In the Alley
STATION 3YA’s Music While You Work sessions are probably no better and no worse than any other station’s. They are a cross-section of Tin Pan Alley opera; interesting to a sociologist, significant to a psychologist, and appalling to @ musician. Moon rhymes with June, aughter with daughter, sky with eye, love with above, fall with all, and so on. Nobody cares when the tunesmith pinches a bit from Tchaikovski, a few bars from Nanny Hipstein’s smash hit of yesterday fortnight, a phrase from a negro folk tune and then signs his name to it as an original composition. This will go on occurring just so long as there is a demand for background music and escapist music and while frustrated and unrequited people want cheap balm for their scraped emotions. Some day, perhaps, someone will make a film about Tin Pan Alley and it will not be like the films already made on Gershwin and Cole Porter. If it is honestly done a good deal of it will blister the tar of 52nd Street, but equally it will remember with gratitude the honest songs that are written, perhaps one in five yedrs. It is possible to be grateful for the unabashed footloose amorality of ‘"There’s a fellow waiting in Poughkeepsie" or to wonder at the psychologically perceptive lyrics of "Laura." The Tin Pan Alley account is not all debit.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470110.2.21.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 394, 10 January 1947, Page 10
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231In the Alley New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 394, 10 January 1947, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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