Ward,

I am am Andrew Lloyd Weber afficionado ... I think he's a musical
genius just as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms etc were ... I'm stopping short
for Mozart, that's another category.

A classical gas is a Mozart Fart. <G> In the movie "Amadeus", the
character of Mozart did just that, on several occasions. While folks
have been farting since day one, society has gotten so banal. There was
a study that determined that people fart from as little as 15 times a day,
to as much as 25 times an hour. I wonder how much of our tax money was used
to determine that?? There was also a rumor that they were going to do a
study on the effects of second hand flatulence, but they couldn't get any volunteers. :P

When they had the 25th anniversary performance of Phantom of the Opera
in London's Royal Albert Hall, my daughter and I had tickets costing hundreds of pounds each ... and well worth it. We went to Broadway to watch his work, Hamburg, other places. Even contemplated Melbourne ...
but the plane tickets were too expensive.

I remember listening to items from it on a record, but never saw it on
TV or in person. I think the theme (or one of them) was "That's All I Ask
Of You".

Anyway, the story about ALW's cat is authentic, she destroyed the
entire score of "Love Never Dies" which was stored, without backup somewhere, on his Clavinova. That's how we know he doesn't score on
paper anymore.

That was originally on a deal known as "Amateur Radio Newsline".

So Yamaha engineers were flown in and his instrument was disassembled
to see what traces might be left in the chips and a substantial amount
was recuperated. He still had to rewrite several portions, bridges etc
... There was no orchestral scoring involved.

There is software now where you can create the music, instead of hand
writing everything on sheet music paper (been there, done that). I used
a program called Cakewalk years ago.

"Love Never Dies" had a short carreer, 6 months in London, 6 months in Melbourne and Brisbane, 1 month in Copenhagen and 1 month in Hamburg.
The public loved it, the critics destroyed it and the financial backers withdrew fearing for their investment. I saw it in London and Hamburg, with my daughter, of course ... a masterpiece, thanks to the cat.

The thing is, the public may love it...but if the critics hate it, the
deal is doomed.

With his latest piece "Cinderella" the cat was nowhere near and he
daily backed up his work.

Lesson learned...no pussyfooting around. <G>

Some trivia about data-retrieval: little is it known that about 80% of
all data on the computer discs that went down when the WTC towers collapsed eventually was recovered ... and that was "a lot".

That's true.

Daryl

... Out of my mind. Be back in five minutes.
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