Monday, December 17, 2007

The Leader of the Band is Tired


Friends,

Three people who touched a part of my life recently died.

My wife and I met Allan Bérubé, a MacArthur Award-winning independent scholar, in Liberty, New York when we dropped our daughter off at the legendary (and decrepit) Catskills performing arts camp, Stage Door Manor. He was running a lovely B&B with his partner, and we had decided to explore the region and the ghost towns of Borscht Belt resorts. Allan fascinated us with his stories and anecdotes, particularly those that related to his book and subsequent PBS documentary, Coming Out Under Fire, about the difficult and sometimes accommodating relationship between the U.S. military and gays in World War II, published in 1990. His obituary came as a shock to me and is well worth reading. We were in Liberty when Allan and a team of his friends were using a crane to position the recently relocated Munson Diner--a vintage chrome relic about to be demolished--from Hell's Kitchen in NYC. After several years of restoration work, the diner opened in Liberty just one month ago.

Just today I read Dan Fogelberg's obituary. Dying at the young age of 56, Fogelberg was a gentle balladeer, whose album Souvenirs seduced me away from listening almost exclusively to the Grateful Dead (this was over thirty years ago), particularly with its Zen-inspired song Part of the Plan. While most of his music has never been on my top 100 play-list, listening to him has always cheered me up and given me a sense of inner peace. I will miss him.

A couple of weeks ago I saw that the guru of subscriptions, Danny Newman, had died. To most, his life and death may be an overlooked footnote, but for anyone in performing arts management and marketing, he was a legend. His book, Subscribe Now! Building Arts Audiences Through Dynamic Subscription Promotion was a well-thumbed resource on all of our bookshelves. Very practical and simple, his book helped to fuel an explosion in performing arts subscriptions in the seventies and eighties (I once had the opportunity to attend a master class of his). Even today, his advice is followed, though box office sales techniques have evolved significantly since he began his quest. Indefatigable and bursting with enthusiasm, Danny Newman had an almost naive Horatio Alger personality. According to his wife (as quoted in his New York Times obituary), "even during his final illness he was often ready with one of his famous trademark expressions: 'We’ll get out of this mess yet.'"

Talk to you soon!

Bob