journal.nonesuch.com

Further Praise for Sweeney Todd Tour

Boston Now joins the critical mass in praising this week's kick-off of the Sweeney Todd national tour at Boston's Colonial Theatre, saying "It works gloriously." Entertainment Editor John Black offers high praise indeed when he writes: "On a night when it seemed that the entire city was staying at home to watch the Red Sox in the World Series, a few lucky thousand were seated at the Colonial Theatre watching a thrilling tale of revenge, romance, murder, and meat pies." Citing the recent Tony-winning Broadway production, Black writes, "The play obviously has a pedigree. Thirty minutes into the show at the Colonial, you will know why."

To read the complete review, visit bostonnow.com.

For more on the tour, see today's previous post.

Can Randy Newman's "Burn On" Help Red Sox Rise?

In recapping Boston's 7-1 win over Cleveland in last night's game five of the American League Championship Series, bostonist.com sportswriter Michael Fernia offers a suggestion of music opener for tonight's game in Boston: Randy Newman's "Burn On," about the fire that set Cleveland's Cuyahoga River ablaze in 1969. This follows rumors that the woman the Indians brought out to sing before last night's game in Cleveland was an ex-girlfriend of Sox starting pitcher Josh Beckett. A spokesman for the Indians denies having known of the connection.

Marathon Motivators: Steve Reich and Philip Glass

In today's Kansas City Star, music writer Paul Horsley recommends that runners prepping for a long-distance run, like this weekend's Kansas City Marathon, avoid the common mistake of training to disposable Top 40 hits ("simple carbs"). He recommends instead a healthy dose of "high energy" compositions to motivate through the long haul. On his list of Top 10 training tunes: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and Philip Glass's score to Koyaanisqatsi.

There's Always Next Year

David,

There are two pictures I vividly remember from a night in October, nine years ago, when you and I were at the sixth and last game of the 1998 ALCS championship, when the Yankees beat Cleveland at Yankee Stadium. In the first photo, echoing the remarks in your note the other day to Chris, you are seen standing to the side of my very happy family, with the whole world wildly cheering, you have a bemused look on your face, but you look clearly far more reserved than anyone else around. I remember at that moment you said that as semi-happy as you were to be there (winning a pennant is always a tremendously exciting event), and even half-heartedly rooting for the Yankees to win, it also brought this intense feeling of longing and even poignancy, it pained you to be among all of those happily celebrating, and you felt outside, thinking what it might be like if it ever happened to the Cubs.

The other picture is one I took of my son Nick, who was nine, which is one of the most joyful and unabashedly happy photographs I have ever seen; it was taken as the last out of the last play took place, when all of life was perfect. Only a year earlier, the night that the Indians won the Division playoff, the moment came when he realized not just that the Yankees had been defeated, but there would be no more baseball games that year by the Yankees; he was impossible to console.

This range of emotions, from yours of devastation (as a boy in 1969 when the Mets beat the Cubs); of deep frustration (1984 when Cubs had a 2-0 lead against the Padres and blew it); of anger (I never saw you, in all the years we've known each other, as mad as you were when Lee Smith once blew a save at a Shea Stadium); of poignant resignation (when the Yankees won); as well as, within 12 months, my own son's ecstasy one year and sense of being shattered the next, gives some insight as to why baseball means so much to so many of us. There is heartbreak for 29 of 30 teams each year, and, like in classical music or hip-hop, those who are on the outside can never completely understand the people for whom these passions become all consuming.

For Yankees fans, by the way, I think there has become another emotion—sourness—that has taken over our lives in the last seven or eight years, as the Yankees have fallen short; we are becoming like the Braves in our ability to perform at a high level for 162 games a year, and then, in the next four or five, fall on our faces. But sourness is often associated with people of privilege, who are used to having everything come easy. Cubs fans, looking at the years since the Yankees won the World Series in 2000, with six division titles, two American League titles, and seven straight playoff appearances, shake their heads in disgust when they hear Yankee fans whine.

And of course there is the emotion of utter and total depression and pain. All you need to say are three words—Dent, Buckner, Boone—and you know what I’m talking about. (That pain was permanently lifted, starting with a walk in the ninth inning of a game in October 2004 to Kevin Millar).

It was with a certain irony that you and I were together with our two sons last night for the Yankees and Indians again, your Sam around the age of Nick, now ten years older and so far removed from the innocence of a different time—of a perfect time—for a Yankees fan. It was clearly a night where the Yankees went out with a whimper, not a bang, and both of us were rooting more for our sons’ happiness than a Yankees victory: that will always be the way it is.

Bob

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Nonesuch President Bob Hurwitz responds to Senior Vice President David Bither's previous entry on being a Cubs fan.

Talking Baseball with Chris Thile

Thursday, October 4, 2007

2 PM

Dear Chris,

I know it's been a big few weeks for you—the Tensions Mountain Boys (as a band name) has been retired, the Punch Brothers have been born, you're signing a new record deal, you've written four new songs, you're working with a new producer and engineer, in a new studio, you've finally recorded The Blind Leaving the Blind.

And so, when I visited the studio on the other day, what was everyone talking about? Baseball, of course. Indeed, all of us at Nonesuch were touched by your quote when you signed to the label: "When I found out the boys and I were going to be working with Nonesuch, I felt like I had been drafted by the Cubs." After last night, with the Diamondbacks smoking the Cubs and the temper tantrum by Ted Lilly, the quote gives me some cause for concern.

Bob 

Friday, October 5, 2007

12:15 AM

Hi Bob,

OK, it looks bad, but I will watch and root my Cubs on to whatever fate awaits them. The Diamondbacks are winning 6-2 in the top of the fifth after winning the series opener 3-1, but Hart just came in and struck out two batters (both on full counts) to clean up Ted Lilly's mess, and we have the top of the order coming up. OK, Soriano just singled (a LONG single. He's not running very well.). Good, good! You know, the ability to cultivate unwarranted optimism is a real blessing. Damn it!! Theriot flies out deep to left, Lee pops up, and Ramirez strikes out. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, and though I'm not going to start saying "wait till next year" just yet, I'm almost ready to say "wait till Saturday." Come what may, GO CUBS!

Chris 

Friday, October 5, 2007

4 PM

Hi Chris,

As you know, we have a kind of a divided office here. There are those (Peter, Karina, Gregg, Sam, Jocelyn, Ronen) who couldn't care less about what happens this week; I think they are sick of hearing the rest of us—Eli and Drew, Rhode Island boys/members of Red Sox nation; David, Cub, sufferer; me, insufferable Yankee fan; Josh, Dodger fan and Gagne look-alike; Melissa, kinda Yankees fan but stays above the fray (and certainly out of the debate). On the other hand, the Punch Brothers are Cub fanatics, members of a long-suffering tribe.

Bob

Friday, October 5, 2007

5:34 PM

Dear Chris and Bob,

Chris, your quote also troubled me, not because I didn't understand what you meant—to me it was an expression of the purest rapture—but because I was afraid that taken out of context, "I felt like I was drafted by the Cubs" could be misinterpreted by the uninitiated as gaining entrance to one of Dante's innermost circles of hell.

I've lived in New York City for almost 30 years but there has not been an instant that I haven't carried with me the weight of being a lifelong Cubs fan. I try to carry it with dignity; I occasionally carry it with ecstatic giddiness (1984, 2003); but always, it is there. I've been at Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees clinch pennants and World Series crowns, but I barely remember those events (wasn't Wade Boggs riding around the stadium on a horse one year?). My son, Sam, who is now eight, is a Yankees fan, as he should be: when he was too small to know any better, I used to outfit him in a Cubs cap, and I once had a father seriously berate me in a playground in Central Park for inflicting the Cubs on such an innocent youngster.

My grandfather had a tryout with the Cubs in about 1920; my father grew up near Chicago in the 1930s and 40s and raised his own family there in the 1950s–70s. So this thing goes deep and it goes way back. My heart was first broken in 1969—the damned Mets. It gave me great pleasure this year to watch the Mets stage their own epic collapse, just as it gave me a sort of evil joy to see the Padres lose in the one-game playoff to the Rockies (the damned Padres—1984—and that damned Steve Garvey with the home runs in game 4 in San Diego!).

But what about this team, Lou Piniella's Cubs? I do think Lou brought the Cubs some Yankee swagger and a disdain for the tradition of losing. But let's face it—not only are these the Cubs, but also they 1) had the worst record of all the playoff teams; 2) played in the worst division in baseball and barely won that; and 3) exhibited all the usual Cubs traits (lack of timely hitting, wildly erratic starting pitching, a time bomb for a closer, etc., etc.) all season long. Even though I still don't know a single Diamondback player, even after watching the last two games (wait, wasn't Augie Ojeda a Cub once?) and that hissing sound they pipe into the stadium to rally the home crowd sounds like a toilet flushing … they're killing us. Yeah, Lou should have left Big Z in the first game, but if you can't score more than one run, you're not going to win even if a suddenly miraculously healthy Randy Johnson were to switch dugouts and come in to relieve Zambrano in the eighth.

They might win a game at Wrigley this weekend—Rich Hill pitches well with extra days of rest and he will have had a week off—but I do not understand why managers, in the face of an avalanche of stats to the contrary, think it is a good idea to bring pitchers back on three-days rest, which is what Lou intends to do in game 4 with Zambrano. I have the Cubs losing in four games. At Wrigley, just to make it extra bleak.

So Dad, at 78, I still don't think this is the year. Hang in there … the fates are just waiting for next year, that nice round centenary, 100 years since the Cubs last won the World Series. After all, they've got some good young kids, Soto behind the plate, Theriot at short, Hill and Marshall starting … Kerry Wood looks more dominant each time he pitches, he can close next year with Marmol setting him up … yes, 2008 will be the year …………

David

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Discussing above are mandolinist and member of Punch Brothers Chris Thile, Nonesuch President Bob Hurwitz and Senior Vice President David Bither.