"Song sung blue, everybody knows one," crooned the lounge singer Randy Medallion as his audience swooned and clapped along. And I, too, was swaying and tapping my foot in time to the music ...
Until it slowly began to dawn on me that I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Songs sung blue? I didn't know one. I'd never heard of such a thing.
Suddenly seat 73Q (balcony) seemed a very lonely place indeed: an isolated musical wasteland of desolation and despair. I felt deeply excluded, like the friendless child in the schoolyard who doesn't know the words to the popular jump-rope rhyme. But worse was to come when Randy kicked into his next number.
Unlike my fellow concert-goers, apparently, I had not been informed that I was required to bring a strip of colored fabric with me to the show. Consequently, when Randy made his unreasonable demand that we tie a "yellow ribbon" around some imaginary "old oak tree," once again I found myself empty-handed and unable to join in with everybody else.
If sing-a-long entertainers like Randy are going to make such bold assumptions and assertions about their songs, and if they will require attendees to equip themselves with relevant theatrical props, then surely they should distribute a detailed memo before each concert outlining some of the subjects they will be singing about. Such a document would provide a useful point of reference for those of us who don't know anything about blue sung songs or that bits of material are needed for full enjoyment of these performances.
Frankly, I wanted to ask for my money back, but my wife became very vocal and insistent about not making a scene, so in the end we just went home.
