggled a snake onto a plane turned “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” into “A Snake is in My Pants.”
For Gridiron regulars, the major suspense this year is how the company will handle the fact that Dan Cooke, who for years has played Linda Lingle, has moved to the mainland. Last night I saw how we dealt with it and you will find the results very funny.
And when the laughter dies down we will have raised some funds for interns who may one day report the news to you.
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