Last week we went to the 25th anniversary show for the Phantom of the Opera (or as the website calls it 'Phantom of the Opera'). The two in the lead were the two leads we saw and loved so much in Love Never Dies (Ramin! Sierra!) last year so we were EVer so excited to see them in the original. Earlier that day at work I decided to get into the theme of things by listening to ye olde original cast on Spotify. First I was distracted by the title track with the Canadian cast, including ye olde Colm Wilkinson. It was dismal, but then I was distracted again by this "Tribute to Phantom of the Opera." Just look at the cover art! A pirate patch? A wacky feather hat creation? A random floating rose? I should have known then that it was going to be...special. I started the title track and said, hmm, okay. But then it just got worse and worse and I was giggle snorting at my desk. Naturally I couldn't stop there and listened to the rest of the CD. Let me tell you. AMAZING. So incredibly amazing in its terrible terribleness. So terrible I'm pretty sure it's the worst CD in the WORLD. Or at least the worst CD in the world based on something else. I could hardly contain my snorts of laughter and sent pretty much every track to Mr. Graham via Spotify.
The moral of this story? Check it out. You will not be sorry. Highlights include the sleepy Phantom in the title track, everything about Music of the Night, the disaster that is All I Ask of You and the garbled words in Point of No Return. In fact, there are words wrong in pretty much every song.
If you needed another reason to try out Spotify, this is it, my friends. This is it. Samples on Amazon are not enough for this level of terrible.
(Oh, and the concert was great. Sierra killed it, Ramin tried a little too hard to kill and so didn't *quite* kill it but I still heart him.)
Here is a confession for you, Internet--I am a binger. Of songs! Here's how it happens: now and then I run across a song that I really like. I like it so much that I listen to it over and over and over again, maybe 10 times in a row. I do this for days and maybe weeks until it fades off a bit. And while you might think I never listen to that song again, I haven't seemed to have killed a song so far and I listen to past bingees pretty regularly. In the interest of sharing, here are some of my recent favorites. I've listed the number of plays according to my lil iPod, Athena, but I'm pretty sure they're all quite inaccurate. Add like 20 to each of them and maybe that's pretty close to the real number.
A Promise to Return, from season 2 of Battlestar Galactica:
I love all the BSG music, but this is probably my #1 favorite. Anders! Plays: 25
Better Than Neil, from the musical commentary (called "Commentary!") on the Dr. Horrible DVD:
It never fails to amuse me! Also, it's all true. Nathan Fillion is SO much better than Neil. (PS: there's a moment of naked Mal bum in the video) Plays: 21
Til I Hear You Sing, from Love Never Dies:
Mmhmm. This one never gets old. And it's so much better when you aren't watching the lame video, haha. Plays: 63. LIE. It's so many, many more than that (I've even listening to it right now).
Secrets, by One Republic:
I just love a good, big angsty song. And bonus for the strings. Plays: 56
Swallowed in the Sea, by Coldplay:
Of course I've heard this song many, many times before I started Le Binge, but it just suddenly grew on me the other day! Plays: 13. Hah!
(Originally I was going to try to cram this into a Facebook status.) Tonight Mr. Graham and I went to see a one-night showing of the recent Les Miserables 25th Anniversary concert. It was three hours and $15 a pop, but it turned out to be well, well worth the cost and time.* During these three hours I compiled the following list of conclusions:
It IS possible for "Bring Him Home"--one of my least favorite songs in the world--to sound like it is being sung by a man. Thank you, Alfie Boe, for singing like a man.
While I can give Nick Jonas some credit for being involved with something that is not a Disney Channel byproduct, for an event on this scale, he just didn't have the (Marius) goods. That said, he didn't embarrass himself, but he did sound comparatively underwhelming.
Lea Salonga as Fantine is just as good as Lea Salonga as Eponine. (She *may* have made someone that is not me cry...)
Ramiiiiiiiiiin! It was nice to see him in a show that is good and stuff. His inclusion as Enchiladas ("Enjolras," says Mr. Graham) was 50% of my motivation for seeing it in the first place. I want to turn him into an iPod and put him in my pocket.
Oh my, Michael Ball is not as young as he once was, though his hair looks exactly the same.
I enjoy Les Mis probably 40-50% more as a concert. Granted, I have seen most of the 10th anniversary concert many times, and on stage only once. However! I think the show itself is kind of fundamentally flawed in its characters and storytelling, but it works better when you can see people's faces well and identify all the characters better. For whatever reason, probably because some minor things are cut, the story seems much more focused in concert versions.
I find it frustrating that even though I only really, really like about 1/3 of the songs I still find the whole thing so very spirited and rousing. It puts me at odds with myself. When the original 1985 cast came out at the end I was ready to squeal like a little girl.
Why don't they do concerts for any other big shows? How has ALW not been all over this for years?
Anyway, it was a good time, and it was really fun to see a lot of the cast members that we saw live this summer. We even spotted that most dreaded Marius--he who makes Nick Jonas look good, or at least better.
*As a sidenote, we were finishing up our Harry Potter movie-a-night marathon and had to watched the first hour, go to the show and then finish it after. Last night we had to interrupt Order of the Phoenix with a rather lackluster local production of The Scarlet Pimpernel...bad French accents were ever-y-whare.
A pirate patch? A wacky feather hat creation? A random floating rose? I should have known then that it was going to be...special. I started the title track and said, hmm, okay. But then it just got worse and worse and I was giggle snorting at my desk. Naturally I couldn't stop there and listened to the rest of the CD. Let me tell you. AMAZING. So incredibly amazing in its terrible terribleness. So terrible I'm pretty sure it's the worst CD in the WORLD. Or at least the worst CD in the world based on something else. I could hardly contain my snorts of laughter and sent pretty much every track to Mr. Graham via Spotify.