With the Grammys now in the bag, Hollywood turns its sights to the next and final event of the year-end entertainment awards spree: the king of kudosfests known as the Oscars. While within the Grammys the Recording Academy throws some institutional loving toward nearly all other major art forms - film and television (Song Written for Visual Medium; Film Score Soundtrack; Music Videos Short and Long), theatre (Cast Album); literature (Spoken Word and Comedy Albums, Album Notes), and even visual art (Album Package), few of them reciprocate. There's no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize for Songwriting; the Tonys can honor Mamma Mia! without recognizing ABBA; and there are, to my knowledge, few exhibits of 21st century album artwork touring the major museums of fine art (yet...but that would be very cool). Perhaps worse than omission, though, is the current treatment of music (especially songwriting) by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, whose newly implemented eligibility rules and voting procedures display such hasty disregard for the category that only two songs from 2011...TWO...managed to secure a Best Song nomination this year. (Never fear - there are still separate categories for Sound and Sound Effects Editing. Whew!) Fortunately, in the heart of Hollywood mere yards away from where the Oscars will soon be doled out, a small but gifted consort of theatre folks are doing their part to pick up the film industry's slack with Red Carpet Memories, an intimate and entertaining musical revue composed of 21 songs that scored Oscar nominations over the years.


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