Why are musicals so terrible?

[daasgrrl]

[quote=“The Gumper”]A musical gave us;

Bangkok:
Oriental city where the city don’t know what the city is missing
The creme de la creme of the chess world in a show
With everything but Yul Brynner.[/quote]

Ah, Chess - so much potential, so desperately flawed. I love Murray, though. And that should be:

[quote]Bangkok! Oriental setting
And the city don’t know what the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the chess world in a show
With everything… but Yul Brynner[/quote]

A musical also gave us:

[quote]Hunt me down, smear my name
Say I did it for the fame
What I did was kill the man who killed my country
Now the South land will mend
Now this bloody war can end
Because someone slew the tyrant
Just as Brutus slew the tyrant

Damn my soul, if you must
Let my body turn to dust
Let it mingle with the ashes of the country
Let them curse me to hell
Leave it to history to tell
What I did, I did well
And I did it for my country
Let them cry “Dirty traitor!”
They will understand it later
The country is not what it was…

-The Ballad of Booth, Assassins[/quote]

or how about:-

[quote]There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren’t worth what a pig would spit
And it goes by the name of London

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed…

I too have sailed the world, beheld its wonders
For the cruelty of man is as wondrous as Peru
But there’s no place like London…

- No Place Like London, Sweeney Todd[/quote]

[flike]

[quote=“daasgrrl”][quote]There’s a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren’t worth what a pig would spit
And it goes by the name of London

At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed…

I too have sailed the world, beheld its wonders
For the cruelty of man is as wondrous as Peru
But there’s no place like London…

- No Place Like London, Sweeney Todd[/quote][/quote]

Oh no, the melody has returned now, hand in hand with my brain’s register of these words. Yikes, now that song’ll take up its old familiar loop in my head - again. Sigh. DARN you! :grrr:

Still, if you have to have a tune stuck in your loopy head, this is probably one of the best.

You’ll probably be disappointed again in Tommy, daasgrrl. It’s rock and that means you have to take it as a whole. As you know, with all good rock n’roll style’s paramount. Unlike Sondheim, Townshend doesn’t write numbers which either the melody or the lyrics are stand alone, discretely cogent. Not to me, anyway.

I haven’t read the Sweeney Todd lyrics in a long while, but they’ve certainly stood the test of time, haven’t they? That’s some good stuff.

That said, anybody heard Then and Now, Pete Townshend’s Who standards remixed for modern sound systems? Stunning. The muddy old bass lines of “Pinball Wizard” suddenly have supple new muscle to flex. This new sound precisely matches my memories of hearing The Who play these numbers live, a memory the promise of which has never been delivered upon in their recorded work.

Until now, that is. If you’re like me, now your nephews won’t get that condescending look in their eyes when, after a couple beers, you drag out the Who as your standing example of what rock’s supposed to sound like, ferchrissakes. Well, the open giggling seems to have gone away, at least.

“5:15” also pops and thrums as well as it ever did.