Give My Regards To Broadway

[poliphilo]

I don't like musicals, but I'm loving Channel 4's history of Broadway.

Maybe what I mean when I say I don't like musicals is that I can't stomach Rogers and Hammerstein.

Or Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It's something to do with cosiness.

But Cole Porter and George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Yip Harburg and Ethel Merman and Ethel Waters and Fred Astaire ain't cosy. No siree!

Those songs from the twenties and thirties have a Deco stylishness, a chromium shine. They shimmy and they glitter and they shake their collective ass. The moon is their mama. She smiles from an spangly sky.

Indulgence and effulgence.

My generation (or the one just before) carries on like it invented popular music. Well, nuts to that! I'm not saying that the Beatles aren't good, but there's no way they're better than the chaps I've listed above.

And let's not forget Noel Coward. He doesn't get into the picture because he's a Brit, but I love him dearly.

And let's not forget Kurt Weill.

Comments

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

I agree. I love the older standards- I think here they refer to them as the American songbook. The songs by Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, etc. I can't stomach this newer stuff: Andrew Lloyd Weber, Sondheim, etc. Kind of unfortunate, seeing how my dad is a theater critic ;)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Your dad's a theatre critic? I didn't know that.

Yeah, I kinda lose interest in shows and show tunes later than about 1950.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Yes! He writes for some small local papers in the Boston area.

Same here. I like the early songs by the great singers.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

That's really cool. Although I'll bet he's had to sit through his share of really awful stuff.

Now, no one could ever call Fred Astaire a great singer. But, he WAS Fred Astaire...

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Lol, he certainly has! Unfortunately, he has to sit through the entire show in order to write his review, hehe