Good Morning, Starshine

[poliphilo]

Joe has the soundtrack for the movie version of Hair. I borrowed it the other day and it was crap- all smoothed out and picked clean of emotion. So I just had to get the original Broadway cast recording. It came yesterday and it's tons better- raw and spiky and antsy-  just the way I remember it. Hair is special to me. It's the sound of my generation enjoying its brief moment of glory before the sell-outs began.

The film version- which didn't get made until 1979- was wrong. It came out too early to be a period piece and too late to feel connected to anything but its director's fuzzy memories.  Someone should do a remake now. It's time has come; we're immersed in another "dirty little war" and don't seem to have a voice to protest it. The Hair lyrics are still fresh and funny and cheeky. There's a sadness in realising how much braver we were back then.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I love that record.

Even at the time, I was a little ambivalent about the show: it's a show about hippies made by people who aren't hippies, with Broadway musical values. It's about hippies the way that Oklahoma is about cowboys and farmers. Not that there's anything wrong with Broadway musicals...

Anyway, I too have the original American cast recording, so not the show I saw in London, but oh, I love that record!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ragni and Rado were sort of hippies, weren't they? It says on Wikipedia that Ragni played Berger so often he eventually turned into him.

And I just checked out Rado's website. He sounds like he's keeping the dream alive- and still trying to get his no-hope, post-Hair, hippie musicals off the ground.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that: thank's for telling me.

I wonder why the show does feel so artificial, then? Is it just that the associations of the musical are so - so unhippyish?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't like musicals much. The only two I really love are Hair and My Fair lady.