Top Beat
Soundtrack
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Crows by Steve Crossett
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Musical Numbers
Another Opening ~ Another Show
TOP BEAT
a musical conspiracy
written & directed by
ROGER LIENKE
at
Tin Roof Theater
(behind The Red Cup)
Oklahoma City, OK
1998 / 1999
The Sooner Theater
Norman, OK
1999
Dad visits the set
at the Tin Roof Theater
The Synopsis
Top Beat is a "musical conspiracy" presented as a revue of spoken and sung numbers that tells a story. The show is set in l951 and serves as a mythical history of a band that never was: Carmen Metropolis and Onsombo.
Having vacated New York City (the home of bebop jazz), the group has made its way to the Hotel Clayton in downtown Minneapolis to anchor the nightspot Deep Treble, located in the hotel basement. Within a hybrid form of non-backbeat-centered rhythm and blues (pre-dating rock and roll), the group is grappling with a new rhythmic sound, the "top beat".
While the more familiar backbeat is in process of becoming institutionalized, the top beat is fated to submergence and obscurity. The avenue for impact open to the top beat then inclines towards the inescapable present rather than to the desire for posterity. Thus, Top Beat features elements of dissent, recovery and innovation, and suggests in turn the losses, conflicts and inspirations encountered by those compelled by initiatives outside the mainstream.
The plight of Carmen Metropolis and Onsombo is an allegory for the plight of spontaneity and diversity in a culture tending toward homogeneity and unconscious conformity. Embedded in the chemistry and tensions between its central characters are sexual and philosophical questions that, viewed via the time framework of the early 1950s, reflect value struggles as pertinent to today as to tomorrow.
The set of Top Beat at the Tin Roof Theater
