Trickle Trickle

June 1, 2008 by Ro.

We have a very productive rehearsal on a Saturday. Despite Jeff’s illness, we are just on fire! Perhaps it is the homemade eggplant parmigiana. Or Brenda’s fabulous cookies. Whatever, we are able to nail down two more new songs: “Trickle Trickle,” a jive number resurrected from Jeff’s a cappella stint during his college days, and “I Wonder Why,” a doo-wop song by Dion and the Belmonts arranged exclusively for MB4 by Steven Kohn himself.

The Dion song we pretty much master in one rehearsal, but “Trickle Trickle” proves to be more of a challenge because 1) it is written as a 4-part men’s arrangement, and we are only 2-part men (Audrey and Ro are actually quite smug about that). So, in a 4-part men’s arrangement, Audrey has to warble away an octave higher than the rest of us, or Ro is croaking along in the bottom of her register, sounding like a foghorn with laryngitis. We try different vocal configurations (hey, let Ro sing bass an octave higher and Jeff do the lead a third above the way it’s written), give up, and then try to change the key, spending an inordinate amount of time on Steve’s “magic piano,” some high-tech (natch) contraption that can change keys with a push of a button. After hours of frustrating experimentation, we come back to singing it as written, which leads to the next problem: 2) the music is a blurry xerox of a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of a hand written copy from a couple decades ago, seemingly written by a drunken chimp with a blunt instrument. The words, aside from being nonsensical (“a one button show” “sure to blow” — huh?) are indecipherable, as are the sharps and flats. We look like a convention for the visually impaired, peering at the music from two inches away, squinting, Ro looking like an out-of-control bobblehead doll, alternating between the top and bottom lenses of her bifocals in a vain attempt to read the lyrics.

There is much snorting and hilarity.

At last we succeed, it works and it’s MB4 magic, and “Trickle Trickle” is added to the repertoire. We are overjoyed by our productivity!

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