Loads of lather

I have just been having an interesting ( and perhaps frustrating ) experience.

For each of the National Youth Music Camps each year, we present a forty minute musical, which is miraculously put together in about six rehearsals amid everything else that goes on during the week. Quite often the musicals are especially written for the week ( I have done quite a few over the years), and consequently there have been many new works generated because of the camps.

It is always a challenge finding something new and different to perform, and we have re visited musicals on occasions.

I really haven't time to write something for teenage camp this year, so have decided to do a musical I wrote with Derek Brechin about fifteen years ago about soap operas called "Loads of lather".

It has been an odd experience trying to update and refresh this piece. It was one of my earliest musicals, and the writing feels quite primitive. I feel a desperate need to re write parts of the songs, but can't seem to leave behind the tunes. There is a strange emotional attachment to the melodies, but a feeling that this is not the writing I would be doing now.

Oh well, I don't want to spent a lot of time on this, so hopefully crisping up a few rhythms (and writing them correctly) and changing a few wrongly chosen keys may do it.

Comforting to know that my approach has developed, and also comforting to know there are some good jokes, and cracking lyrics that are just as good as they always were.