Some of my collected reference. I had long had the idea of the rooster having the strutting Steven Tyler sort of thing going on.
Happily Whatever After Series: Bremen Town Musicians
An irreverent second look at popular Fairy Tale Legends … and the reality of what really happens in the “Happily Ever After”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the idea fed to children over decades is there’s a happy ending to every story. The Prince comes, the clouds clear, the sun comes up and then... what? Won’t the clouds gather again at some point? The sun will more than likely come up again, but only after enduring the night. The Prince is charming until Cinderella discovers he is a notorious slob with smelly feet who habitually belches loudly and blows his nose at the dinner table. Ahh Reality rears its ugly head.
Town Musicians of Bremen
Those audacious Grimm Boys strike again with yet another hemp-influenced tale involving farm animals. So how does a donkey play the lute?
The story opens with a farmer's old faithful donkey who was fixing to be sent to the glue factory. Instead, donkey decides to take off for the town of Bremen where he thought he could become a town musician. After all, it can't be that hard and it sure beats the heck out of being killed.
The story opens with a farmer's old faithful donkey who was fixing to be sent to the glue factory. Instead, donkey decides to take off for the town of Bremen where he thought he could become a town musician. After all, it can't be that hard and it sure beats the heck out of being killed.
Along the way, he comes across a dog who is about to be shot, and entices him with his musician plan. "I will play the lute and you can play the drum." Later they are joined by an old cat and an old rooster, all in the same predicament of impending death. The cat knows about "night noise" and the rooster can crow his head off... dog can play the drum and donkey will play the lute...
The group later comes across a handful of criminals hanging out at some crack-house in the woods. The animals ultimately scare off the lot of them with some loud noises. The animals set up house and stay there, never actually making it to Bremen. And they supposedly lived happily ever after... until the food in the fridge ran out. So, they fired up the tour bus, printed up a stack of crappy flyers and hit every pub and dive in northern Germany that wasn't playing polka music...
The crowds were excited by the live entertainment... that is, until the donkey played the lute...
After the ruffs were done, planning the merger of animals into their stage environment and building the colors up.
The biggest challenge, I felt, was recreating a "stage lighting" atmosphere. I had toyed with the idea of including faces in the crowd but realized
it was just superfluous noise that would detract from the reaction to Donkey's solo.
Any musician knows there is a "look" that is given by other band mates who hear something, uh, off. The best band mates don't make a big show of it because if the crowd sees that face, they know something's up. But if YOU happen to be the band member who "screws up" the best thing for you to do is to repeat the mistake. That's right. That way the crowd will think you meant to do it the first time. And, if you string enough screw-ups together in a song, they wind up calling it jazz.
