Off the Bohème.
Thanks to my local public library, I was finally able to listen to the reissued original Broadway cast recording of the musical Hair (1968; reissue release date 1988; the reissue contains six songs that weren't on the original release, the best of which is "The Bed"). While I'd heard it at university, I didn't pay much attention to it as it was being used as background music to a session of Dungeons & Dragons. (Although game play did come to a screeching halt when "Sodomy" was on...)
Therefore I was able to come (very belatedly...) to the following revelation:
Rent has, for my money, far more in common with Hair than it does with Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, on which Rent is putatively based.
Rent might have a more linear plot and, arguably, better defined characters; but in terms of its songs' subject matter, flirtation with transgression, faux cheekiness and cynical co-option of a handful of youthful subcultures, Rent is Hair 2.0. (Or, considering how cold Rent's songs left me, Hair 1.1.2.)
Other things I didn't know about Hair:
Therefore I was able to come (very belatedly...) to the following revelation:
Rent has, for my money, far more in common with Hair than it does with Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, on which Rent is putatively based.
Rent might have a more linear plot and, arguably, better defined characters; but in terms of its songs' subject matter, flirtation with transgression, faux cheekiness and cynical co-option of a handful of youthful subcultures, Rent is Hair 2.0. (Or, considering how cold Rent's songs left me, Hair 1.1.2.)
Other things I didn't know about Hair:
- "Good Morning Starshine" is from Hair; Oliver's cover of it is more tolerable than the original Broadway cast's recording of it.
- OTOH, while I can appreciate The 5th Dimension's production values on their medley of "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," the latter -- which is actually titled "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" -- is much better, at least in part for the inclusion of, y'know, verses, instead of four minutes of singing the friggin' chorus. Although I wouldn't have objected to "TFF (LtSI)" being padded out by two or three minutes at the end.
- My favorite previously unknown-to-me song from Hair has got to be "Frank Mills;" I really like Shelley Plimpton's voice, and I can't believe that, in an era when Judy Collins and Melanie's records were flying off the shelves, no one handed her a recording contract: Plimpton's voice is kinda-sorta like theirs, but clearer.
- Diane Keaton was in the original Broadway production of Hair. Yes, Diane Keaton. She looks heavier (though I should hasten to add that she is by no means fat; she barely qualifies as "pleasingly plump") in the photo in the CD booklet than I've ever seen her. Kind of makes me wonder what her career would've been like if she'd kept some of her curves. The way Hollywood works, it probably would've been far less distinguished, unfortunately.
- Other Hair alumnae include Ellen Foley, Meatloaf (who appeared in the Detroit production [!]; Ellen Foley was his memorable back-up singer on his first album, Bat Out of Hell, and functioned as his co-vocalist on the epic "Paradise By the Dashboard Light," the video for which was reportedly, if not "X"-rated, at least "NC-17"-rated), Dobie Gray ("Drift Away," which was subsequently covered and not-quite ruined by Bon Jovi: "Give me the beat, boys, and free my soul/I wanna get lost in your rock 'n' roll/And drift away...;" insert perverted versions [here]), Donna Summer, Philip Michael Thomas (Miami Vice), Jennifer Warnes and, last but not least, Tim Curry.