Some months ago I went on yet another publishing adventure, of putting some music on Itunes. And today I actually got my first payment. Yay.
A little story for you: years ago, when I was creating family concert programming (see Peter VS the Wolf, right column), I also did a fantasy story about JS Bach, called JS Bach, Superstar, where Bach meets up with a sleazy agent from modern day Los Angeles. Bach and his 22 children find themselves swept up in the commercial frenzy of the pop music industry.
The humor of the show is that the agent has no appreciation of Bach’s genius and instead proceeds to "fix up" Bach’s music in modern pop idioms so as to appeal to a wider audience and achieve immediate sales success. A series of absolutely over-the-top truly tasteless pop versions of Bach’s music are played, complete with dance numbers featuring Bach’s kids.
The arrangements are midi’s, I am not really an arranger but what the heck, I did them myself, they are actually kinda fun, and I hate to admit it but I play them in my car all the time.
If you are at all interested, you can hear one of these on Itunes yourself. Easiest way is to go to Itunes, and type the keywords "bach superstar suite" in the search box (usually in the upper right corner). I can't do a link to itunes but you can also link to the CDbaby page for JS Bach Superstar and listen to snippets and buy downloads there as well. I just figured Itunes is easier for most folks.
My favorite, if I have one, is "Jesu Joy of Saturday Night." This is the first pop number in the show (this is Bach’s first introduction to things having gone horribly awry with his new career– after being magically whisked out of his little house in Germany, he finds himself in the grand opening night in Vegas) . . . Yes, it is a disco version of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Please don’t hate me. Think of it as an homage from Donna Summer.
Another fave is "The Hot Tempered Clavier," a latin/chacha arrangement of the C Major prelude of the "Well Tempered Clavier" . . . if anyone is interested I suppose I could convert this into an actual usable arrangement for Pops concerts.
Another fun one is "Sheep may Safely Swing."
There is also a country western tune, and a salsa number based on the Toccata and Fugue in D. I also did a hip-hop rap number based on the Bach Chaconne but I didn’t have the guts to put that out for public consumption. I can do many things with my voice but rap is not one of them.
The story of JS Bach Superstar (which can be read on my website) is perfect for this blog– It is a fable about what so many of us go through in life– so often we present our best creative work to some kind of authority figure that we think is capable of appreciating it, and they don’t . . . and instead they try to shoehorn you into some pre-existing paradigm . . . and you have to believe, and take the lead and find appreciation of yourself within yourself.
Please understand, the plot of the story is that these arrangements are supposed to be tasteless, so Bachophiles, please don’t send me any hate mail!
Anyway, again, you can hear snippets for free on itunes and I think on other music download sites like rhapsody. Please tell your friends, I just need 599,991 more downloads and I can retire. Again, go to Itunes, and type the keywords "bach superstar suite" in the search box. Or go to cdbaby.
Also I wanted to mention and thank alphainventions.com for helping to promote my site so much!
© Justin Locke
