At last they arrive to what is indeed a barn, (yes, painted barn-red and everything!) but now equipped with guest rooms, plumbing, an in-ground pool, a hot tub, a rec room with a pool table and ping pong, a modern kitchen, surrounded with beautiful gardens and decks, and featuring a spectacular view of Lake Cayuga, one of the Finger Lakes. There is not a cow in sight, and the only chickens around have been deliciously barbecued.

Over the weekend, as Jeff’s generous and hospitable parents proceed to stuff us with fabulous meals and libational fluids, the tale of the barn’s conversion is told. Jeff and his brothers were raised in the barn, which originally had only a wood stove for heat, a hand pump for water, and a composting toilet. It still is a barn, but decades of innovation and hard work have transformed it into a the unique, elegant, and comfortable structure it is today. In addition, the family owns the property next door, with a house they turned into a charming and spacious guest house. An acre of lawn and an expanse of wildflowers lead to the lake a mile and a half down the hill. It is breathtaking!

Weekend activities include non-stop eating, swimming in the pool, gazing at the lake, nightly bonfires (and, of course, s’mores) and sing-alongs with Ro’s husband Allen on guitar, watching fireworks, a picnic at Taughannock park and trek up to the river to the waterfall, and a trip to the local farmers’ market and craft sale. Jeff arranges for MB4 to sing at the market and we have appreciative audiences both inside the market and outside by the dock. It is a thrill to sing at such a beautiful location!

We also “sing for our supper” in front of the barn before dinnertime (on the very foundation of the barn’s original silo), locking in the vote for “most picturesque place we’ve ever sung” — with a view of the lake in the background.

The entire weekend is a splendid success and we are so grateful to Jeff’s family for their hospitality!

We begin work yet again on the “William Tell Overture.” We have begun work on this piece several times before, but no one can remember how to sing it at all, so we have to start all over again each time. The only way we know we have tried it before is that there are pencil notations in the music, made by Steve’s very hand.

But this time we are determined to learn it once and for all, so we plod gamely through it, in excruciatingly slow tempo, for several weeks, each time adding a few more pages that have been scribbled upon. It is a hectic piece, almost entirely eighth and sixteenth notes that dance dizzyingly across the page. Couple that with numerous page turns that happen at just the trickiest vocal parts and a multi-page repeat plus a nasty coda and you have yourself quite a challenge to our moderate brightness. We work diligently.

At last Steve is confident that we can pick up the tempo, so like Captain Kirk ordering “warp speed,” he kicks up the metronome. We sail at breakneck speed through the first four pages, huddled over the music in intense concentration, through all the tricky repeats and page turns, vainly trying to gasp a bit of breath during the rare sixteenth note rests. We fly through page five all the way to the bottom of the page. And suddenly and simultaneously, we stop. There is profound silence. Steve has forgotten to turn the page.

We all stare mutely at the measure we have just sung, with no clue whatsoever what comes next. After a heavy silent beat we all look at each other and burst into our patented hilarity as we all try to describe what it felt like. The best description is that it was like a pack of lemmings scrambling hellbent for the cliff, with the “William Tell Overture” as their soundtrack, and on reaching the edge, launch themselves headfirst, tiny lemming feet splayed, their mouths agape in silent screams as they plunge to their deaths.

We then spend quite a bit of rehearsal time mimicking the hapless lemmings, with snippets of “William Tell Overture” thrown in as the lead-in to their silent deathly plunge. Ba-da-bum ba-da-bum ba-da-bum-bum-bum AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!

It was funny. It really was.

Finally we settle down to sing, Steve at the piano and the rest of us standing behind him. That’s when Ro notices something at Steve’s collarline, beneath his shirt. Could it possibly be a TATTOO??? There is a design at least 3 inches in diameter just below the nape of Steve’s neck. Green ink. Ro cannot resist a peek. Gently she pulls away the back of Steve’s neckline and peers inside to see — HAIR HAIR HAIR! There’s no tattoo at all, just a prodigious amount of luxuriant hair! The “tattoo” was a printed label inside the back of Steve’s shirt.

This leads to a protracted discussion of how difficult and ill-advised it would be to tattoo hirsute individuals like our beloved Steve. How Steve would have to endure frequent and painful depilatory sessions to keep his tattoo from becoming obscured beneath his natural furriness… Or perhaps this might lead to a whole slew of professional opportunities: electrolysis especially for those too hairy to tattoo, or a line of “Pluck-a-Tatt” kits, or, hey, let’s just work with the hair and create CHIA-TATTS! Imagine the possibilities: a schooner on a fuzzy sea, a skull that grows real hair, “I [heart] my golden retriever” (with pettable fur!)

Ro, Jeff, and Audrey are in ruins as these ideas came out in gasps, barely able to breathe in between spasms of laughter and hare-brained (hair-brained?) ideas. Even Steve’s shoulders are shaking a bit. It is a miracle we are able to salvage the rehearsal at all and get down to business.

We have just performed at our 6th annual Temple Hatikvah Coffeehouse and are getting ready for our April 17 performance at the Sacred Bean Coffeehouse. Our goal is not to repeat any of the songs we sang there last spring. It is a tall order, and if we can control our silliness, we should be able to pull it off.

The main problem with “Drive My Car” is three repeats and a coda, all involving split-second page turns. There are also quite a few nonsense syllables with tricky rhythms. Steve’s entire part consists of “Noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo-n-n-noo” and Jeff’s bass line is, and I am not making this up: “I’ll love you ba ba b dm dm dm dm beep.” In fact the only part of the song that is catchier than the intro (“beep beep m beep beep yeah”) is the instrumental break. The Beatles used guitars, bass and drums. Since we have none of those things, we have to do the instrumental solos on voices alone. It is a lot of fun and we are starting to get good at it.

We better be! We have some shows coming up! Our first is a Purim celebration later this month at White Meadow Temple. To prepare for this, we are running through our tried and true repertoire. Most of the songs are ready for performance, but others show some memory lapses, in lyrics or harmonies or both. The most hilarious lapse shows up in the barbershop song “Bye Bye Blues.” The song features bell chords in which one by one we sing one note to add to a chord. (Bye bye bye bye blue blue blue blues). It’s a standard barbershop feature and lots of fun to do. For some reason (perhaps because we are standing out of order) Jeff forgets to come in, so it sounds like: Bye bye ___ bye blue ___ blue blues — with resounding silence in the blank spaces. We feel as if we have arrhythmia or sporadic hearing loss problems, like a loose wire. Jeff says we should say, “The tenor part will be sung by a CPAP machine.” Audrey suggests that we each be issued an air horn or similar noisy device to deploy in the event of such a memory lapse. It would be handy if one forgot a lyric: “There were bells on a hill but I never HOOOOONNNK!!” If we each have a different noise, our bell chords would be outstanding in a cacophonous way: HONK! Riingg! Screeech! Yowl! Yowl! Screeech! Riingg! HONK!

It’s worth looking into.

All of this takes lots of rehearsal and many snacks, supplied generously by the fabulous and kind-hearted Brenda.

We succeed in building our holiday repertoire to a full hour of material, adding this year “Throw the Yule Log on, Uncle John,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” which has only one word: plum. Somehow we manage to get it wrong in rehearsal, substituting “fig,” “grape,” “prune” and other monosyllabic fruits. We think we are riotously funny and frequently wind up twitching on the floor, snorting merrily.

Morris Choral Society requests that we banter a bit with the audience, so Ro appoints herself the schtick master (she likes the word “schticksa”) even though this costs her many hours of sleep and anxiety planning and rehearsing her witty remarks. Many of these jokes are at poor Jeff’s expense, mostly because he doesn’t mind, but also because he is an easy target. [Go back to our bio and reread the part about Jeff being raised in a barn, and you’ll see why the stuff just writes itself.]

Ro is horrified to find out just before the show that Jeff’s parents will be in the audience, and she is concerned how they will react to these attacks on their son. Fortunately, they turn out to be good sports, just like Jeff. His mother even states, “That’s OK. He was born with a ‘Kick me’ sign on his back.”

The best part of the show is the wonderful audience, who seem to like Moderately Bright Four quite a bit. From their generous applause to their laughter at Ro’s jokes to their sighs at the end of songs like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” they give us the support we need not to melt into four little pools of stage fright in front of their very eyes. It is a wonderful day, followed by a raucous after-party at Ro’s where we even sing “M-O-T-H-E-R” to Jeff’s mother. The whole day is a huge success.

In fact, 2009 as a whole is a huge success for Moderately Bright Four, and we are looking forward to more musical merriment and mayhem in the New Year!

Unfortunately, for some reason, the songs involve a lot of syllables like “doo” and “dong.” We need little encouragement to regress to pottymouth days.

Rehearsal verbatim:
“We have to keep our doo-doos moving here.”

“What does ‘subito’ mean?”
“It means our doo-doos suddenly get soft.”
“I hate it when that happens.”

“Audrey, Steve and Jeff need to hold their doo-doos longer in this measure, otherwise Ro has a dangling doo-doo.”
“Ew.”

“What went wrong?”
“I think Jeff has been holding his dong too long.”

The merriment intensifies after we skip a week of rehearsing to accommodate various Back To School Nights. Apparently going 14 days without rehearsing allows pent-up hilarity to erupt uncontrollably when we reconvene, with Steve falling to the floor a record three times, twitching merrily, the other three in different states of rapturous ruin. At one point, gamely getting back to business, we resort to singing with our backs to each other, valiantly suppressing our laughter, but the telltale vocal quavering is enough to set us off and send Steve back to the floor.

Life is good for Moderately Bright Four, with many more upcoming performances, including some new venues, and a whole slew of new music to tackle, if we can ever stop laughing.

Five Years!

It is hard to believe that Moderately Bright Four has been in existence for five wonderful years! If we were a child, we would be starting kindergarten. Let’s see… fifth anniversary. I’ll look it up… Hmmm, it’s celebrated with gifts of wood. Toothpicks? Chopsticks? A cord of logs? Perhaps a suite of new furniture?

It doesn’t seem possible that it was five years ago when Ro, sweating with nervousness from all her various pores, walked into the first rehearsal, which was for all intents and purposes, an audition. It was our first song, “My Girl,” with Jeff starting with his “Dimmmm dit didip didip” bass line, Steve’s impeccable solo “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day” and then Ro & Audrey echoing in harmony “On a cloudy day.” The harmony was perfect and we all stopped simultaneously and exclaimed, “We can do this!” And the rest is history!

We have seen each other through good times and bad, through sickness and health, for richer and for poorer, and the harmony and camaraderie always pull us out of whatever slumps we’re in, individually or collectively.

Interviewer: So, Moderately Bright Four, what have been your favorite experiences over the past five years as a group?

Steve: It would have to be our first outdoor concert at Flanders Park. As we started our set , the thunderclouds rolled in, rain started to splatter, and it was clear that we would have to cancel. Luckily, Temple Hatikvah was right next door, and we convinced our audience to drive over so we could continue the concert over there. I don’t think I’ve ever sweated so much racing to take down our equipment in a thunderstorm and scrambling to set it all up again in record time.

Audrey: I love all of the hilarity whenever we attempt to sing “M-O-T-H-E-R.” Every time we try it, some disaster occurs and we end the song twitching on the floor shrieking in fits of laughter. It is truly a dreadful song to begin with, with awful lyrics, and when that’s topped with our spelling out “MOTHRA” or substituting “E is for the enemas that she gave me” there is no hope we will ever perform that song well unless we are all at gunpoint.

Ro: Ever the serious one, I would have to say singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Somerset Patriots stadium with all our fans waving, well, fans at us from the stands. That was quite a thrill and I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t wet my pants from nervousness while being broadcast on a JumboTron. Oh yes, and I like to write the blog.

Jeff: Dum diddip diddup dum. Bum doo. Bop didda bop. Rip di diddle dip bo…

This is our third performance at this event and it is one of our favorite gigs. This year we get to perform while riding in the back of an antique truck! Ro is especially happy because the truck is painted a bright orange and the color will bring out the brassy shades in her newly-tinted hair. However, being the Seat Belt Queen, she is not unaware of the dangers of riding around on a bumpy lawn STANDING UP in the bed of an antique truck. She can envision the possibilities: one false move as the truck swerves to avoid a collision with some other antique vehicle and it will be Moderately Bright Mayhem as we fly through the air, clutching our wireless mikes and desperately try to stay on pitch and not die.

As always, Ro’s fears are not realized. It is great fun tooling around and singing to the people with their cars on display. There is a professional photographer there who manages to get a rare picture of the four of us in which we simultaneously look perky and cute. He is able to print the photo on various items, and Audrey and Jeff surprise Ro with a Moderately Bright Four mug. Now when Ro drinks her morning coffee, she can see Audrey, Jeff, and Steve smiling at her from atop an antique truck. There is no better way to start the day! Ro is concerned the first time she uses the mug that it might be some sort of trick mug in which hot liquids make MB4’s clothes disappear, but thankfully it is just a normal mug. It is truly a special and prized item and I’m sure there is some website out there where more can be ordered. Ro is thinking of perhaps having a complete set of MB4 dinnerware made.

June 21… Rained out at the beach…

June 24… Finally we are able to squeeze in a show between the showers. We share a bill with the Fabulous Unknowns, an up-and-coming blues trio. Rumor has it they won’t be Unknown for long — they are very good! Ro has a big crush on the slide guitar player “Slidemaster” (sigh)

Audrey has a GPS on Jeff, so we are able to track his concert-bound commute (He’s on 287! He’s on 80! He’s on 206! There goes his car! That’s him! That’s him!) The excitement is palpable. He arrives with plenty of time to change into his black ‘n’ blues, the uniform of the day. Steve paces in anticipation, watching the storm clouds gather and threaten us with certain death by electrocution. Ro muses, “What if my last word is “Bop?” But all fears are put to rest when the clouds pass us by and go on to ruin someone else’s outdoor plans for a change.

We are able to debut our three new songs and don’t mess them up at all! We do, however, have some pronoun-related mishaps on “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” which I’m sure will be addressed at our next rehearsal. The audience doesn’t seem to notice and it is great fun singing outdoors at Flanders Park yet again.

A big hello and thank you to our loyal fans, including many of Ro’s students and former students who came out to the show to celebrate the end of the school year. It was great to see a lot of “Happy Foster Dances” going on!

Happy Summer, everyone!

Saturday, June 20: Blues Cruise Car Show 9:30 - 4:30 in Knowlton (off Exit 4 Route 80). This is our third appearance at this wonderful car show and we’re revving up all our doo-wop numbers. Jeff’s head is just a-spinnin’ from all the doos and dip-dips and dum dit-dits he’s turning out. Steve, Audrey and Ro are feverishly trying to memorize all the car parts mentioned in Shut Down and Little Deuce Coupe. We’ll be singing on and off all day. Come out and enjoy the great cars, great clams, great music, and free firetruck rides!

Sunday, June 21: Budd Lake Beach — We go on at 3:00 p.m., followed by The Fabulous Unknowns (featuring Ro’s husband Al Foster on slide guitar!). This is a fun venue, featuring a sandy beach on NJ’s largest natural lake (it’s not all that big, but it was made by glaciers! Talk about cool!) Free to Mt. Olive residents. Treat your dad to a fun concert at the beach for Father’s Day. Don’t forget your beach chair, sunscreen and shades!

Wednesday, June 24: Flanders Park — we go on at 7 p.m., but come at 6:00 to catch The Fabulous Unknowns! Free concert — bring a lawn chair, a picnic supper, and enjoy the show! Free!!!!!!!!

In other news, we are working on a few new songs, including a jazzy arrangement of Over the Rainbow, Shut Down (featuring Ro spitting out all those car words), and That’ll be the Day (a great belter that Audrey does impeccably). We also are finishing Seems Like Old Times, in a barbershoppy arrangement. Unfortunately the whole song takes about 45 seconds to sing and there doesn’t seem to be a second verse. Do we repeat the whole thing on Loooo? Do we write our own second verse? Do we do Ro’s harebrained idea of a segue into another song (unfortunately in a different key and involving a disturbing and ill-advised modulation)? Stay tuned!

Our cheerful and efficient waiter patiently and thoroughly explains the many many options we have. Ro, always on the lookout for new problems for her gifted math students, recognizes the makings of an extended math class involving probability and the use of factorials. (If a soprano, an alto, a tenor and a bass enter a fondue restaurant and have a choice of 8 salads, 9 cheese fondues, 7 entree fondues with up to 4 different cooking styles, how many possible combinations would there be and what is the probability that the soprano will have a Caesar salad? What is the probability that the alto’s husband will stab himself with a long fork and spill boiling oil on the tenor’s shoes?)

Between courses, we have our usual hysteria, snorting, and mascara run during our discussions of random things, like what if the police drove Smart Cars. “Stop or I’ll toot!” etc.

Our jocularity is heightened when we learn that the restaurant is having audition night. Hmmmmm, what do we have in our repertoire that would be appropriate for a fondue restaurant? There are not too many songs about melted cheese. At last Audrey suggests that we sing one of the many songs featuring Jeff singing “Dip Dip Dip” as his bass line.

Then Steve comes to the realization that the next table is having a bachelorette party. Perhaps the little crown reading “BRIDE” on one of the girls’ heads is the giveaway. Of course, we will sing “Why Do Fools Fall In Love”! We do, and it is a big hit.

And, of course, we sing Happy Birthday to Steve, using our new four-part version.

Having successfully just performed our three new songs at the Temple Hatikvah Coffeehouse (plus “Happy Birthday,” also brand new), we are eager to find new material to tackle. Steve is up to the task. We meet for our Thursday evening rehearsal and he has no less than nine songs for us to try. We attempt them one by one…

Now I’m sure there are some a cappella groups that can say, “Hmmm… “Over the Rainbow” in G?” and then calmly give a starting pitch and just improvise the harmonies, and it is good.

We are not that type of group.

And I’m sure there are some a cappella groups who buy an arrangement of “Over the Rainbow” and sight-sing it, looking at the music, and it is good.

We are not that type of group.

What Moderately Bright Four does is cluster around the piano in an eager and cheerful manner. We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the music to stay upright on the mysteriously slippery and poorly-designed piano ledge thingie that holds the music. (Please help me: I’m sure there is a word for this thing). We bravely listen to the opening pitches Steve plays, optimistically hoping that we will be able to sight-read the song. Of course, we can’t, and by the third measure we start what can only be described as vocal flailing. Steve, Ro, and Audrey simultaneously poke out their own parts on the piano, Ro doing the bobbing parakeet-head thing because of her bifocals, while Jeff adheres firmly to the “if the little black dots go up, sing higher, and if they go down, sing lower” school of sight-reading. Of course, we are all on different measures. Ro frequently takes the key signature with its pesky and inconvenient sharps and flats as simply optional. The result is cacophonous. The sheet music, from all this activity, frequently slides down from its slippery perch, falling in separate pages on the floor.

It is so hilarious that productive rehearsal time ceases and it is a miracle that we ever learn a single song.

Nonetheless, in one rehearsal, we tackle at least the first page of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, At Last, The Theme from Peter Gunn, the William Tell Overture, Yesterday, My Blue Heaven, Seems Like Old Times, My Funny Valentine, and Bohemian Rhapsody.

Now that is a good day’s work!

So it is Ro’s birthday and we celebrate by singing at our fifth Temple Hatikvah Coffeehouse. This is always a special event. When the quartet first formed way back in ‘04 (pronounced “aught-four”) our primary focus was to get ready for The Coffeehouse, always said with such reverence you could actually hear the italics. The annual Coffeehouse, now in its tenth year, has evolved into quite a showcase of talent and a ton of fun and we are proud to be a part of it.

Plus, Audrey is in charge of it, so of course we are on the bill.

This year is a special occasion for MB4. It is the first time we have the audacity, or perhaps stupidity, to debut three songs in one evening (except for our very first show (yes, in aught-four) when everything was a debut and we were suitably terrified. Our new songs, all brand new in ‘09 are: “It’s Alright”, “Dock of the Bay”, and “Good Lovin’.” We love them.

Ro shows up at the Coffeehouse doubly unnerved. Not only is she going to debut her first big solo (“Good Lovin’) but she has had a traumatic blonde moment earlier in the day: while pulling her beloved Misubishi Eclipse out of the garage, she realizes that there is a dreadful electrical problem with it that will undoubtedly cost hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to repair and will have the car laid up in the shop for weeks! Oh no! The problem is with the audio controls conveniently placed in the steering wheel: normally with a touch of a finger, Ro can adjust volume, change stations, switch from radio to CD. She is a master of all of these skills. Unfortunately, all the controls have become REVERSED!! What a mystery! The volume control, once on the right, is now on the left! When she pushes the volume down, it gets louder!! When Ro tries to change the radio station, the CD player starts! It is an electrical nightmare! Of course this will not be covered by warranty! Ro cannot imagine how this happened — perhaps all the cold weather? Dampness? Maybe sunspots??

That’s when Ro realizes that since she has backed the car out of the garage and is angling it to head out of the driveway, the steering wheel is UPSIDE DOWN so of course all the audio controls are backward…

Who says she’s not a natural blonde?

“Do you like Jeff’s “bum” or should he “doo”?”
“I’ve always liked Jeff’s bum.”
“That’s all well and good, but which sounds better, bum or doo here?”
“Well, does he do doos before or does he do bums?”
“Did you say doo-doo?”
“Let’s not be immature. We’re discussing Jeff’s bum.”
“So, the question is, do you want to doo it with Jeff or should he bum?”

By now we are teary-eyed and rasping with near-hysteria.

This is heightened by the ending of Dock of the Bay which, you may recall, ends with Otis Redding whistling. We all try whistling and are hopelessly inept. It sounds like a laryngitic parrot convention. Since we can neither whistle nor summon Otis back from the dead to help us, Audrey decides to scat the whistle part. Of course, Ro has a better idea. She suggests doing the whistle part like a chicken: Brrruc buc bucca, brr bucca bucca bucca, brr bucca bucca bucca brr bucca bawww, while flapping her chicken wings and shaking her tail feathers. She is quite good. The entire performance is greatly enhanced by Audrey adding additional barnyard noises, including her horse nicker which is beyond compare. Her cow “moo” sends Ro over the edge and both girls default to flamingo impersonations. The boys are oblivious, still working on the bum vs. doo conundrum.

For some reason, this leads Jeff to tell us of his daughter’s turtle’s eye infection. The turtle is in grave danger of losing its eye. Ro suggests that perhaps the turtle might be happy with an eye patch, a sort of rakish, pirate-like look. This leads the girls to embellish the whole turtle-as-pirate theme, complete with supergluing a little parrot on the turtle’s shoulder and installing some sort of turtle pegleg.

No, we were not drinking. Perhaps we should.

Happy Birthday is coming along fine, difficult arrangement that it is (who would think Happy Birthday could be a challenge?) We are still inclined to sing “So-and-so” for the person’s name, so all names now start with S: Happy Birthday dear SLarry, Happy Birthday dear SBrenda.

So we need a new Audrey song. Steve has no trouble finding songs featuring his impeccable lead. Jeff has the new Huey Lewis tune “It’s Alright” (which Ro can’t even write, having spent 31 years in the Mt. Olive Public School system prissily telling students that writing “alright” is “all wrong.”) Ro herself actually has a song, “Good Lovin’,” which causes her no end of anxiety, being a background singer all her life, content with her “doos,” her “wops,” her “ahhhhs,” and if she’s very frisky, “pum piddledy pums” (what alto hasn’t sung “Little Drummer Boy?”) To sing lead is alien to her, almost as if she had been asked to sing in some foreign language, like Latin or French or Hebrew or Polish. Wait! She’s done all that. Perhaps this really can work and she will sleep once more…

To round things out, we need a new Audrey song. We search our books and find a couple of possibilities that will do justice to Audrey’s soaring soprano: I’ll Be There and Dock of the Bay. Both will probably wind up in our repertoire (in due time, my little pretty) so mark it: we first tried them out on January 29, 2009.

We begin by tackling a giant void in our repertoire, “Happy Birthday To You,” always requested, but we never had anything prepared. So we are busy deciphering the Whiffenpoofs’ (Whiffenpooves’?) version. Our biggest challenge will be replacing “Happy Birthday dear so-and-so” (as it says in the music) with the celebrant’s real name. Or perhaps we will only be able to sing it for people actually named “So-and-so.”

We also start on “Good Lovin’” and the Huey Lewis tune “It’s All Right.” This we happen upon by chance after Steve plays us the recorded version and wistfully says, “I’ve always wanted to perform this,” [sigh] “but where to find the sheet music,” [sigh]. Whereupon he picks up one of our music books, flips it open, AND THERE IT IS: four part harmony, SATB. This is a small miracle, and Jeff already knows the solo by heart, almost freakishly so, as he is able to correct mistakes in the sheet music. We begin work in earnest on it and the other two songs.

We begin the year with an open calendar but quickly fill in three dates: the Temple Hatikvah Coffeehouse (our 5th appearance!!), the Temple Hatikvah Fashion Show (our 3rd!!) and the Sacred Bean Coffeehouse, one of our favorite venues ever! We are brimming with excitement!

We also have difficulty with the chorus of “Here We Come A-Caroling.” For some reason, we can never remember whether it’s “bless you and send you” or “send you and bless you” so we wind up with a spoonerized “sess you and blend you” with resulting hilarity. We even write BSS on our cheat sheet to remind us it goes bless, send, send, but no one can remember what it means.

Jeff is off and running with the whole spoonerization of our repertoire and discovers the lyrics are even more hilarious if pronounced backwards. He is delighted! “Hey! ‘bless’ backwards is ‘sselb!’” he discovers. He proceeds to “sselb” us all with his microphone (Jeff, solemnly, “I sselb you,” to each of us, as one by one we fall to the floor in hysterics.) This prompts Audrey to recall the joke about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who lay awake all night wondering if there was a Dog. Ro suggests that perhaps he should try counting peesh. PEESH! We all fall on that one and simultaneously start going, “Aaaab, aa-aa-aaab, aaa-aab!”

We are now in ruins, Steve wheezing for breath, Jeff snorting, Audrey and Ro in fits of coughing and laughter, Ro’s mascara streaming down her face so she looks like something from the Thriller video. It takes a bowl of Brenda’s excellent soup to calm us.

This is our fifth holiday season together as a quartet. It is still fun and magical.

To all our friends, fans, and family, “Holly Hapidays and West Bishes for a Nappy Yew Hear!”

And it’s paying off! We have three new holiday songs to add to our repertoire: Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, Carol of the Bells, and I’ll Be Home for Christmas. We have a rehearsal at Steve’s that is very productive, despite the fact that the Wellses have just flown the redeye back from Hawaii and are between time zones. Flo is also in attendance and, as usual, she is our harshest critic. “Oh, that was just wonderful!” “I loved that!” “How do you do it? You all sound so good!” “I can’t get over it!” etc. etc.

Ro is in pure pre-holiday befuddlement, evidenced by her reaction when told by Brenda that she’s been “baking for Oklahoma.” Ro immediately assumes that there has been some horrible tragedy that has affected the state of Oklahoma and wonders why she didn’t get the word to begin baking for the poor people of Oklahoma who must be suffering and starving so. She tries to get her neurons to fire enough to recall recent news about Oklahoma. She knows that the country is in economic peril, but can’t recall hearing anything about another Dust Bowl. Perhaps a rash of tornadoes? Floods? As she is doing this, she is noticing that Brenda is wrapping up, not nourishing and practical foods for the people of Oklahoma, but festive-looking pralines. They are even in holiday wrappers with ribbons, nothing at all appropriate for a disaster zone. That’s when Ro remembers that Brenda is FROM Oklahoma and these are treats for her FAMILY.

Duh. Soooooooooo blonde.

Event #1 is the last chord of “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” — a catchy holiday tune, but admittedly not a challenging and inspirational choral masterpiece. However, our arrangement ends with a build-up starting with Jeff’s “Rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” (how can you beat those poignant lyrics?) and then Steve adds in “Yeah we’re rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” (how very pithy) and then Ro pipes up (you can see where this is going) “Yeah we’re rock rock rockin’ round the Christmas tree” and finally Audrey comes in to fill the chord “Yeah we’re rockin’ round the Christmas tree!” AND THEN WHAT? The music calls for a bizarre and seemingly unrelated chord on a generic “Oooo.” Whenever we try it, and we’ve rehearsed it a lot, it’s always stunningly wrong and comically bad. We all have to travel weird intervals from our starting note, completely unrelated to the note we’re on, and we never quite make the journey. We land, hard, on a jarringly awful chord that is decidedly unfestive. The result is always pants wettingly funny. Steve, our resident music theory guru, tries to explain the chord to us, but it always sounds like when the car mechanic tries to explain why the oil change will cost $780. “Jeff has to modulate the root up a minor third, Audrey has to swing down a diminished seventh, and Ro has to find the squeamish augmented fifth in the minor key of the chromatic blah de blah de blah blah.” By now Ro has glazed over and will take the “poke and hope” method of finding her note. We never, ever, have found that chord.

That’s why we end “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” on a cool and breathy “Yeahhhh.”

Event #2 is a lyrics malfunction that occurs when we try to resurrect our holiday repertoire after a 10 month hiatus without reviewing the music. We try to sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and wind up with a hybrid of verse #1 and #2.
Verse #1 = “Let your heart be light”
Verse #2 = “Make the Yuletide gay”

WE SING “Let your Yuletide ___.” WHAT??? Let your Yuletide do what??? There is no word to complete that sentence in one syllable. So all four of us simultaneously stop and stare at each other. The Jewish contingent of the quartet stare at Ro’s lips hoping that she can figure out what we should let our Yuletide do, but she, too, is clueless, so we collapse in hopeless fits of laughter.

As you see, you have to be there to appreciate why these two incidents are so hilarious, but perhaps it gives insight as to why we all count down the days till we can rehearse again. We do have fun!

Unfortunately, it is misting, drizzling, foggy, and warm. The humidity is 100% and there is no breeze. The boys are melting in their long sleeves, their hats conserving their rapidly rising body heat. The girls have similar issues, compounded by hormones (or lack thereof) and three layers of floor-length skirts that efficiently wick up the rain from street and stairway and render the girls soaked from the knees down. There is some wardrobe-related unhappiness among the members of Moderately Bright Four.

Nonetheless, the homeowners and tourists are delighted with both our appearance and our sound and we make numerous new friends and fans. They ask about our repertoire and our outfits. They are especially fascinated by the girls’ bustles, and rightly so. Ro explains that the dress’s bustle effect is achieved through a complex combination of shirring, cantilevering, hydraulics, and interestingly-placed levers. In actuality there are strings inside the dress that help to gather the bustle into its consummate fullness. These strings cause an inordinate amount of problems when Audrey and Ro try to put on the dresses. If one mistakenly straddles the strings, there is a surprising “thonglike” effect, not Victorian at all, which must immediately be remedied. Or perhaps that is how Audrey is consistently able to hit her flawless high notes.

Energized and refreshed from this escapade, we celebrate the next day by lying inert on the beach for hours, enjoying sun, sand, surf, and songs.

Steve inadvertently entertains us all with his eccentric way of eating corn on the cob. It is rodent-like in method and machinelike in precision, with each kernel stripped away from the cob neatly and uniformly, row by row, resulting in a perfectly clean cob that appears to have been sucked dry by a mob of voracious crows. The secret, he says (although nobody asked) is in the bottom teeth. Naturally we all try to match his corn-eating prowess but our efforts are in vain. There is not enough orthodonture in the world to enable Jeff to do it, and Ro takes too much of an abstract random approach to corn eating to ever succeed at the Steve method. Audrey suggests that Steve might be able to make some money with this skill, perhaps by creating artistic designs or chewing people’s names in corn at carnivals. This is probably an ill-conceived idea, although if anybody out there is interested in some “corn art,” just contact Steve through our website.

Thankfully we are moderately bright and more or less master the operation by the bottom of the sixth inning. Our mistakes are few and forgiveable: the soft serve ice cream that looks like a pile of dog doo, Ro punching in $2000 instead of $20.00, serving the Cub Scout soda in a souvenir beer cup.

It was really a lot of fun. However, we all agreed it’s a lot less terrifying to sing in front of a stadium of hundreds of people than to figure out how to process a VIP coupon.

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!

Moderately Bright Four has the unique opportunity to entertain the masses at the Somerset Patriots baseball game for their joint celebration of an unlikely combo: Cinco de Mayo AND Jewish Community Day. Guess which one we represent! Yes! We are resplendent in our brand new Israeli blue and white hoodies courtesy of the clearance rack at Old Navy. We are to perform “Hatikvah,” the national anthem of Israel, in between the appearance of “Sparkito,” the enthusiastic and fuzzy Patriots mascot decked out in sombrero and serape (or was that some way funky prayer shawl?), and the throwing out of the first pitch by a young man in a yarmulke. With a festive mariachi band in the background!! Oh, the merriment! There are dozens, perhaps even scores, of cheering fans in attendance!

Actually, we are quite honored, humbled, and pleased to sing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. It is a beautiful arrangement of “Hatikvah” and through the sound system at the stadium the four of us sound like a whole choir. It all goes off without a hitch and Steve manages to post the whole thing on YouTube.

Afterward we celebrate with nachos and margaritas and Ro is grateful she will now be able to sleep through the night without waking every hour to practice her Hebrew.

So, with all this drama, Audrey, Steve, and Ro decide the song will be greatly enhanced by their terpsichorean skills. Unfortunately, they don’t have many. They press all their collective wits into action and come up with — very little. There is, as you might guess, much hilarity. We take to holding carrots as microphones, have difficulty discerning left from right, and memory loss issues abound. We err on the side of too little (in which we repeat the same lame movement over and over and resemble a bad tape loop) or too much (Audrey’s riotous specialty, in which she acts out every word as if signing the song for people who don’t speak English). Ro generally just gives up in despair and lurches around like a hunchback or imitates a flamingo.

Eventually we come up with a routine and we actually perform it at the coffeehouse without a hitch. I hope I never see it on tape, however…

Yup, two snorts and a weenie. The rehearsal is a success, of sorts. It certainly is therapeutic.

Perhaps we do not feel a pressing need for a productive rehearsal at the moment. We are sitting nicely on a fairly versatile repertoire that is reasonably performance-ready. The only new piece we need to work on is “Hatikvah,” but we won’t perform that for another 6 weeks. We just had a very successful show a the Sacred Bean Coffeehouse (best audience EVER!) so perhaps we are resting on our laurels a bit and needed the laughter more than the singing.

We do try to sight read a few new things: “My Funny Valentine,” “If I Loved You,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Seems Like Old Times,” “Peter Gunn,” and “My Blue Heaven.” Perhaps at our next rehearsal we’ll get down to business on some of them.

Meanwhile, Steve is growing out his beard following his clean-shaven appearance as James Kirk at the Purim festivities, Audrey is busy preparing for next week’s coffeehouse, and Jeff and Ro are getting ready for their upcoming marathons (Jeff running, Ro doing the walkie thing).

4 days, 7 hours and 14 minutes till the next MB4 rehearsal! What will it bring? Be sure to bookmark this blog to find out!

Today, for example, we do a show, and we are very well-received. The audience is happy and smiling and singing along. They request our cards. They seek us out afterwards to compliment our singing, our repertoire, our costumes (well, we ARE cute, Audrey and Ro in our “bumblebee” outfits: yellow and black sparkly tops straight off Macy’s clearance rack. We are, in a word, adorable.). And yet, to us, there are glitches and moments of panic only we are aware of (and sometimes blissfully unaware).

Take, for instance, the premature wee-dee. There is a part in “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” where Steve and Ro duet on the “wee-dee” part. The actual words are, and I am not making this up: “Wee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee eee um mum away.” Hey, Gershwin it’s not, but it’s still a big hit. Anyway, this duet wee-dee part comes after two verses. Well, the performance is going great, Audrey is singing like a little angel for what Ro counted as two verses, and then Ro launches into her duet wee-dee part with Steve. EXCEPT HE ISN’T SINGING.

So here’s the whole gist of this blog entry: what goes through your mind onstage when things clearly aren’t going the way they were rehearsed. Now, mind you, things aren’t going badly: the audience has no idea it is supposed to be a duet, but Ro is thinking, “Holy jeez. I am singing alone. Did I come in too early? Didn’t I count two “sha’s”? OMG did I prematurely wee-dee? Will the song finish 30 seconds early because of my mistake? Why has Steve been rendered mute?”

All these thoughts fire through Ro’s neurons at lightning speed as she is singing the now-solo wee-dee part.

And the song continues, and finishes, and it is a big success. But it remains unclear whether Ro prematurely wee-dee’d or whether she just took Steve by surprise.

Either way, it explains why we all sweat so much during a show.

There are always unforeseen factors at work during a show. Things that cannot be imagined during rehearsal. WHAT IF the place you’re singing has a large birdcage with a lovely but very vocal bird inside that persists in squawking and tweeting incessantly during your songs? WHAT IF a cell phone rings — twice— in the middle of a ballad? WHAT IF enthusiastic audience members are so transported by your music that they sing along — a lovely thing, except that they don’t know the arrangements and the key modulations and the tempo changes and become quite distracting? WHAT IF your bumblebee outfit is so low-cut that you can’t take a bow without exposing your very nonnies?

And all these thought occur while you are in the middle of singing and supposedly concentrating on lyrics and breathing and stage presence.

I suppose that explains why we show folk make the big bucks.

As you can see, we are inventing our own language. This is probably due to the fact that we sing so much doo-wop music, involving a lot of nonsense syllables, like “doo” and “wop.” Wow! Coincidence? I don’t think so. But, it is clear that our command of real language dwindles in direct proportion to the amount we rehearse.

Especially Jeff. As our bass he undoubtedly sings more “doos” and “wops” than the rest of us. Audrey generally sings a beautiful melodic line with actual lyrics in the English language, and Steve and Ro, the middle parts, harmonize on some syllable like “Ah” or “Oo,” or if we’re being really creative, “Oh.” But good ol’ Jeff The Bass is carrying the bottom line, doo-wopping and dip-dit-ditting and dum-dippy-dooing in his amiable and winning way. I believe we’ve had entire rehearsals where he hasn’t sung a single actual word.

Jeff is also responsible for starting many of our songs. If you’ve ever seen us perform, you’ll notice that we have a set list on our music stand. Steve, the computer genius, has established a very detailed and complicated database of all our songs from which he creates a set list for each performance. It gives the song title, the starting pitch, any choreography cues, the lead singer, and the all-important starting cue: who starts the song and how.

Poor Jeff. Most of the starting cues go like this:
Jeff start “Doo doo doo.”
Jeff start “Did dit”
Jeff start “Dum dum dum”
Jeff start “Dum dit dit”

How in the world he ever remembers one from the other is one of life’s great mysteries.

Audrey and Ro start a series of “doo doo” jokes, always a favorite. I swear you never outgrow this stuff:
“Why is Jeff leaning to the side? Because his starting cue was written in italics.”
“How does Dyslexic Jeff start a song? boo boo”
“How does Jeff start a song in Hebrew? ood ood”
“Why is Jeff shouting? Because his starting cue was written in boldface.”

So it is no surprise when we are trying to decide where to mark “Every Time I Feel the Spirit” for breathing that Jeff, who probably hasn’t had to speak a real English word for the past hour of rehearsing, says “I brothe here,” inventing a whole new past tense. Naturally this sparks a protracted and hilarious snort and weenie session and the rehearsal is pretty much down the toilet, so to speak, for the day.

Oh, we do have fun!

The best part is this means Ro and Audrey get to go shopping on a Sunday afternoon and to laugh themselves sick in the dressing room at Macy’s with an armload of the most dreadful holiday rejects Macy’s can’t discount enough to sell.

And laugh they do! And they entertain every other customer in the dressing room as well, who can’t wait to see them sporting what they are giggling about.

“What are you trying first, Ro?”

“Let’s try the brown shirred number.”

“OK”

[insert hysterical laughter here]

They meet at the communal mirror:

“OMG I look like a stuffed sausage. “

“No, you look fine. I look like something the cat left outside its box.”

“Maybe under stage lighting it would be OK.”

“This wouldn’t be OK even to blind people left in total darkness.”

“Maybe it will look better when it’s on the clearance rack.”

“Maybe. We’ll revisit in a couple weeks.” (They return to their dressing rooms.)

“How about the copper sequin tee? It might be nice with black pants.”

“OK.”

“I’m thinking it makes me look like a greased pig. It kind of matches my skin when it’s oily. And I can’t move my arms.”

“I know. It feels like a straitjacket. Clearly a bad thing.”

“Try the hot pink muumuu.”

“I never thought I would see the day when I would be trying on a hot pink muumuu. And yet here I am.”

[At this point we are starting to draw crowds in the dressing room. We explain that we are “show folk” and they all nod wisely and appear to forgive us.]

We continue in this fashion (to pardon the pun) through the pink muumuus, the gold sequin cardigans, the yellow and black sparkle tops, the black and gold beaded numbers for which Audrey clearly needs a different bra, and the Carmen Miranda-inspired fou-fou skirts with fabric flowers the size of Cleveland. We are dying laughing. For sure the security cameras will have us both on YouTube in the morning.

And we emerge from the dressing room victorious! We have three new costumes!

What did we choose? The muumuus? The sparkle tops? The Carmen Miranda skirts? The only way to find out is to come to our shows! See the Events link at www.moderatelybrightfour.com!

We have our final rehearsal of the year. We have become so bonded as a group that Ro misses the other quartet members at all her holiday events. She can’t believe that they haven’t achieved at least “cousin” status. They certainly would have enjoyed her Wassail. Here’s the recipe. It sure is festive and yummy. Just the thing to warm your cockles after an afternoon of sleigh riding or skiing (or anytime your cockles need some warming).

Ro’s Cockle-Warming Wassail

5 very small apples
1 orange stuck with whole cloves 1/2” apart
5 teaspoons brown sugar
1 bottle dry sherry or dry Madeira
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
3 cloves
2 allspice berries (yeah, hello, who has those in their spice rack) — just use 1/8 teaspoon allspice
2 cinnamon sticks
1/3 cup fine sugar
6 - 8 cups cider
1/4 cup (or as much as you like) brandy

Core the apples and fill each with a teaspoon of brown sugar. Place in a baking pan and cover the bottom with 1/8 inch of water. Add the clove-studded orange to the pan. Bake the apples and orange in a 350° oven for 30 minutes. It will smell terrific and you will start saying things like Fa-la-la-la-la.

Pierce the orange with a fork and catch the juice in a large heavy saucepan or Dutch oven. Save the apples and orange for later.

Add to the saucepan or Dutch oven: the sherry or Madeira, cider, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, allspice, cinnamon sticks, sugar, and water from the apple/orange pan. Heat slowly without letting the mixture come to a boil. Leave on very low heat. When your guests arrive, add the brandy and float in the apples and orange.

Ladle hot into punch glasses, festive holiday mugs, or, if you must, styrofoam cups. Make toasts and celebrate the season.

Even though he has missed out on the Wassail, Steve has brought lots of new music to the rehearsal, including “Happy Trails” and “Hatikvah,” two songs unlikely ever to have been on the same program before, but such is the stuff of the versatile Moderately Bright Four. The Hebrew of Hatikvah is not a problem, even for Ro, but “Happy Trails” calls for “coyote howls” and “horse whinny” sounds, which has MB4 creatively transformed into a veritable barnyard of animal sound effects, from Jeff’s inadvertent snort to Ro’s freakishly accurate imitation of a flamingo, admittedly not a barnyard animal, but hilarious enough to reduce us all to tears of mirth and effectively ruin the rehearsal from a musical standpoint. From a social standpoint, however, the rehearsal is a resounding success, and we all go out to dinner to celebrate.

We have dinner at a restaurant woefully unprepared for Moderately Bright Four and their Exceedingly Bright Spouses, being unstocked in virtually every alcoholic beverage on the menu we want to order (even to the point of being unable to make a frozen pina colada because their blender is inoperative!) and the cheerfully inept waitress is unable to operate a corkscrew or pronounce the few items left in stock (“We have Hacker Pschorr,” she says, with an accent on the “P”) leaving us all laughing merrily at the table and imitating flamingos. We are an easily entertained bunch and are happy with our drinks, even though they are our fourth or fifth choice. It is a fine way to end 2007 and we look forward to another year of music and merriment with Moderately Bright Four.

Happy New Year to our wonderful fans!

After that we move on to Christmas mode with an appearance at a private party, performing our entire holiday repertoire, including a debut of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” We are able to sing about snowmen frozen hard and figgy puddings and Cherry’s right cheek without collapsing in our usual gales of laughter. The boys are even able to choose the right word for their solo line in “Winter Wonderland.” Audrey and Ro somewhat disturbingly start off by singing to each other, “When we finally kiss goodnight” and then the boys have the manly reply, “How I hate going out in the ___.” It’s supposed to be “storm” but they usually take a multiple choice approach, selecting from among A) storm, B) snow, and C) cold, and generally wind up with a hybrid like snorm or stold. Then of course, we laugh hysterically and run for the bathroom.

Luckily this does not happen at the party and we are all grateful.

We continue our festive activities by attempting to carol in the Clover Hill neighborhood. This is not as easy as one would think. It seems that some people are frightened of carolers, assuming we are perhaps fundraisers or looters, so they don’t answer their doorbells. To top it off, we have chosen to carol on the heels of an ice storm so the sidewalks and porch steps are treacherous and slippery and there are gale warnings out. The Weather Channel warns about falling tree branches and downed power lines. The intrepid Moderately Bright Four grip icy railings, trying not to blow off people’s front porches, digging the toes of our boots through the ice crust trying to gain a foothold. We resemble, not fundraisers or looters, but a foursome of inept mountain climbers, flailing about before falling to our frozen deaths, gamely singing all the while. Such a brave, brave quartet, intent on bringing joy to the masses during the holiday season. It is so much fun!

Happy Holidays to all our fans from Moderately Bright Four! Now go have some figgy pudding!

Add in Morris County’s premier a cappella quartet: Moderately Bright Four! Oh yes, and some wine.

Beth and Bud, huge MB4 fans, provide the crowning touch: a string of lights spelling “SOUP FEST” decorated with spoons and bowls and soup cans. It is magnificent. We hang it up in the kitchen.

And challah!! Ro tries her hand at making challah from scratch, and it actually turns out sort of good, in a goyishe sort of way. Ro is pleased with the proofing cycle on her new ovens and vows to bake more breads as winter sets in. She will become the soup and bread maven of Cedar Knolls. She is filled with contentment.

Lots of friends, lots of kids, lots of soup, lots of wine, lots of music. We light the tree. We sing in the living room and in all of the kitchen areas. We sing Christmas songs and Havah Nagila. The friends clap. They eat soup out of Ro’s substantial collection of Christmas mugs. They request recipes. Oh, OK! Here they are! Enjoy — and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Note: I never measure anything, so amounts are approximate. Luckily, this is not a big issue for soup.

CLASSIC TURKEY NOODLE SOUP

I turkey rack (whatever’s left on the bones after the Thanksgiving feast)
2 large cans chicken broth, maybe more
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
8 carrots, sliced
5 celery ribs, sliced
1/3 box of noodles, maybe more, depending on how noodley you like your soup. You could use rice, too, but don’t forget you’d have to change the name of the soup.

Do what you must to fit the turkey rack into your largest soup pot. I usually enjoy this task, ripping off turkey legs with my bare hands, tearing apart the rib cage. Suggested music: “Welcome to the Jungle” or anything by Guns ‘n’ Roses. It’s best not to let children watch.

Wash off your hands (and forearms, probably — actually sometimes I need a shower) and pour enough chicken broth in the pot to cover the rack. Put on the lid and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer about 20 minutes.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the turkey pieces to a platter. Let them cool a bit.

Meanwhile, add the rosemary, carrots, celery, and noodles to the broth and cook for about 8 minutes. When the turkey is cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bones, shred it, and add to the soup pot.

Done!

CROCKPOT BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH CHIPOTLE CHILES

Yes, it’s worth getting your crockpot out of the basement for this one!

1 T olive oil
2 onions chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 t cumin
16 oz. dried black beans
1 T chopped canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
7 c. hot water
2 T lime juice
2 t salt (I always use the kosher kind. It’s the closest I get to a religious experience!)
Garnish: plain yogurt, chopped tomato, chopped cilantro, hot sauces

Sauté the onions and peppers in oil 8 minutes. Add garlic and cumin for 1 minute. Put in crockpot. Add beans, chiles, and hot water. Cook on high 6 hours. Puree 2 cups of the soup in a blender. Mix in lime juice and salt. Serve with yogurt, tomatoes and cilantro. Olé!

TORTELLINI PESTO SOUP

There’s a vegetarian in every crowd, so this is a good soup to include. It’s also criminally easy to fix!

2 c. chopped scallions
6 cans vegetable broth
2 pkg. frozen cheese tortellini
1 large package of frozen peas, thawed
1 package frozen pea pods, thawed
1 container of pesto

Bring scallions and broth to a boil. Add tortellini. Cook 3 minutes. Add peas and pods. Cook 3 minutes. Stir in pesto. That’s it!

HARVEST SOUP

This will warm your very cockles, especially if you add in extra hot sauce! And don’t worry, you don’t actually have to go and HARVEST anything to make this soup. It’s just the name.

1/2 lb ground turkey
1/2 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
1/2 c. chopped onion
6 c. beef broth
1 c. tomato juice
1 c. dry red wine
3 large cans of tomatoes, chopped (I use fresh tomatoes)
3 large carrots, sliced
2 c. diced zucchini
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
2 t. oregano
2 t. Tabasco

Brown turkey, sausage, and onion. Drain. Add rest of ingredients. Simmer until vegetables are tender. Serve to all your friends. Offer them extra hot sauce.

Enjoy the recipes, everybody! Bask in the glow of good friends and hot soup. Or hot friends and good soup. Your choice!

DA BLOG FODDER!!!!!!!! The boys are quick to pounce on that one, careening around the kitchen like mobsters as Audrey and Ro warble the theme song. We feed off each other, using “blog fodder” as noun, verb, adjective and expletive, in every context imaginable.

Nonetheless, the rehearsal is a success, as we make great progress with the doodooful “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and a new one: “Can-Can,” which is done completely with nonsense syllables, not one of which, thankfully, is doo.

We are having a great time adding new songs to our repertoire while at the same time running through established numbers. It has occurred to us that singing doo-wop music involves a specialized vocabulary that is unintelligible by the general population. Ro realizes this when she inadvertently leaves her rehearsal tape running in record mode through an entire rehearsal. Sample conversations:

“I need some help with my hot cold woo.”
“Where’s that?”
“Right before the bahp bahp bahp bahp bahp bahp bow.”

“Is it oo-wah-oo or oo-wah-oh?”
“It’s Oo-wah-oo the first time and then oo-wah-oh after the dit-dits.”
“And make sure the dit-dits are big.”
“Yeah, we need big dits.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Speaking of dits, let’s lose the last dit in the middle of the last measure of the second system on p. 34.”
“Who you callin’ a ditz?”

So when you hear us perform “Silhouettes” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” listen for our big dits and the perfected Hot Cold Woo.

We reunite for our first rehearsal after we all return from our respective vacations. We spend the first fifteen minutes leaping on each other and declaring how much we’ve missed each other. It is, after all, ALMOST our third anniversary as a group. Audrey says it seems like our second, but I am the record-keeper. I know. It is indeed our third. If this were a marriage I believe it would entitle us to gifts of paper or plywood or some equally useless commodity. Actually, it’s LEATHER! I just looked it up! Hmmmmmm… I’m picturing pants, no?

Anyway, we eventually get down to business. We have a busy week in October coming up: a fashion show (hey, those leather pants could come in handy!), a coffeehouse, and a return engagement at Steve’s piano student recital (which had been our first gig, see earlier in the blog.) We revisit “And So It Goes” (the Billy Joel one). We then start working on “Silhouettes” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Both are hilarious fun. Or perhaps it was the margaritas whipped up by Brenda. Whatever… it’s good to be back.

Many thanks to our loyal fans, new friends (and soon-to-be loyal fans) who came out to our summer events. We defied the weatherman’s gloomy prediction for the Somerset Patriots game and sang the Star Spangled Banner under beautiful skies and an almost-full moon. (Note: if we ever decide to record, the stairwell where we warmed up at the stadium is PERFECT!) We also sang at two Mt. Olive events: Mt. Olive Community Day and the rescheduled Flanders Park Summer Concert which had been rained out in July.

Instead of packing it in, Steve decided to call around to see where else we could play that night.  He ended up speaking with Rick at the Stonefire Grill in Randolph.  Through some gutsy maneuvering, he got Rick to agree to have us come on down for a 7:30 show.

After calling around to all of the Moderately Bright Fans we thought might be stopping by the park to alert them as to our new venue, up to Randolph we went.

… and WHAT A SHOW!  We had several compliments, a couple of job offers, and probably the most fun we’ve had in a bar in quite some time.

We start working on
Pretty Little Angel Eyes
Till There Was You
Embraceable You

Our website has 1111 hits!

March 2007

We sing a show at Cedar Crest in Pompton Plains! Ro’s mom, Flo, is a resident there. The theater is beautiful. It is the first time we have a real dressing room backstage! We have a sound man! It is a good show and Flo becomes an overnight celebrity. She is interviewed for the Cedar Crest newsletter. She is kvelling.

We sing at the Temple Hatikvah Coffee House for the third time. We do:
Pretty Little Angel Eyes
Embraceable You
Sh-Boom

NEW OUTFITS!

May 2007
Brenda makes us FABULOUS Victorian outfits! She really does her homework and makes the girls some real live Victorian skirts, petticoats, and overthingies, complete with flounces and shirring and ruffles and frou-frou and hoo-hoos and bustle-type, um, fullness in the nether regions. We even have parasols. We look spectacular. We cannot sit down in them, but we look spectacular.
Thus resplendently attired, we sing at the Boonton Historical Society House Tour on a beautiful May day.

June 2007

Our website has 1250 hits!

We get wireless mics!!!
We work on The Lion Sleeps Tonight
When Will I Be Loved

The Lion Sleeps Tonight is so catchy that it gets Ro in trouble at the grocery store. For some reason she has Jeff’s bass part in her head as she is shopping, particularly the part where he makes a bass drum sound on the first beat of every measure (as Audrey is singing the verse). She notices that shoppers are eyeing her warily. Some are clutching their cell phones. She becomes aware that she is actually doing Jeff’s bass part ALOUD — so what the shoppers saw and heard was a blonde woman in Aisle 4 saying “DOOM!” “DOOM!” “DOOM!” at regular intervals.

NEW OUTFITS FOR THE CAR SHOW!

We get black and yellow BOWLING SHIRTS with our names on them!

We sing at the Blues Cruise Car Show on a gorgeous day in June. We start the car show with the Star Spangled Banner. Our sets include:
Why Do Fools Fall In Love
Under the Boardwalk
In the Good Old Summertime
Pretty Little Angel Eyes

Come Go With Me
Sh-Boom
When Will I Be Loved
Up On The Roof
Blue Moon

Longest Time
Blue Skies
In the Still of the Nite
Goodnight Sweetheart

The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Here, There and Everywhere
Surfin’ USA/Barbara Ann
Java Jive

Little Deuce Coupe/409
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
My Girl
Stand By Me

June 2007

We learn Who Wrote the Book of Love in one rehearsal.

July 3, 2007

We have a new website! Over 1300 hits! We have a BLOG! What fun!

NOT MORE RAIN!!!

We are anxiously watching the forecast for July 5, the date of our third appearance at Flanders Park. The weather has been perfect for about a month, but the forecast for July 4 and 5 is dismal. We are filled with gloom and sadness.

We continue to add to our repertoire. We work on:
Here We Come a-Caroling
Our Love is Here to Stay
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Our website has over 900 hits!

September 29, 2006
We sing at the Mt. Tabor House Tour for the second time. It is another beautiful day and we are magnificent in our burgundy vests.

October 14, 2006
Rehearsal at Ro’s. We work on
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts) and When Will I Be Loved. There is much laughter.

Our web site has over 1000 hits!

We are doing a lot of singing! We sing at
The Temple Hatikvah Sisterhood Fashion Show
The White Meadow Temple dinner
The Ecumenical Interfaith Thanksgiving Service
The Mt. Olive Library Gala

November 11, 2006 We sing “My Girl” to Rachel at her Bat Mitzvah

December 2006

We’ve been working hard on our holiday repertoire. We’ve memorized
Here We Come A-Caroling (”bless you and send,” not “sess you and blend!”)
The Gloucestershire Wassail
White Christmas
Let It Snow
Winter Wonderland
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Deck the Halls
We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Ro spends a good deal of time trying to describe what a figgy pudding is.

December 9, 2006
We sing at Barbara Barre’s (Diane McCormack’s mom) holiday party. People love us and we look great in our burgundy vests (and some pants).

December 12, 2006
We sing at the AAUW meeting at the Basking Ridge Library. People love us and we look great in our burgundy vests.

December 23
We sing at Merry Heart Nursing Home

Steve gets overly enthusiastic during a rehearsal of Sh-Boom and knocks over the table of snacks. The grapes fly. Luckily, the dip remains upright.

We sing a song for Becky Mason at her retirement party (to the tune of “My Girl.”)

We try to sing at the Cops ‘n’ Rodders car show in Flanders but get rained out.

We try to sing at the car show two weeks later, but we get rained out. We try car caroling instead…

July 4, 2006
We sing at Jeff and Audrey’s July 4th BBQ. It rains…

July 5, 2006
In the middle of a week of rain, we sing at Flanders Park. We have a small, damp, but devoted audience, all carrying umbrellas. We sing:

Sh-Boom
My Girl
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday
Java Jive
Heart of My Heart
Coney Island Baby
In the Good Old Summertime
Stand By Me
Blue Moon
Little Deuce Coupe/409
You’re a Grand Old Flag
Hole in the World
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Here, There, and Everywhere
The Longest Time
Goodnight Sweetheart

July 22 - 23, 2006
We try to sing at Mt. Olive Twp. Day but are, of course, rained out. We succeed in singing to a small, damp, but enthusiastic crowd the next day, using our new sound system. We sing:

Sh-Boom
Up On The Roof
My Girl
Come Go With Me
Coney Island Baby
Lida Rose (debut)
In the Good Old Summertime
Blue Skies
Java Jive
Desperado (debut)
Blue Moon
Stand By Me
Surfin USA/Barbara Ann
Under the Boardwalk
The Longest Time
Helplessly Hoping (debut)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love

July 27, 2006
We try to sing at the car show for the third time, but it starts, of course, raining, after our second song… We are thinking of offering our services in drought-ridden countries as rainmakers.

August 2006
We work on “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”

THE SOMERSET PATRIOTS GAME — August 6, 2006
We sing the Star Spangled Banner to open the Somerset Patriots baseball game. It is a beautiful day and it does not rain. We have a wonderful section of Moderately Bright fans waving Moderately Bright fans, painstakingly and brilliantly made by Brenda. The sound is amazing in the stadium. We wear our red MB4 shirts. We don’t forget the lyrics. Our performance is projected on the gigantic stadium screen. People cheer for us. They wave their fans. There is much rejoicing.

Our website has over 700 hits!
We now include video clips of some of our songs!

One week later…

Our website has over 800 hits!
Must be because we now include video clips of some of our songs!

August 16, 2006
We sing at Heath Village for their Wednesday night music program. It is a return engagement and we sing two 25 minute sets (maybe a bit longer). For our second set we had the audience pull song titles out of a hat to determine our song order. It was fun.

August 17, 2006
After 4 rain-outs, we finally got to sing at the car show in Flanders!

A successful, if not terribly sunny, summer!

It is becoming apparent that we will sing just about anywhere at anytime.
We sing the Star Spangled Banner and Stand By Me at the Tinc Road Variety Show.
We sing in the Subway while waiting for our sandwiches.
We sing at the cocktail hour for The Newcomers Club of Roxbury and Mt. Olive.
We sing on Ro’s deck for her brunch.
We sing at Steve and Brenda’s fajita party.
We sing “Java Jive” in front of a Starbucks.

March 11, 2006: Club Hatikvah Coffeehouse
We sing:

Little Deuce Coupe/409
Here, There, and Everywhere
M-O-T-H-E-R (with full schtick)
Java Jive
Stand By Me

Our website has over 400 hits!

March 18, 2006
We have another intriguing opportunity. The Somerset Patriots baseball team is holding auditions for singers to perform the national anthem at their stadium this summer. We don our red MB4 shirts (and some pants) and go to Menlo Park Mall for our audition. We are terrified. It is being broadcast live on a radio station. Audrey and Ro are shaking so much, Ro has a vibrato. The mall is crawling with people vying for a chance to sing the Star Spangled Banner. Most are 14 year old girls envisioning an American Idol-type opportunity. We are older and wiser and have matching red shirts. Out of 100 participants, they picked 14. A week later we got a phone call, saying that we had passed the audition! There was much rejoicing! We are slated to sing on Sunday, August 6. There is much to do.

We start working on
Sh-Boom
Helplessly Hoping
Desperado

By May 2006 our website has 500 hits!

We add 409 to Little Deuce Coupe

As of 1/19/06 our website has 310 hits!

February 2006
We sing “Blue Moon” at Mt. View’s Variety Show.

Audrey and Ro shop for costumes. They almost buy furry jackets that look like they are made from hamsters. Instead they buy black tops with itchy sequin trim from the 75% off rack. They also buy very tall, metallic, platform boots. These are perhaps an ill-advised impulse buy. Time will tell. They spend a lot of time giggling in the dressing room. Other shoppers are wary and concerned until Audrey and Ro explain that they are “show folk.”

March 1, 2006
We sing “Stand By Me” at Mt. View’s Variety Show #2

We have 37 songs in our repertoire.

Steve introduces his new toy: a Fostex recorder. We start the chant: Bach-a Kohn, Bach-a Kohn, Bach-a Kohn. He delights in recording our rehearsals, making us all nervous wrecks, and soon audio clips appear on our web site.

HANUKKAH HAPPENINGS

We sing at the Hanukkah Dance at Temple Hatikvah:
Why Do Fools Fall in Love
My Girl
Blue Moon
Surfin’ USA/Barbara Ann
Coney Island Baby
The Hanukkah Song
Havah Nagila

OUR FIRST PHOTO SHOOT

Ro replies to a Reader Call in the Daily Record. They are looking for information about caroling. Ro gets an email from the Features reporter and MB4 has its first photo shoot!

We are featured in a Daily Record article on caroling (“A Caroling They Go… A few groups keep up the old tradition”) and have a photo shoot in Ro’s kitchen! The photographer’s camera is larger than Ro’s first car. We are front page news and there is a life size pic of Steve in the article! A nice Jewish boy singing his carols! Ro’s letter is quoted extensively! Her new kitchen photographs well. There is much rejoicing!

WE REALLY DO CAROL

We carol around the Clover Hill neighborhood. It is beastly cold. One family offers us an adult beverage. We partake. We are well received except that the Cowan family requested that we carol for them but neglected to tell us that they moved. So we merrily woke up a pregnant mom, a groggy dad and a baby at the Cowans’ old address. We did not give them our card. We are lucky they did not call the police.

A CHRISTMAS STORY

We sing at St. Clare’s Hospital, Boonton, at their annual Christmas dinner for their outpatients. This is a very fine thing to do on Christmas Day. All goes well except Steve mis-sings a lyric in Winter Wonderland. Instead of “The fire is slowly dying” he sings “The CHOIR is slowly dying.” Not festive at all, especially at a hospital event, but otherwise we are a smash hit.

Steve has designed our “lightbulb” MB4 logo. It doesn’t take long before Jeff figures out how to have it emblazoned on red shirts. We are thrilled with our new costume, which we wear, of course, with pants.

BUSINESS CARDS!

We are tired of saying “No” when people ask, “Hey, do you guys have a card?” The Moderately Bright Four business card is born.

WEB SITE!

Steve, the GeekMan, can’t be stopped when it comes to applying computer technology to the quartet. We have databases up the ying-yang, documenting every possible detail of every song we sing, sang, might sing, might never sing, and never heard of. His latest masterpiece is the official Moderately Bright Four web site. www.moderatelybrightfour.com. Be sure to bookmark it, send it to all your friends, and sign the guest book. We quickly start accumulating hits and guest book sign-ins.

THE MT. TABOR ANNUAL HOUSE TOUR!

October 1, 2005. We are the musical entertainment. We stroll, we sing on front porches, parlors, street corners, in front of vintage cars. We wear our new red MB4 shirts. We give out business cards. We tell people to check out our web site. The weather is perfect. People like us. It is fun. We even get asked back for the following year! And yes, we sang “M-O-T-H-E-R” all the way through without wetting our pants.

NEW REPERTOIRE

We learn:
Coney Island Baby
Here, There and Everywhere

We desperately need to add to our holiday selections, so we work diligently on

We Wish You a Merry Christmas
The Hanukkah Song
Havah Nagila
White Christmas
Deck the Halls
Jingle Bells
Throw the Yule Log On Uncle John

For some reason, these songs inspire much hilarity. There are dangling juleps, tootsie-wootsie issues, very wrong lyrics (“When you wore a tunic, a sweet yellow tunic, and I wore my mother’s hose”) — and the song “M-O-T-H-E-R” is invariably impossible to sing without laughing: tears streaming down our faces, noses running hopelessly, Ro and Audrey scrambling for the bathroom, while the boys twitch helplessly on the floor in spasms of laughter. We can’t even look at each other when we try to sing it. We take to standing with our backs to each other, trying valiantly not to be the first one to laugh and break up the song.

One major issue is that we never seem to be able to spell out M-O-T-H-E-R without losing count. It comes out MOTHRA or MOTO or MTRTHRETER. Steve decides to help cue us by spelling out the letters with his fingers, looking like some hearing impaired chimp.. M… O… T…we’re singing bravely, trying not to laugh… then he makes some weird deformed looking cross — trying to make an H with one hand — and I’m looking at it and thinking, what the hell letter is that? Didn’t we already do T? Or maybe it’s an X? Wait, there’s no X in MOTHER.

If anybody ever sees us perform M-O-T-H-E-R and we get through it without laughing, we deserve a standing ovation, because it’s really hard!!

We have been hired to sing an hour at Flanders Park as part of their Summer Music in the Park Series.

We toy with the idea of using kazoos for “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” This quickly degenerates into a discussion involving wazoos. We decide to rehearse twice a week to get ready for this show.

The kazoos become reality. Of course Jeff’s doesn’t work. He has a broken diaphragm. Steve laughs so hard he snorts. The rehearsal is a success. We work on “Come Go With Me” and some Beach Boys things: “I Get Around” and “Barbara Ann” seque to “Surfin’ USA.”

We work feverishly on songs for the outdoor concert in Flanders Park. Most rehearsals involve much laughter and occasional talk about shoes. Jeff is issued a replacement kazoo. Steve prepares a detailed outline for the concert listing everything from key to where to stand to starting singer to which foot to step with first, Roberta is confused because she thinks “A” for Audrey means “A for Alto.” She is, after all, blonde.

July 6, 2005
We are the second half of a bill with Narrow Escape. Midway through our second song, a thunderstorm threatens and we are stopped in our third song. Luckily we are able to move the show, audience and all, next door to the temple and successfully finish in air conditioned comfort.

Let’s grill! Let’s grill! All over the town!
Our ketchup is red and our mustard is brown!
Our burgers are made of the finest of beef
With our Barbecue Bowl, we’ll drink to thee!

Now here is to hamburgers, here is to buns,
May G-d send our masters the fine toasted ones
And some fine toasted buns that may we all eat
With our Barbecue Bowl, we’ll drink to thee!

Come hot dogs, come burgers, come sausage and steak
Let’s bring on the cole slaw, the salads, and cake
Let’s hear it for baked beans, let’s hear it for chips
With our Barbecue Bowl, we’re smacking our lips!

And here’s to the maid in the apron so rare
Who opened the door and showed off her fine pair
Of baby back ribs all prepped for the grill
With our Barbecue Bowl, we’ll give her a thrill!

Let’s grill! Let’s grill! All over the town!
Our ketchup is red and our mustard is brown!
Our burgers are made of the finest of beef
With our Barbecue Bowl, we’ll drink to thee!

New song: Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

Flo’s comments: “Oh that was so delightful! What music! I can’t believe how you all blend! Oh that Audrey has such a lovely voice! How cute you all are! That Steve is such a sweetheart! So talented. They all are! Every one. One nicer than the other. Now I know why you talk about your quartet all the time. What voices! Can you believe that high note she hits? I can’t get over it. It was so nice to hear that. What fun you all have! That Jeff and Audrey are such a sweet couple. I could have listened for another hour. I can’t believe how you learn all that music so fast. And they’re all so nice. And how they loved their snacks. I’m so glad I got to hear you. I don’t know how you do it. I have goosebumps. Isn’t it cute that you’re all the same size. What a nice gal that Audrey is. So darling! You all look like you’re having so much fun. That Jeff seems like such a nice guy. How do you ever remember all those words? That was so nice of them to do that for me.” etc etc etc etc etc for 90 minutes.

To celebrate, we get ourselves new microphones and learn some more songs:
The Star Spangled Banner
You Make Me Feel Brand New
Blue Moon
Under the Boardwalk
Blue Skies
Come Go With Me

We appear at a fashion show at Meadow Wood Manor on April 7.

We’re on a roll. We get new outfits! And shoes! The girls have tops with snaps! There is much revelry. We laugh so hard that Steve falls to the floor. The rehearsal is a success.

We add even more tunes to our repertoire:
Hole in the World
Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight

We do a stage show at Heath Village. Ro’s beloved Aunt Ruthie is in the audience. Jeff has trouble with his F hole, but otherwise the show is a success.

We continue the Coffeehouse circuit, performing at White Meadow Temple’s Starlight Cafe on May 15. Ro is scared schtickless; otherwise the evening is a success.

MB4 ushers in 2005 by adding to the repertoire:

The Longest Time
In the Still of the Night
You’re a Grand Old Flag

We do a show at the Kessler Institute on January 16, 2005. We begin to realize that it might be a good idea to select songs to suit the audience. We question the wisdom of singing “That Lonesome Road” to the elderly and infirm… Soon we will have enough songs in our repertoire to be more choosy…

We begin feverish preparations for the upcoming Coffeehouse events. The pressure is on. We start to contemplate adding choreography to the act. For some reason, the boys suggest we change our name to “The Titillators.” The suggestion is vetoed by the girls.

We appear at the Mt. View Variety Show on February 8, 2005. We wear black on blue. We are a hit., although our only competition is scores of third graders lip synching to Britney Spears tunes.

Choreography rehearsals continue. We contemplate changing our name to
“The Incredibly White Four” or “The Shades of White.” Yet we persevere. We have the music in us.

We are very excited! We have a gig entertaining the residents at Mt. Olive Manor on December 19. It will be very festive! We have worked hard to come up with a holiday repertoire! Audrey and Ro shop for costumes and come back with…. striped scarves!

So now we have gray turtlenecks with wool scarves and we get to sing at Mt. Olive Manor, where they are generous with the heat… The quartet collectively loses 63 pounds of water weight during a 30 minute show. We sing:

Why Do Fools Fall in Love (which is quickly becoming an Audrey Wells showcase number)
Bye Bye Blues
Up on the Roof
My Girl
That Lonesome Road
Let It Snow
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye
In the Still of the Night
Winter Wonderland
Hallelujah Chorus
The Lord Bless You and Keep You

Everyone seems to like us and we are rewarded with cake.

We work on:
Gloucestershire Wassail
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
and Winter Wonderland, which gives us our new name… MODERATELY BRIGHT FOUR!!!

“Moderately bright four” — It was there right at the top of the music! Perfect! (Of course, another song had “Easy Four” as a time signature and the boys wanted that, but Audrey and Ro veto it…) We love our new name and think we are very clever. Or at least moderately so.

Jeff has a spooneristic problem with “corn for popping” in “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” and we experience our first “two snorts and a weenie” episode. We also have rather a lot of raucous fun with the words of Gloucestershire Wassail but I suppose you had to be there…

October 23, 2004
We sing
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
My Girl

We are jam-packed in Steve’s living room with an SRO crowd of nervous piano students and their nervous parents, relatives, and friends. We are the most nervous of all, sweating in our first costumes: gray turtleneck sweaters (OF ALL THINGS!!) and black pants. We sing and survive. We have memorized well. Audrey and Ro remember that the “Oooo-wahs” come before the “Dum dit didit didits.” We do seem to have to breathe much more often than in rehearsal, but we are encouraged by the applause.

LATER THAT MONTH…

We add to our repertoire:

Bye Bye Blues
The Hallelujah Chorus (yes, the Handel one)
It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday
The Lord Bless You and Keep You
That Lonesome Road

We are astonished and thrilled that we can sing together. We spend much time leaping about and cheering. We work on “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” “My Girl,” and “Up on the Roof.” There is much rejoicing.

Steve has arranged our first gig. We are to appear in October at the piano recital he is having for his piano students. We are to be the comic relief, perhaps. We are filled with joy, tinged with terror. We must come up with a name! We must come up with costumes! We must memorize the music! Ro is used to holding all her music in a handy folder. She usually sings wearing a floor-length black skirt and sensible shoes. There will be much to do to prepare for this event.

OUR FIRST NAME

Steve has suggested a name for the quartet: The Cookie Jars. Something about how the initials of Jeff, Audrey, Roberta, and Steve spell out J-A-R-S. A quartet called The Jars would be silly, so we’ll be The Cookie Jars.

We are all quite silent after this announcement. Ro is filled with visions of the hideous rotund pieces of crockery all the mothers had on their kitchen counters back in the 1960s. Cookie jars. They were always shaped like cutesy little animals or cartoon characters. Ro’s family’s was particularly appalling: it was shaped like Little Red Riding Hood. There is something so disturbing about having to remove Little Red Riding Hood’s HEAD in order to get a cookie. To this day Ro can barely eat them. And now she will actually be in a quartet called The Cookie Jars. There is a certain amount of dismay.

Jeff proposes the Phlegm-Tones, which is met with hysterical laughter. Flanders Four? Alliterative, yes, but a bit boring. We settle on “Two Plus Two” because of the two-guys/two-girls thing and the fact that we could handle the math. Life is good yet again. We have a name.