So, I was raised to love show tunes. My paternal grandfather loved musicals. So did his brother - between the two of them, they instilled it in my father, and it got passed on to me.
Now, Dad was big into the classics - Oklahoma. South Pacific. Especially South Pacific. I loved that one as well. In 7th grade, I played Bloody Mary in a middle school production of it.
To be accurate, we didn't perform the whole musical. We did snippets of several musicals that year - four, actually - Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, South Pacific and West Side Story. So I got to sing Bali Hai, I was in 2 scenes and out. It was still kind of a big deal, since the previous year, I played one of a bajillion orphans in Oliver! - so, yeah. Actually, I know that I was also up for consideration as Eliza Doolittle, but let's be honest, we didn't have a lot of ethnic looking kids at my whitebread middle school - my jew 'fro was exotic.
I was also fairly tan. This was taken several months after I killed it in South Pacific.
Anyway.
My love of show tunes only grew. In 2004, I started hearing about this show called Avenue Q. I read a review in the New Yorker, and it sounded funny. So I bought the soundtrack. And I memorized it, quoted it, loved it, lived it.
Then, a few years later, Mom, Laura and I took a trip to New York. Mom got us tickets to see The Drowsy Chaperone, and I took advantage of my credit card and a free afternoon to sneak off to a matinee of my beloved Avenue Q. They were both awesome. The lead in Chaperone, at the time, was Jonathan Crombie, who you would recognize as Gilbert Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables miniseries (side tangent - they can remake that if they want, but to women of a certain age, there is only one Gilbert who fueled our fantasies).
The lyric in Avenue Q that really hooked me was this, "When I was little, I thought I would be/A big comedian on late night TV/But now I'm 32, and as you can see/I'm not. Nope. Oh well/It sucks to be me/It sucks to be broke, and unemployed and turning 33/It sucks to be me."
At the time, I was about to turn...you guessed it, 33.
Anyway.
I fell in love with some other musicals along the way - Legally Blonde, The Last Five Years.
My parents came to Nashville and we all went to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - it was fun.
I went with some friends to see Wicked (in Nashville) - and it was stellar.
Last year, when Book of Mormon came to Nashville I saw it twice. I saw it again last month with my mother, in Atlanta. It was funny all three times.
But now. Oh. Shit.
I had a rental car a few weeks back, and it got satellite radio. Twice, I heard songs from a musical I had heard about - this new one called Hamilton.
Both of the songs sounded like nothing I'd ever heard on the Broadway channel before. One of them called 'The Room Where it Happens' made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
So last week at work, I found the cast album posted on YouTube. Game. Over. I've been listening to the whole thing time and time again.
It is, in case like me you haven't pored over every article you can find, a hip-hop musical about founding father, Alexander Hamilton.
The genesis of it was a single song, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who, at the age of 36 has written two Broadway musicals. Anyway, he performed this one song at the White House and it kind of snowballed from there. Last year, he won a MacArthur Genius Grant.
If you want to know why, look at this clip. Notice the POTUS and FLOTUS get sucked in to the magic.
And it is magical.
This is my newest obsession. I bought the soundtrack, and I won't be happy til I see it performed.
ae
Now, Dad was big into the classics - Oklahoma. South Pacific. Especially South Pacific. I loved that one as well. In 7th grade, I played Bloody Mary in a middle school production of it.
To be accurate, we didn't perform the whole musical. We did snippets of several musicals that year - four, actually - Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, South Pacific and West Side Story. So I got to sing Bali Hai, I was in 2 scenes and out. It was still kind of a big deal, since the previous year, I played one of a bajillion orphans in Oliver! - so, yeah. Actually, I know that I was also up for consideration as Eliza Doolittle, but let's be honest, we didn't have a lot of ethnic looking kids at my whitebread middle school - my jew 'fro was exotic.
 |
| It would be another year or two before my tits moved in and took over. |
I was also fairly tan. This was taken several months after I killed it in South Pacific.
Anyway.
My love of show tunes only grew. In 2004, I started hearing about this show called Avenue Q. I read a review in the New Yorker, and it sounded funny. So I bought the soundtrack. And I memorized it, quoted it, loved it, lived it.
Then, a few years later, Mom, Laura and I took a trip to New York. Mom got us tickets to see The Drowsy Chaperone, and I took advantage of my credit card and a free afternoon to sneak off to a matinee of my beloved Avenue Q. They were both awesome. The lead in Chaperone, at the time, was Jonathan Crombie, who you would recognize as Gilbert Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables miniseries (side tangent - they can remake that if they want, but to women of a certain age, there is only one Gilbert who fueled our fantasies).
The lyric in Avenue Q that really hooked me was this, "When I was little, I thought I would be/A big comedian on late night TV/But now I'm 32, and as you can see/I'm not. Nope. Oh well/It sucks to be me/It sucks to be broke, and unemployed and turning 33/It sucks to be me."
At the time, I was about to turn...you guessed it, 33.
Anyway.
I fell in love with some other musicals along the way - Legally Blonde, The Last Five Years.
My parents came to Nashville and we all went to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - it was fun.
I went with some friends to see Wicked (in Nashville) - and it was stellar.
Last year, when Book of Mormon came to Nashville I saw it twice. I saw it again last month with my mother, in Atlanta. It was funny all three times.
But now. Oh. Shit.
I had a rental car a few weeks back, and it got satellite radio. Twice, I heard songs from a musical I had heard about - this new one called Hamilton.
Both of the songs sounded like nothing I'd ever heard on the Broadway channel before. One of them called 'The Room Where it Happens' made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
So last week at work, I found the cast album posted on YouTube. Game. Over. I've been listening to the whole thing time and time again.
It is, in case like me you haven't pored over every article you can find, a hip-hop musical about founding father, Alexander Hamilton.
The genesis of it was a single song, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who, at the age of 36 has written two Broadway musicals. Anyway, he performed this one song at the White House and it kind of snowballed from there. Last year, he won a MacArthur Genius Grant.
If you want to know why, look at this clip. Notice the POTUS and FLOTUS get sucked in to the magic.
And it is magical.
This is my newest obsession. I bought the soundtrack, and I won't be happy til I see it performed.
ae
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