Thursday, August 14, 2025

The link for new (mainly theater-related) parody lyric book - 6th in my "21st Century Oldies" series

 Here's the Amazon link for my new (mainly theater-related) parody lyric book - the 6th book in my 21st Century Oldies parody lyric series


21st Century Oldies, The First Quarter Century: What A One-Percent World!

Sing-along parody lyrics by Fred Landau, 21st century events sung to the tune of musical favorites.

Topics and 21st century events included:
SKYROCKETING COST OF ENTERTAINMENT
CLIMATE AND GLOBAL WARMING
ECONOMIC CRASH & BAILOUT OF 2008
PANDEMIC & SOCIAL DISTANCING
POLITICAL TURNING POINT: THE 2016 ELECTION
APPENDIX: A COLLECTION OF BEATLES PARODIES

ABOUT FRED LANDAU’S PARODIES:

Fred’s parodies in the New York Times reader comments section caused Broadway legend Lin-Manuel Miranda to tweet: “Freddie the NYTimes commenter is a local treasure.”  The New York Times reprinted Lin-Manuel Miranda's tweet - bottom of this article https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/service-advisory-artsbeat-is-finished/index.html

Fred’s Sondheim, Sesame Street and Katy Perry parodies have also been written about in articles for The Village Voice by Michael Musto.  

https://www.villagevoice.com/hilarious-gay-spoof-of-im-still-here/ 

Financial Times critic Brendan Lemon covered Fred’s parody of A Little Night Music on his site and said “A Little Site Music: Brilliant.”  

http://www.lemonwade.com/2009/11/25/a-little-site-music-brilliant/

Comedy great Mark Evanier called him “master parody-writer Fred Landau” https://www.newsfromme.com/2011/10/25/todays-video-link-545/ 
when writing about Fred’s YouTube videos. Fred's  YouTube parody work was also excerpted on Jeanne Moos reports on CNN (AC360, Situation Room).

Fred’s tribute to the new Sondheim Theatre (“Losing My Sign”) was included in the NYU Patell & Waterman History of New York course materials. Economics Prof. David Albrecht, who reports on economics in pop culture, named Fred’s AIG spoofs #2 and #9 in his Top Ten Bailout Parodies rundown.

FRED’S OTHER WORK

Fred’s work from the musical ACROSS STATE LINES got him a Finalist slot (top six of over 100 entries) in the Fred Ebb Award competition for musical theater writing. He received two Midtown International Theater Festival Award nominations for the book/lyrics and production of I NEVER MISS A LARRY KRAMER MUSICAL (which ran at NYC's Roy Arias Theater); the show's leading lady Jennifer Pace won the Best Actress award in a field of 25 shows.

He wrote the book for the musical THE LAST STARFIGHTER (Second Story Repertory summer 2018; Cleveland’s Blank Canvas Theatre Dec. 2022; debuted at New York's Storm Theatre; also NYMF - Theater at St. Clements); as well as the book and score for THE HAPPIEST OF TIMES (Triangle Theater, workshops BMI, ASCAP, Circle Rep).

In praising Fred’s work on THE HAPPIEST OF TIMES at ASCAP, critic/historian Martin Gottfried said the work “was defined by the invention of its creators. It sounded like itself and like nothing else...They invented their own language for musical theater and it had nothing to do with anything else that I’ve seen, really, in terms of musical theater.” Peter Filichia in Theater Week said “a stunning piece of writing by librettist-composer-lyricist Fred Landau.”

Fred graduated from Harvard Law School & has Masters degrees from Brooklyn College and NYU Law School. Other musical theater projects include VIVA MAX! - co-author of a musical based on Jim Lehrer's novel: and FAMILY MUSIC - co-writer (with Marian Wiener) of this musical about the effect of the Afghanistan War on a Long Island family in the ever-changing music business.  Fred also wrote SING ALONG WITH RICK, a novelization of the show FAMILY MUSIC, also available on Amazon.

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