The "Dead Man's Cake" blogs, issue #4


Dead Man’s Cake:  The Songs.

The album “Dead Man’s Cake” (2012, by David Barrows) is my autobiographical narrative consisting of 11 songs which generally proceed chronologically from my childhood to the present day.  The first half of the record is about the story of my parents, my Mom’s suicide and how it affected me.  Most of the second half of the record is about how I went on to live my life afterwards.

Track 1:  Hollywood Sixties  

Hollywood Sixties is about those years in the mid- to late 1960s when my parents, Robert Guy Barrows and Judith Friedman Barrows, enjoyed a few years of success as Hollywood television writers.  They wrote individually and as a husband and wife team, for a number of famous television shows, including series like Mission Impossible, Bonanza, the Green Hornet, Daniel Boone, etc.  Many of these episodes are available as part of boxed sets of those series, and there are even some complete episodes that exist on YouTube etc.

You can find references to their TV career by searching the web:





Musically, "Hollywood Sixties" is upbeat and funky, with a kind of a film noir undertone, and interspersed with horn section parts that quote Hollywood film and TV theme songs.  It makes reference to the glamour of Hollywood, but also questions our obsession with it, and hints at the high price of fame and Hollywood’s dark side.  The song foreshadows the impending premature ending of my parents’ short-lived Hollywood career, due, as I see it, to a combination of fateful decisions, delusions of grandeur and the tragedy of untreated mental illness.

(To be continued).

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