There's A Monster Under My Bed

Now here's a really serious song. A soloist (optional) tells the story of a monster under her bed who plays a saxophone. The background singers join in with reasonable doubt of her sanity and everyone has a good time with it! On the P/A Cassette, we have used our featured performer for this issue, Anne Riggio, as our soloist. Anne demonstrates a gutsy, blues sound which can be discussed and compared to the sounds she produces on the other pieces she sings on the cassette. (This was deliberately designed to be a part of your studies of the human voice, which we focus on in this issue.)

On side two of the cassette, there are two versions of this song. The first is completely instrumental and can be used for your own soloist and background singers. The second version has Anne singing, but no background singers. This is for classes who don't have strong (or brave) soloists. It can be used to lip sync the solo, however, if you have a student(s) willing to try.

All of the spoken parts are meant to be very natural. They can be changed and ad libbed, if you prefer. At the end of the song, you will hear (and see on the lyric page) a lengthy bit of ranting by the soloist. We were able to fade this for the cassette. For your live performance, you may wish to "push" the soloist slowly offstage or out of the room while she protests. Again, ad libbing is best.

A fun note: If you are performing this piece, a monster costume for your "sax soloist" would be a natural, of course. But even funnier might be a monster costume for the singer - either in addition to or instead of the sax soloist. In any case, a monster mask would definitely help the mock solos for either.