Updates

So, there's a lot to follow up on from my last post. First of all, and very good news indeed, emusic did add Make Me A Song to its lineup, and unlike Grey Gardens, Seesaw, and Pal Joey, is offering the entire album, all 30 tracks. The one problem is that I still need to get the final track of Evil Monkey Man, which would then only give me 29 tracks of MMAS, causing me to wait another month to finish it up and move on to the next album. Fortunately, Amazon offers both EMM and MMAS as mp3 downloads, like it does with Seesaw and Pal Joey, so I think I'll just spend the 99 cents and buy the last track of EMM and on May 20 go ahead and download all 30 tracks of MMAS. Then I can start June off with a clean slate. Maybe by that time they'll have Kerry Butler's solo CD available.

Speaking of Ms. Butler, is Xanadu in trouble? It was announced today that the 5 main performers (Cheyenne, Kerry, Tony, Mary, and Jackie) have all renewed their contracts through 2009. However, in recent history, both Sweeney Todd and Curtains made big announcements that the principles were renewing and then posted closing notices about 2 weeks later, ending the run well before the renewed contracts were supposed to end. While Mary Louise Wilson did not renew her Grey Gardens contract, Christine did and again and a big announcement was made that she renewed through October, but the show closed in July. The Tony odds will not be good if Xanadu posts a closing notice before the ceremony, let's hope it holds on, and if it makes a good showing, it might keep the show running, at least through summer.

I also mentioned on Tuesday that Javier Bardem was set to star in the movie version of Nine. Well, it was also announced today that he has withdrawn. I have to admit I was surprised they didn't offer the part to Antonio Banderas right off the bat (granted, he was not good in Evita, but his singing on the Nine cast recording was actually pretty good, and more in character with Guido). Hopefully they'll take this opportunity to right that wrong and actually let a show's star preserve the performance on film. Other than Rent, that hasn't happened in a long time, and the less said about Rent, the better.

Lastly, Boston Legal did it again. Christine Ebersole was on last night's show, in a very memorable performance, that at least has a small chance of appearing again. When can we expect to see Patti? Or at least Betty, Chita, Idina, or Judy Kaye? Granted, Kristin and Audra are busy with their own shows, but given that NBC in its heyday encouraged its must-see stars to jump around onto each other's shows on a routine basis, ABC should be able to follow suit.

So, that's it for now, hopefully I'll get my thoughts about Les Miz up on Sunday. See you then.