Knock knock...

Who's there? Tommy.

I forget the punchline...it's a The Who joke or something. You see, in the past month or two, I've been gearing up my fingers to be more like Pete Townsend. No, I haven't been downloading child pornography for "research". I've been learning the score for Tommy. Why just tonight, I was playing Pinball Wizard while the rest of the cast danced in 20° weather (as gifted a musician as our director is, he's not too good with the theater's thermostat). Yes, my Tommy chops have been coming along nicely ever since I received the score two weeks ago (finally). Prior to that, I was merely given a recording of the soundtrack and a hyperlink to some terrible guitar tabs and asked to "give it my best shot". Well, I pulled a Hiawatha and shot it into the air and let it land where ever it may. I was greatly anticipating the delivery of the official score as I was not a big fan of playing blindly (no pun intended).

Arrive it did and happy I was. It was slightly less official looking than I had envisioned. For all intents and purposes, it looked completely hand-written. It even had measures printed with cross-outs and arrows pointing to other sections of the song. I have chosen to find this endearing since most of the inserted notes are useful rock-guitar cues like: "SOLO!", "WAIL!", "SCRAPE!" and my personal favorite, "SMASH GUITAR!" No lie folks, it says SMASH GUITAR at the end of a particularly dramatic scene. As much as I wish to be as cool as The Who, I don't think my father would appreciate my smashing of his irreplacable T.F. Morris for a community theater production. Oh well.

Speaking of rocking musicals, I have failed to tell you all of my trip to see Evil Dead: The Musical.

If you are not a fan of the Evil Dead Trilogy, you either haven't seen them or you're a crazy person. Well, it turns out that both my brother and I have wives who fall into either of those categories (kidding-ish). This was very inconvenient since my family had already made arrangements to get tickets to the New York production of Evil Dead: the Musical.

My entire family had been fans of Bruce Campbell since Army of Darkness came out on VHS. We watched the entire series of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., went to the limitted theatrical release of Bubba-Hotep, and my mother and brother both attended a book signing of "If Chins Could Talk". It should go without saying that we also love Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn. And to a family with two music degrees, the prospect of a musical setting of this horror masterpiece was too good to pass up.

We offered the wives a choice: come with us to see a shlock musical splatterfest or you can choose another Broadway musical and we'll buy the tickets. Wouldn't you know they chose to see "The Color Purple" over "Evil Dead"? Like I said: crazy. But my goal in life, as is my brother's, is to make my wife happy so I woefully went to the musical without her.

My woe was short-lived as I stepped into the theater. The house music was blaring 80's power metal, the stage was lined with evil looking trees, and the front three rows had been completely draped in plastic tarps. You see, this was the "Splatterzone" which bore with it the disclaimer: fake blood may be splattered upon the audience. Oh man...is that cool or what? It was so cool in fact that we bought souvenir white t-shirts ahead of time that said "Splatterzone" on the front and had the "Evil Dead" logo on the back. I knew in my heart that my t-shirt would not remain white for very long.

The curtain openned and I seriously thought I was in the wrong theater. The backdrop was that of a happy forest and looked like scenery painted by third-graders for a church play. Five smiling youth were holding up a cardboard likeness of a car and singing "Cabin in the Woods" very cheerfully. I was worried that this might be a little too "Broadway" and not enough "Sam Raimi" as cute little cardboard animal cutouts panned across the stage to give the illusion of highway travel. It wasn't until one of the cute rabbits ended up as cute roadkill that my fears were quelled. From that point on, the tone of the play remained wonderfully tongue-in-cheek while still being the morbid gorefest that the movies were. There were a couple stupid songs (duh, it's a musical), and a few great ones; my personal favorite being the "What The Fuck Was That?" tango.

After act I, the ushers started handing out (or rather pelting us with) ponchos to prepare for the second act. I caught my poncho, looked at it curiously, then handed it to the next available person. As I scanned the people around me, one couple caught my eye. A man and his wife, roughly my parents' age, were sitting in the row behind me wearing white polo shirts. In a room full of people who mostly looked like the comic shop guy from the Simpsons, they certainly stood out. I saw their obviously plain white shirts and said, "You don't want this do you?" Their reply will forever be etched in my mind: "We didn't drive all the way from Detroit to wear ponchos!" I hope to be just like them when I grow old. My family chanted that quote many times throughout the evening. As we were from New Jersey, it didn't make as much sense, but it was the spirit that counted.

I would love to tell you my account of the Splatterzone but I feel like I would be ruining the show for you. I will let the aftermath speak for itself:













I have not washed that T-shirt yet. If my band ever gets another gig, I plan to wear that shirt. Nothing says death metal quite like a souvenir from a Broadway musical.

Speaking of "Evil Dead"-loving bands, here is a video of Mercury Radio Theater. If you listen closely at the beginning, you can clearly hear me yelling, "YEAH! MUSTACHE!"