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

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think if I were staging Hair now I'd want to cut the nude scene. It's bound to be anti-climactic. Naked bodies no ponger have much power to shock. But I guess it's partly thanks to Hair that this is so.

An all-chick Godot? Did the Beckett estate know about this?

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Beckett estate knew. *g* I don't think anybody knew, because we had the smallest audiences I ever performed for in my years of amateur theatre. The director was a professional Equity man who for some reason wanted to do this amateur production, which he was not supposed to do, according to union regs, and he also thought he could "improve" upon Beckett by throwing in a lot of four-letter words. My parents did not allow me to see or hear any of the show beyond the (heavily lesbian subtextual) scenes I was in. It was, altogether, one of the more traumatic experiences of my childhood.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Now that does sound weird!

Four letter words? Lesbian subtext?

I'm guessing you must have played Lucky.

[bodhibird.livejournal.com]

I was too young for Lucky. Remember there was a boy who comes along twice and promises Vladimir and Estragon that Godot is coming? That was me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the boy. I was remembering it as a four-hander.