Back to the Dress Circle

I slept in on what turned out to be a gorgeous Sunday morning. It was sunny and warm, with not a bit of humidity. I turned the air conditioner and fan off and made Alton Brown's Whole Wheat Pancake recipe for breakfast, along with an Italian plum from the farm market. Tried calling Mom twice. Got the dial tone the first time. I tried calling her an hour later; got a quick "busy; gotta go." I'll try again later tonight. She must have been dealing with Skylar and Collyn.

Work was busy, thanks to several call-outs. There were some mild customer problems as well. A man took advantage of a big 2 for $10 sale on 12 packs of Snapple to buy 32 cases for his employees ("keeps them from going to 7-11 for two hours," he said). Alas, you're only allowed one coupon per order...so I had to do each order eight times, two cartons per coupon! Everyone in the line took it well or moved, but it was annoying.

I decided to cheer myself up when I got home by reviving an old favorite Sunday night ritual. I discovered The Dress Circle on Mercer County College's WWFM: The Classical Network in the late 90s. Two teachers from the college introduce a wide variety of songs from musicals, with a different theme every week. One week, you'll hear the songs from Broadway shows that opened in that month; the next, you might hear famous comedy teams of the 50s and 60s. The week after that, they'll play music from famous TV musicals, or songs from famous stage flops, or songs from European stage shows. I loved the variety of music one couldn't hear anywhere else.

From the late 90s until I got out of college in 2001, I never missed "The Dress Circle." I even used to skip out of dinner early when I still lived with Mom and Dad and listen to the second half of it while everyone else finished. I forgot about it for the first year or so of living in Wildwood...until I heard it while looking for something else on the radio, and once again, I never missed it (unless I was working late).

I was a regular listener until early 2006, when I moved to Oaklyn. I had a hard time picking up WWFM in Wildwood, and once I moved away from the Shore, I couldn't get it at all...until tonight. I found it online on it's website and listened to it tonight. It's the same as ever; the theme was one of my favorites, "Back to School." Songs ranged from a very good number from a very bad movie, "Question Me an Answer" from the 1970s Lost Horizon, to "Back to School Again" from Grease 2, to the Bing Crosby standard "An Apple For the Teacher," to "The Book Report" from the original cast of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and a gentle lullaby from a British kids' TV show called Charlie Chalk, "I'm Not Asleep, I'm Just Resting My Eyes." (The hosts are both college professors; they make a lot of jokes about students sleeping in class before that one.)

There's even an archive of this year's shows on their site. I'm currently listening to "The Shows of March." Richard Kiley and Diahnne Carrol sing the title song of one of those shows, No Strings.

Here's that archive, so you can catch up on this fun showcase for showtunes, too:

The Dress Circle's 2009 Archive