This week CERAWeek returned.
It takes its name from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), which started it back in 1983, and is now one of the world’s biggest energy summits. Heads of state and captains of industry meet in Houston, Texas, each year to discuss “what’s ahead for global energy markets, geopolitics, and technology”. So, naturally, what with sanctions being imposed on Russia and the effects they’re having on global energy markets, this year featured a series of Broadway musical numbers about fracking and energy transition.
Sadly CERAWeek Sings! is not one of the website’s “On Demand Highlights“, nor, unaccountably, have any of the many news reports on the event covered it. I only know it happened thanks to The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff (and frankly, if she hadn’t filmed chunks of it on her phone, I’d suspect they’d hired another Stephen Glass-style fantasist).
The US — because of its the competitive, individualistic spirit, the belief that anyone can make it, the veneration of stardom, the size of the place — is lousy with gifted performers. In 2014, I watched a toe-curlingly embarrassing piece of “satirical” dinner theatre in which every member of that cast could bring the crowd to a hushed reverence when they sang. In a nearly empty restaurant in Santa Fe, a guy unapologetically approached our table, played a genuinely moving country song he’d written — lines still come back to me to this day — and left after I’d bought him a sandwich.
This all came back watching four genuinely talented singers performing a loving ode to the late fracking pioneer George P Mitchell:
Where else in the world would you see the committed and mellifluous selling of lines like: “We can frack/ in the shale/it might sound like it’s a fairy tale/ that’s what dreams/often do/they seem crazy/till you make them true”.
I cannot stress enough these are the actual lyrics and not joke ones I came up with.
While it appears my burning need to see the whole thing will never be satisfied, I was amazed to find out how many petroleum-themed musicals were commissioned by the resources industry down the years. The industrial musical was a full-on genre. Check out Up Came Oil by those hitmakers at Exxon Corp (from 1976’s The Spirit of Achievement):
The same musical, Tactical Media Files tells us, features a song called “Efficiency”. I can’t find the audio, sadly, so we’ll just have to imagine the smiling, pristine-voiced performance of the following lines:
Reasonable government guidelines, now that’s OK
We don’t mind if the government has its fair say
But too much control, now that just gets in the way
Of Efficiency!
Look, it’s cleaner and more elegant than Gina Rinehart’s similar work.
There is so much wrong with the world, particularly the United States, plus climate disasters (localised in other nations) the aussie media misses reporting for our public, plus our devastating disasters here, plus covid, plus Ukraine etc etc.
Actually have not enough coherent thoughts to comment on any subject. It’s not the end yet for me – read about Fujitsu and UK Post office scandal/injustice/horror, then another on Fukushima – deaths etc, and now will try to get books mentioned.
At least Crikey is still good value and a must read every day.
Thanks for providing me with the new thing I learned today, Charlie Lewis. I’m gobsmacked and horrified that people write musicals about Oil, but delighted at the ridiculousness of the endeavour. Isn’t it amazing that you can hold 2 conflicting emotions about the one thing??
I think my head is going to explode.
Subversive? Musical theatre? Well i never…
The ire, and often too inadequate rage & fury, rightly directed at the elites ignores their NOT being 10mts tall wielding telegraph poles as clubs to cow & dominate the rest of us.
With a vast army of priests, Jobsworth clerks, toadies, panderers and armed enforcers (gotta lurve that state monopoly on organised ultraviolence) they would just be silly little men (only 96%…?) behind the arras with a megaphone & light show.