Over on the WFMU Blog they have been chronicling a lost art form. The corporate musical! These were musicals created by large companies to help charge up their sales force during conventions. They hired professionals to do it and those professionals obviously have no passion for the subject. It’s a great example of overcoming obstacles and having to create without inspiration.
What would you do if you had to write an entire musical about bathroom fixtures? Probably something like The Bathrooms Are Coming. Not only does it contain the best (only?) song about bathroom fixture distributors ever written, but also the best song about how a woman feels about her bathroom.
My bathroom
Is a private kind of place
very special kind of place
the only place where I can stay
making faces at my face
How about a calculator company? Here’s the Monroe Calculator Company musical, It’s a Brand New Ball Game. Or JC Penny’s Spirit of 66! Which include the great song, How Would We Look Without Zippers? Or the most complicated corporate musical, General Electric’s Go Fly A Kite! It includes a trip to hell and the song Big Fat Wife and Make a Woman Out of Your Wife. This post is a potpourri of different companies, my favorite is the song from the point of view of a salesman’s wife called My VIP, a creepy appreciation from a neglected wife.
We’re those things called salesman’s wives
We gave up living when we chose our lives
But one truth stands, it will always be
We love those men, our VIPs.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes there is nothing more inspiring than something completely uninspired.
