Shortly after The Last Christmas Carol was published in 2001, I told my partner-in-crime, Scott Michal, that I wanted to write a “sequel.”  It wouldn’t actually be a sequel because I wouldn’t be using any of the same characters and the story would have nothing to do with Christmas Carol.  However, it would be the second part of a trilogy dealing with classic stories reimagined in my own original (I hoped) way.  So I set about writing The Last Oz Story.

By the following year, I, essentially, had it written and needed only for Scott to write the music to accompany my lyrics.  However, from Scott’s standpoint, the timing wasn’t right.  For one thing, he had to earn a living.  For another, he is a composer-for-hire and I wasn’t hiring him per se.  So Oz Story took a backseat to the other things he had going on in his life.  Over the years, he has worked on the show as he has had time, but it was never a priority.  Several times I thought we were close to being finished, but then Scott’s computer would crash and we lost much of what he had already composed.  (In the meantime, Wicked became a big hit on Broadway.)

To make a long story short, Scott still isn’t quite finished, but we’re getting close.  And, what is more, he is making a recording of the music as he goes along.  That was something we neglected to do when we did Christmas Carol.  Of course, we had no idea that anyone else would be interested in doing that show when we were finished. We are a little more optimistic this time around.

So to answer my own question, it took six months to write The Last Christmas Carol and eight years to write The Last Oz Story.  In the meantime, I wrote the third part of my trilogy and staged it as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Condominium Association, Inc. There are only three songs and I “composed” the melodies myself (Scott wrote them down for me since I am a musical illiterate).

Meanwhile, I have been working on another musical since 1980.  This will be my magnum opus.  It will be a huge show and Scott is looking forward to doing the music.  I’ve got about 80% of it written, but I don’t talk about it because I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t already been done.

I’ve also written another show (a non-musical) entitled The Hoboken Radio Catastrophe.  I had hoped to collaborate with Dan Mushalko on it, but he’s a very busy man.  One of the highlights of my life was working on WCBE’s “Kids Sundae” with Dan and the whole crew many years ago.   Talk about a labor of love.  I’ve never worked with such a dedicated group of people before (or since).

Advertisement