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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