The 2015 Front Page Follies are over five months away but David Lauver has been hard at work developing concepts for parody songs that poke fun at local events. He invited last year’s cast members to a meeting to discuss his ideas and to bring some of their own.
I mentioned two or three recent news stories that might still be topical by July. David asked those of us present if we wanted to take a stab at writing lyrics for some of the songs on his list. My homework is to try writing parody lyrics to the tune of “All About that Bass,” “Blank Space” and a few others.
The assignment reminded me of the parody songs my friend Bruce and I wrote for our own amusement while working at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in the summer of 1980. Most of our compositions were about people or events at Wolf Trap that summer.
I had another reminder of Wolf Trap a few days ago. It happened to be Bruce’s birthday too. I heard a few minutes of Aida on WUOT. One of the spoofs Bruce and I wrote that summer had to do with shows that were canceled, including Aida after a thunderstorm knocked out the power. I didn’t remember that the cancellation of Aida resulted in a lawsuit between the Opera Company of Boston and the Wolf Trap Foundation.
