#lyrics are from a teen suicide song “give me back to the sky”

[raccoonodysseus]

but it's not the dark that scares me.

[random-ass-fanboy]

My Snape playlist:

Here are 40 songs that remind me of Snape, if anyone is interested :)

Feel free to leave song recommendations for this playlist in the comments!

TW/ depressing lyrics and mentions of suicidal ideation.

-

Paralyzed- NF

"Where are my feelings? I no longer feel things, I know I should. I'm paralyzed. Where is the real me? I'm lost and it kills me inside, I'm paralyzed."

My Immortal- Evanescence

"You used to captivate me, by your resonating light. Now, I'm bound by the life you left behind. Your face it haunts, my once pleasant dreams. Your voice it chased away, all the sanity in me."

Horrible Kids- Set It Off

"Picture this he was just a kid, not knowing where to begin. He wore all the wrong clothes, followed all the wrong trends, persecuted for the things he did."

Lifeboat- Heathers the Musical

"Everyone's pushing! Everyone's fighting Storms are approaching, there's nowhere to hide! If I say the wrong thing, or I wear the wrong outfit, they'll throw me right over the side!"

Panic Room- Au/Ra

"The silence is so loud. The lights spark and flicker, with monsters much bigger, than I can control now. Welcome to the panic room, where all your darkest fears are gonna come for you."

Michael in the Bathroom- Be More Chill

"I am hiding, but he's out there, just ignoring all our history. Memories get erased, and I'll get replaced, with a newer cooler version of me."

Worthless- eli.

"I'm always so alone, even when surrounded, by people that I know. I'm always so astounded, by my ability to ruin everything. Losing friends and starting fires, everyone thinks I'm a liar"

Let Me Down Slowly- Alec Benjamin

"Don't cut me down, throw me out, leave me here to waste. I once was a man with dignity and grace. Now, I'm slipping through the cracks of your cold embrace. So please, please.."

Waving Through a Window- Dear Evan Hansen

"We start with stars in our eyes. We start believing that we belong. But every sun doesn't rise. And no one tells you where you went wrong"

Broken Again- eli.

"No one knows what it's like putting up a fight, for your life every time, now I'm losing sight. Wish that I had a way to make me feel alive. I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die."

Match in the Rain- Alec Benjamin

"Yeah, I can taste it, it's the end, this love's impossible to save. Though you embrace it, I can't face it, so I look the other way. There's trouble in your eyes, but I pretend that we're okay. I wish that we could compromise, but there's just nothin' left to say."

Snail- Cavetown

"I was just born like this. Wish that I could change it. Four peculiar limbs and a head that doesn't fit. Wish that I was still a kid."

Dissappear- eli.

"Carrying the burdens of the world up on my shoulders. Looking for the answers, maybe I'll know once I'm older. Need some time to recollect myself, please don't forget me. When I disappear next week, I hope you can forgive me."

Teenagers- My Chemial Romance

"The boys and girls in the clique, the awful names that they stick. You're never gonna fit in much, kid. But if you're troubled and hurt, what you got under your shirt, will make them pay for the things that they did."

Words Fail- Dear Evan Hansen

"No, I'd rather pretend I'm something better than these broken parts. Pretend I'm something other than this mess that I am! 'Cause then I don't have to look at it, and no one gets to look at it! No, no one can really see!"

Untitled- Mxmtoon

"I tend to forget, that I shouldn't fret. People come and then they go. At this point I should know."

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead- Set it Off

"I'm stuck self-torturing, my meds are failing me, internal clock in smithereens. Can't fix this. I'm hopeless. My eyes are stapled open wide, as I lay down on my side. I am bouncing off these walls."

Outrunning Karma- Alec Benjamin

"He's never gonna make it, all the poor people he's forsaken, karma, is always gonna chase him for his lies. It's just a game of waiting from the church steeple down to Satan karma. There's really no escape until he dies."

One Song Glory- RENT

"Find, one song, one last refrain. Glory. From the pretty boy front man, who wasted opportunity. One song, he had the world at his feet. Glory. In the eyes of a young girl, a young girl."

Good For You- Dear Evan Hansen

"All I need is some time to think! But the boat is about to sink. Can't erase what I wrote in ink. Tell me how could you change the story?

All the words that I can't take back, like a train coming off the track. 'Cause the rails and my bones all crack. I've got to find a way to stop it, stop it! Just let me off!"

Teen Idle- MARINA

"Adolescence didn't make sense. A little loss of innocence. The ugliness of being a fool. Ain't youth meant to be beautiful?"

Dark Paradise- Lana Del Rey

"And there's no remedy for memory. Your face is like a melody, it won't leave my head. Your soul is hunting me and telling me, that everything is fine. But I wish I was dead!"

Trying- Cavetown

"I'm trying to tear the wool from your eyes. But a part of me wants to let you be. 'Cause then you wouldn't see what I've become. I'm trying to shout, but no sound comes out. It's like we're in a dream state. But I should've woken up, woken up by now."

Wake Me Up When September Ends- Green Day

"Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars. Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are."

21 Guns- Green Day

"When you're at the end of the road, and you lost all sense of control. And your thoughts have taken their toll. When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul."

Give Me Novacaine- Green Day

"Take away the sensation inside. Bitter sweet migraine in my head. It's like a throbbing tooth ache of the mind. I can't take this feeling anymore."

iRobot- Jon Bellion

"I am a robot, thoughtless and empty. Don't know who sent me, don't know who made me. Electric robot, everything's gray now. Numb to the pain now, I knew what love was."

Another One Of Those Days- Cavetown

"Passed that kid from chemistry, who made fun of my name. He didn't look very happy. I guess we all turn out the same."

Boulevard of Broken Dreams- Green Day

"My shadow's the only one that walks beside me. My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating. Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me. 'Til then I walk alone."

We Don't Have To Dance- Andy Black

"You're never gonna get it, I'm a hazard to myself. I'll break it to you easy, this is hell, this is hell! You're looking and whispering, you think I'm someone else! This is hell, yes, I am in hell!

Ribcage- Andy Black

"Nothing in the cage of my ribcage! Got no heart to break, like it that way. Nothing in the cage of my ribcage! Emptiness is safe, keep it that way."

The Run and Go- Twenty One Pilots

"I can't take them on my own, my own. Oh, I'm not the one you know, you know. I have killed a man and all I know, is I am on the run and go."

Fall Away- Twenty One Pilots

"I disguise, and I will lie, and I will take my precious time. As the days spent away, as I stand in line, and I die as I wait, as I wait on my crime. And I'll try to delay what you make of my life, but I don't want your way, I want mine. I'm dying and trying, but believe me I'm fine. But I'm lying, I'm so very far from fine!

Trapdoor- Twenty One Pilots

"He wakes up early today, throws on a mask that will alter his face. Nobody knows his real name, but now he just uses one he saw on a grave. And he pretends he's okay, but you should see, oh. Him in bed late at night, he's petrified."

Sad Song- Christina Perri

"I wish I wasn’t always wrong, I wish it wasn’t always my fault. The finger that you’re pointing has knocked me on my knees. And all you need to know is… I'm so sorry, It’s not like me. It’s maturity that I’m lacking."

Escapism- Steven Universe

"I guess I have to face, that in this awful place, I shouldn't show a trace of doubt. But pulled against the grain. I feel a little pain, that I would rather do without."

Semi-Automatic- Twenty One Pilots

"Night falls with gravity, the earth turns from sanity, taking my only friend I know, he leaves a lot, his name is "Hope". I'm never what I like, I'm double-sided, and I just can't hide, I kind of like it when I make you cry, 'cause I'm twisted up, I'm twisted up inside."

Screen- Twenty One Pilots

"I can't see past my own nose, I'm seeing everything in slo-mo. Look out below crashing down to the ground just like a vertical locomotive. That's a train, am I painting the picture that's in my brain? A train from the sky, locomotive, my motives are insane!"

March To The Sea- Twenty One Pilots

"Then the wages of war will start, inside my head with my counterpart. And the emotionless marchers will chant the phrase, 'This line's the only way.' Then I start down the sand, my eyes are focused on the end of land. But again the voice inside my head, says, 'follow me instead.'"

Migraine- Twenty One Pilots

"Freeze frame, please let me paint a mental picture portrait. Something you won't forget, it's all about my forehead, and how it is a door that hold's back contents, that makes Pandora's box contents look non-violent!"

[serveandfolly]

Be still my beating heart: My longtime partner, Brian Libby, wrote this OR Arts Watch article twinning the stories of two of my favorite artists, actor River Phoenix and musician Elliott Smith, and relating them through their time in our hometown of Portland, Oregon. The original story (link above) shows photos of some of Elliott’s Portland homes and the road with “the fucked-up face” from My Own Private Idaho, but I’ve pasted all the copy below. Hope some of my fellow River and Elliott fans enjoy this as much as I did.

River and Elliott: Remembering two troubled princes of 1990s Portland

River Phoenix and Elliott Smith brushed Portland and maybe Portland brushed them

NOVEMBER 27, 2018 // CULTURE, FILM, MUSIC // BRIAN LIBBY

There’s a name you keep repeating You’ve got nothing better to do

— Elliott Smith, “Alphabet Town”

From James Dean to Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain to Heath Ledger, we have immortalized a constellation of famous artists—especially musicians and actors—who died young and, then, through a combination of their talent and the public’s grief, lived on. Robbed of the futures we imagined for them, yet frozen in time and thus never to suffer the indignities of aging or late-career artistic mediocrity, their luminosity—and our love for them—intensifies as if in proportion to the tragedy.

Portland and Oregon haven’t traditionally produced a lot of bold-type names that have endured in the international pop zeitgeist. Far from America’s entertainment capitols, this is arguably a place where talents are nurtured, not where one becomes a full-fledged star. The most high-profile artists, such as the great abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko or Simpsons creator Matt Groening, have tended to move on and live their career-defining creative moments elsewhere. Yet even if their time here is fleeting, sometimes these artists don’t just remain culturally relevant long after their deaths but also come to represent something essential about a particular time in the city.

Last month brought reminders of two such one-time Oregonians and what they left behind. October 21 was the 15th anniversary of musician Elliott Smith’s death, at the age of 34 in 2003, while Halloween brought the 25th anniversary of actor River Phoenix’s death, at the age of 23 in 1993. They died a decade apart, but each moment of mortality came in Los Angeles, and the two sites are less than nine miles away from each other: Phoenix outside West Hollywood’s Viper Room club after an accidental overdose, and Smith by stabbing at his home in Silver Lake (a presumed suicide but never officially determined).

The coincidences don’t end there. River Phoenix and Elliott Smith were born within a year of each other: Smith in Nebraska (he was raised until age 14 in Texas) and Phoenix in Madras, Oregon (raised mostly in Florida). Each arguably made his most famous work in collaboration with director Gus Van Sant. Phoenix co-starred (along with Keanu Reeves) in Van Sant’s 1991 film My Own Private Idaho and Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for the song “Miss Misery,” on the soundtrack to Van Sant’s 1998 film Good Will Hunting. Each struggled with drug abuse, which in different ways led to each artist’s untimely death. River Phoenix and Elliott Smith presumably never met, yet each is a kind of fleeting prince of ’90s Portland, and their work acts as time capsule and talisman for the days many locals now look to longingly: a grittier, more affordable and off-the-radar city that predated Portlandia, a succession of swooning New York Times stories, and an ensuing wave of tourism and gentrification.

Like Rothko, neither stayed here for good. But also like Rothko and many of the city’s other most famous sons and daughters, Phoenix and Smith were transplants to the city who saw Portland with fresh eyes. Like rain clouds that give way to bright sunlight almost daily for much of the year, each artist’s Portland-based work is personal and often deeply melancholic, yet also joyful, lyrical and instinctual. It’s not always pretty, yet we are drawn to their work again and again.

By the time Phoenix signed on to star in My Own Private Idaho, he had long since become a star, thanks to such minor Hollywood classics as 1986’s Oregon-filmed Stand by Me and 1988’s Running on Empty, the latter of which brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But Idaho, the third in Van Sant’s trilogy of Portland-set films (preceded by 1986’s Mala Noche and 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy), would become the role of Phoenix’s career and the standout classic in its director’s now decades-long portfolio.

While Drugstore was initially a greater critical success for Van Sant, winning Best Film and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics in 1989, Idaho is somehow the film that endures in public imagination and as a lasting artistic achievement. Besides being a landmark of gay cinema, casting two young Hollywood heartthrobs as lovers, it also turned out to be Van Sant’s most cinematically ambitious effort.

The premise of My Own Private Idaho is audacious if not a little crazy. The film is a loose interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I and Part II—the story of a delinquent, debauchery-loving prince planning to shed his skin and embrace his more virtuous monarchical destiny—transposed to the realm of contemporary Portland street hustlers. As legend has it, Phoenix and Reeves spent nights on the streets of Old Town researching their roles by hanging out with the city’s young street denizens, some of whom would enjoy supporting roles in the film.

Phoenix plays a hustler named Mike with a handicap—narcolepsy drops him off to sleep in any moment of stress. We first watch him collapse in sleep by the side of a rural highway, his possessions and even his shoes stripped from him as he slumbers; then he collapses in the middle of turning a trick, carried out of a rich woman’s house by his fellow hustlers and left slumped against a tree. Reeves’s young Prince Hal figure, Scott (in this case a Portland mayor’s son), is along for the ride as part brotherly companion, part lover. Yet this quirky Shakespearean tale is also bookended by and interwoven with a larger quest, played out under the limitless skies and golden hues of the eastern Oregon landscape, as Phoenix’s Mike searches fruitlessly for his long-lost mother: to the Idaho of his youth, to Italy, and finally back to Portland.

Part of what makes My Own Private Idaho so great is how Van Sant conjures indelible cinematic moments: time-lapse footage of clouds rolling over the Oregon landscape; symbolic slow-motion shots of salmon (Mike’s spirit-animal; Phoenix even wears a salmon-colored jacket) fighting their way upstream; and even an entire house falling from the sky onto the highway. It’s dazzling cinema that makes both rural and urban Oregon its muse like perhaps no other movie. That Van Sant has gone on to make several Hollywood movies that overdose on schmaltz and are short on cinematic eye candy, and few if any great works of art (the Cannes winner Elephant and the Matt Damon/Casey Affleck vehicle Gerry perhaps being exceptions) only makes Idaho all the more special in his oeuvre. In fact, it’s as if Van Sant refuses to enter Idaho-like territory. Consider, for example, that his last film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot—a profile of cartoonist John Callahan starring River Phoenix’s brother, Joaquin, which is set in Portland and another story of a lonely man’s longing for his mother—was shot in Los Angeles. Suffice to say, there are no houses falling onto the highway.

At least unofficially, My Own Private Idaho owes as much to Phoenix as Van Sant—and not just as it relates to the acting. After all, River Phoenix didn’t just act in Idaho; he reportedly was able to alter the script and his character. The draft that Van Sant brought to the actors didn’t include romance between their two lead characters, but by the time production was complete, Idaho’s most touching moment was a campfire embrace wherein Mike declares his love for Reeves’s Scott. Phoenix is at his zenith here as an actor, a marvel of delicacy, communicating a blend of easy cool and endearing vulnerability.

Both Phoenix and Reeves came to the Idaho cast with something to prove: that they could be serious dramatic actors. To a large extent it worked for both. While Reeves has never been considered a master thespian, his roles in blockbuster franchises like The Matrix and even the more recent John Wick movies have cemented his place in movie history. And for Phoenix, post-Idaho there was no longer any doubt that the child actor we’d seen in Explorers and the angst-ridden teen of The Mosquito Coast (not to mention a memorable “Family Ties” guest-starring turn) had graduated to leading roles with the charisma, looks and vulnerability of a budding superstar. Would it be going too far to say he was the James Dean of his time? Maybe. But the comparison is not ludicrous.

Of course longevity was not to be for Phoenix. Within 25 months of Idaho’s release, his story ended, just like Mike’s, collapsed on the pavement—in this case on a Hollywood sidewalk rather than Highway 216, and sadly, not simply asleep for a few minutes. The brother with him that night, Joachin Phoenix, would go on to enjoy the long acting career River never got.

The year of Idaho’s release was also a turning point for Elliott Smith. In 1991 he had just returned to Portland after four years at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and promptly formed the band Heatmiser with three musician friends. Over the ensuing years, Heatmiser would become a fixture at celebrated indie-rock clubs like the X-Ray Café and La Luna, while also recording albums like 1993’s Dead Air and 1994’s Cop and Speeder that infused punk energy with melodicism. The band was part of a broader indie rock scene that included Pond, Crackerbash, The Spinanes, The Dandy Warhols and Quasi.

After Nirvana’s breakout success, both indie and major labels began combing Portland clubs looking for the next grunge sensation. And what was grunge but punk with a little more melody and a flannel shirt? Heatmiser received enough attention that a major label, Virgin Records, eventually came calling. But by that time Smith was ready to venture out on his own, breaking up Heatmiser just as they’d made the big time. As the singer-songwriter explained in a later interview, he had grown tired of screaming all the time as a member of a loud rock band. And besides, by that time Smith was gaining notice for a series of stripped-down solo albums with little more than voice and an acoustic guitar. To the astonishment of many, they sounded less like punk or grunge and more like Simon & Garfunkel or Nick Drake. Smith’s solo debut, 1994’s Roman Candle, was released at the height of the grunge era but also just nine months before Kurt Cobain’s suicide, essentially prefiguring (and perhaps even giving birth to) the emo-core wave that would in time follow grunge.

In the four years between Roman Candle’s release and Smith’s leap to international fame with the Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery,” local audiences who had feasted on loud guitars and pounding punk rhythms filled Portland clubs for his solo acoustic shows, trading chaotic mosh pits for stillness and pin-drop quiet. Not only was there the wistful simplicity of Smith’s voice and acoustic guitar. It was also how the singer-songwriter bared his soul in his lyrics. Though some songs were inspired by others’ lives, it was clear that for the sensitive, often-depressed Smith, music was a confessional and a lifeline. Yet in his almost Lennon-McCartney like gift for melody, even his sad songs feel uplifting.

In those early Elliott Smith albums recorded here, through his 1997 masterwork Either/Or (his last for indie label Kill Rock Stars before signing with the mammoth Dreamworks and leaving Portland for New York), the singer-songwriter also painted a cinematic if melancholy picture of the city. You can almost feel the gray wintertime skies in songs like “Alameda,” as he sings:

You walk down Alameda Looking at the cracks in the sidewalk Thinking about your friends How you maintain all them in A constant state of suspense

For your own protection Over their affection Nobody broke your heart You broke your own because you can’t Finish what you start

When the Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery” came, Smith’s life changed overnight. If that new audience and international media attention meant exponentially greater album sales and the end of his penny-pinching way of life—staying in nice hotels on tour instead of sleeping in the van or on some stranger’s floor, not to mention no longer moonlighting as a drywall contractor by day—it also isolated Elliott from his community of not-so-affluent friends and musicians still sleeping on those floors. This time in his life was also accompanied by increasing drug abuse and greater depressions. Perhaps Smith new that despite overwhelmingly positive reviews for albums like XO and Figure 8 as well as a worldwide audience of admirers (he was particularly smitten when a musical hero, Elvis Costello, attended a London show), DreamWorks saw its Smith signing as essentially an investment that didn’t quite pay off because he wasn’t the megastar they envisioned.

Like Cobain, Smith also retained that nagging Gen X rocker’s worry that he’d sold out. Maybe today a young fan who falls in love with Figure 8 doesn’t care that it was recorded for DreamWorks instead of Kill Rock Stars. After all, going to a major label gave Smith a bigger palette of instruments and fellow musicians to work and record with. Yet for Smith, the decision wasn’t without impact. In “King’s Crossing,” one of Smith’s best posthumously-released songs, he sings, “The method acting that pays my bills/keeps the fat man feeding in Beverly Hills.”

Particularly in the couple of years before his 2003 death, Smith was a shell of his former self, consuming cocktails of heroin, crack and prescription drugs. At times onstage, he even had to abort songs halfway through because he couldn’t remember his own lyrics. Yet Smith was also in those final months showing signs of recovery and renewal, which enabled the superlative album he was working on when he died. Songs on the magnificent From a Basement on the Hill (including “King’s Crossing”) exhibit a layered richness of sound that goes beyond what he recorded in Portland a few years earlier. Yet it all screeched to a halt in Silver Lake—whether inevitably, as some observers maintained, or out of the blue.

Today I can’t look at certain places in Portland and Oregon without thinking of them.

For River Phoenix and My Own Private Idaho, there is the Elk statue downtown on Southwest Main Street between Chapman and Lownsdale squares, where early in the film Scott cradles a sleeping Mike in his arms. There is also the stretch of Broadway downtown near the Benson Hotel where the duo cruise the street on Scott’s motorcycle, handsomely and heroically, like cinema’s sunglasses-masked successors to The Wild One and Easy Rider. And perhaps most of all, there is a lonely stretch of Highway 216, east of the Cascades and not far from the tiny town of Tygh Valley, where River Phoenix begins and ends the movie, succumbing to narcoleptic seizure. Last year my partner and I found the coordinates online and made a pilgrimage. To get there you drive white-knuckled through a series of hairpin turns through a small Deschutes River gorge, and then suddenly you come onto a plateau where the road seems to unfold forever.

If one seeks vestiges of Elliott Smith’s Portland, it’s not just the venues where he took the stage (one of which, La Luna, is now a café of the same name), but also, if you know where to look, one of the many Southeast Portland houses where he lived and recorded. Roman Candle, for instance, was recorded in a home on Southeast Taylor Street that recently was listed for rent. (And yes, I admittedly took a tour.) Smith also lived in another Southeast Portland house, off Division Street, that prompted him to sometimes spend late nights hanging out on a bench in the rose gardens of Ladd’s Addition; the documentary Heaven Adores You includes a long shot looking down over the neighborhood. In “St. Ides Heaven,” he writes

Everything is exactly right When I walk around here drunk every night With an open container from 7-11

Division Street itself also wound up inspiring a lyric in “Punch and Judy” (on Either/Or), albeit not exactly an ideal marketing tagline:

Driving around up and down Division Street I used to like it here It just bums me out to remember

Every time I listen to “Punch and Judy,” that line makes me wonder what Smith would have made of gentrified Division Street now, with its canyon of condos and string of popular restaurants. It’s a phenomenon that has swept most close-in east side neighborhoods—precisely the formerly cheap old houses he and his friends used to inhabit.

Even so, to absorb the work of Smith (especially his early records) and Phoenix (particularly My Own Private Idaho) is to make a nostalgic return to ‘90s Portland. And yet, through the power of these works and these two princes’ immense talent, their work also transcends that time capsule. Even if their tragically early deaths don’t guarantee them true artistic immortality, the more Portland changes, the more their works resonate.

[hottytoddynews]

By Ellis Nassour, Ole Miss alum and noted arts journalist and author

Last season was dominated by the landmark Pulitzer-and Tony-winning Hamilton. People were saying, “How could the 2016-2017 season top that?” There’s not another Hamilton to be sure, but there’s plenty of excitement and diversity in this season of distinguished musicals.

It’s also been a season of superstars: Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Patti LuPone, Christine Ebersole. On these new original cast CDs, you won’t hear the thunderous applause at Sunset Boulevard, and Hello, Dolly!, Where mid-show standing ovations and numerous curtain calls for Close and Midler are the norm. But listen, and you’ll know why.

The Broadway League, the national trade association for Broadway, has released end-of-2016 – 2017 season statistics. It was the highest grossing one ever. Attendance reached 13,270,343 with a gross just short of $1.5-billion. This tally is only legit box office prices, which include premium sales. 

The Tony Awards are June 11 in a three-hour telecast on CBS from Radio City Music Hall, with Kevin Spacey hosting. There were 20 musicals, which includes six revivals; 20 plays (10 original, nine revivals) – both among the highest ever in a season.

Until you can grab tickets these bargain-priced original cast albums are a perfect way to at least enjoy aspects of the in-person experience:

 Amelie (Rhino Warner Classics; 26 tracks) by Daniel Messé and Nathan Tysen; closed; available June 9:

Tony nominee, the luminous Phillipa Soo (Hamilton) returned to Broadway in this charming, bittersweet musical with book by Pulitzer Prize and Tony nominee Craig Lucas (The Light in the Piazza), based on the beloved Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated French film.

Highlights: “Writing on the Wall,” “Stay,” “Where Do We Go from Here?” 

Anastasia (Broadway Records; 25 tracks) by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens; available June 9:

Christy Altomare (a Sophie in Mamma Mia) is amnesiac orphan Anya, hoping to find family, who’s spotted by bungling conmen (Derek Klena, John Bolton (A Christmas Story; Dames at Sea) who wish to take advantage of her likeness to Russia’s Grand Duchess Anastasia, thought to be the only survivor of the execution of Czar Nicholas and family. She’s so authentic that she wins over the skeptics, including the Dowager Empress, Tony-nominated Mary Beth Piel.  Based on Disney’s 1997 animated film [includes Oscar-nominated “Journey to the Past” and five other film tunes].

Highlights: Original songs “In My Dreams,” “Everything to Win,” “Journey to the Past.”

Bandstand (Broadway/Yellow Sound Records; 18 tracks) by Richard Oberacker and Rob Taylor; available June 23: Returning WWII vet, a singer/songwriter, Corey Cott (Gigi; Newsies), forms a band with vets to seek the golden prize: Hollywood fame. But haunted by memories of his downed pal, he meets his young widow, Tony nominee Laura Osnes, who reluctantly joins the band. There’s instant attraction until a shattering secret is revealed. Pulsating Big Band-orchestrations by Tony-nominated Bill Elliott and Greg Anthony Rassen. Tony winner Beth Leavel (Drowsy Chaperone) co-stars.

Highlights: “Just Like It Was Before,” “Love Will Come and Find Me Again,”  “Everything Happens,” “Welcome Home.”

 A Bronx Tale (Ghostlight Records; 19 tracks) by Alan Menken and Glen Slater:

Move over Manhattan Heights, make way for the stoops of rough and tumble 60s Bronx, where crime does pay, in this adaptation of Chazz Palminteri’s 2007 streetwise one-man play (also a 1993 film) about a boys influences. It’s Dad v. Crime Boss, Richard H. Blake and DD nominee Nick Cordero (Waitress, Bullets over Broadway scene-stealer) with traces of Newsies, Wise Guys, and Jersey Boys doo-wop.

Highlights: “Belmont Avenue,” “I Like It,” “Out of Your Head.”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Masterworks Broadway; 19 tracks) by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman:

Chocolate-covered whimsy, sadly readapted from the hit West End musical, based on  Roald Dahl’s novel and featuring songs by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley from the 2005 film. Christian Borle, with John Rubenstein, and Emily Padgett (Side Show revival). The spectacular aspects have been decimated, and all that’s left is a bore. But it’s a family show.

Highlights: “What Could Possibly Go Wrong,” “If Your Father Were Here,” “The View from Here.”

Come from Away (Musical Company; 25 tracks, including bonus) by David Hein and Irene Sankoff: 

Tony-nominated for Best Musical. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, 38 planes en route to the U.S. with 6,579 passengers were forced to land at Gander, Newfoundland’s former military base for a week due to airspace closure. In a variety of motifs [folk reels to lush ballads], we meet unprepared locals who must rise to the occasion. Winning cast of townspeople and passengers includes Tony nominee Jenn Colella, like American Airlines’ first female pilot, Chad Kimball (Memphis), Joel Hatch, Rodney Hicks, and Q Smith.

Highlights: “Lead Us Out of the Night,” “Me and the Sky,” “Stop the World.”

Dear Evan Hansen (Atlantic; 14 tracks) by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson:

Tony-nominated for Best Musical. Broadway’s always attempting to attract younger audiences, and those with good jobs or rich parents are flocking – along with adult theatergoers — to experience the devastating emotions explored in this musical about an emotionally repressed student.Tony nominee Ben Platt (Pitch Perfect films) gives a breathtakingly wrenching performance as the all but friendless teen, already hiding a dark secret, who uses a tragedy to become closer to a suicide victim’s sister and her family – and pays an anguishing price. Tony-nominated Rachel Bay Jones has big moments as his mother. Unfortunately, you won’t hear Will Roland and Kristolyn Lloyd’s scene-stealing bits. The deep empathy of the ballads will captivate and haunt.

Highlights: “For Forever,” “If I Could Tell Her,” “You Will Be Found,” “So Big/So Small,” “Words Fail.” 

Falsettos (Ghostlight; two discs, 36 tracks; with a 60-page color booklet with lyrics and photos) by William Finn and James Levine; closed: Tony-nominated for Best Revival. A neurotic gay man, his wife, lover, son, their psychiatrist, and lesbian friends explore changing relationships in the make-up of modern families. Tony-nominated Christian Borle (Tony winner, Something Rotten), Stephanie J. Block Andrew Rannells (Tony nominated, Book of Mormon), and Brandon Uranowitz (Tony nominee, An American in Paris) captivate. 

Highlights: “Love is Blind,” “This Had Better Come to a Stop,” “Making a Home,” “What More Can I Say,” “Unlikely Lovers.” Groundhog Day (Masterworks Broadway; 19 tracks) by Tim Minchin:

Tony-nominated, Best Musical. Tony nominee and Olivier-winning Andy Karl (Rocky, Mystery of Edwin Drood revival) in a Groundhog Day |Catch-22, based on the 1993 film, as arrogant TV weather caster who finds himself in a time warp – repeating the same day over and over. Clever staging adds a lot to the thin plot.   Highlights: “There Will Be Sun,” “Hope,” “Everything About You,” “Night Will Come.”

Hello, Dolly! (Masterworks Broadway; 16 tracks; 42-page booklet with lyrics and color shot of Midler) by Jerry Herman:

Tony-nominated, Best Musical, Revival. Colorful revival starring the divine Bette Midler gives razzle dazzle new definition. In the showstopping moment after another – singing, doing fancy footwork or eating. She’s well-accompanied to Yonkers, the 14th Street Parade, and Harmonia Gardens by Tony nominees David Hyde Pierce, Gavin Creel, and Kate Baldwin. At 53 minutes, the cd doesn’t give the scope of being there. The disc has an 80-minute capacity, but cuts have been made. “The Waiter’s Gallop,” at 2:51, and the Finale, at 1:43, are shorter than onstage. You won’t feel shortchanged on the Overture, “Dancing” or title song.

Highlights: “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” “Ribbons Down My Back,” “Before the Parade Passes By,” “It Only Takes a Moment.”

Beginning June 13, Tony winner Donna Murphy (Passion) will play the lead on Tuesday evenings; and, at the end of June through year end, additional performances. In Transit (Hollywood Records; 18 tracks) by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan, and Sara Wordsworth; closed: Broadway’s first a cappella score, by vets of Frozen and Pitch Perfect, told of New Yorkers facing the challenges of city life as MTA trains pass them by.

Highlights: “Deep Beneath the City,” “Choosing Not to Know,” “Not There Yet.”

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Reprise; two discs; 27 tracks) by Dave Malloy:

Tony-nominated, Best Musical. The complicated story, adapted from 70-pages of War and Peace, has been turned into a mesmerizing spectacle. Tony-nominated Denée Benton (Natasha, betrothed to Andrei) and Lucas Steele (arrogant, wicked Anatole) are ravenous lovers; Josh Groban (Pierre), the brooding misfit son of a royal who returns to Russia and an inheritance and attempts to untangle the romantic triangle. Brittain Ashford is stunning as the lovelorn Sonya. Highlights: “No One Else,” “Dust and Ashes,” “Sonya & Natasha,” “Sonya Alone.”

War Paint (Ghostlight; 21 tracks) by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie:

Tony, DD nominated Best Musical. Pioneering cosmetic entrepreneurs Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, portrayed by stage favs Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, engage in fierce rivalry for dominance from the 30s to 60s as they change the face of American women.

Highlights: “If I’d Been a Man,” “Pink,” “Forever Beautiful,” “Beauty in the World.”

There’s more: one from Off Broadway and one from London’s West End:

Spamilton (DRG; 25 tracks) by Gerard Alessandrini:  This musical parody of guess what landmark musical is in love with what it mocks. It spins the difficulty of getting tickets, speculation about the film version, and most of all, the revolution — not the 18th-century political one, but the showbiz one. Alessandrini is the creator of 25 riotously hilarious Forbidden Broadway editions. He has a way with words, but this spoof is more affectionate tribute than one dripping with scathing humor.

Dreamgirls (Sony Music; 28 tracks, two discs) by Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger:

U.K. premiere of iconic 1982 Tony-nominated musical of Chicago R&B female trio vying for the big time during the 60s and learning hard lessons about show business and romance. Olivier-winning Amber Riley (Glee) is The Dreams’, Effie White.

Box office prices at around $189 and more for musicals can be daunting. Since you have to pay rent or monthly fees and also eat, you might consider the numerous promotions for shows in previews, Broadway League promotions for Kid’s Night, NYC & Company’s bi-annual Broadway Week [usually two weeks] 2-for 1 ticket offers (www.nycgo.com), and take advantage of the fact that 85% of shows are available for 40-50% off [plus $4.50 service fee] at the TDF booths.

Keep in mind newer shows such School of Rock and the return of Cats, Miss Saigon, and Sunset Boulevard [closing June 25]; and  hot shows from previous seasons – Aladdin, Beautiful, Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, On Your Feet, and Waitress — all still going strong but with available seats. Then, they’re the long-running champs: Chicago, Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, and Wicked. Hamilton is still hot, hot, and hot. 

You can also still get original cast recordings of the original Miss Saigon; Cats; and Sunset Boulevard [Los Angeles, pre-Broadway cast].

Avoid purchasing price-gouging “resale tickets” from those sites engaging in this sort of consumer rip-off.

Ellis Nassour is an Ole Miss alum and noted arts journalist and author who recently donated an ever-growing exhibition of performing arts history to the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the best-selling Patsy Cline biography, Honky Tonk Angel, as well as the hit musical revue, Always, Patsy Cline. He can be reached at ENassour@aol.com. 

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The post Take Broadway Home! – CDs of Tony Nominated Musicals From Off-Broadway and The West End appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #82: Famous.

Written: 3/30/2017

Maria had been conflicted, since, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to be famous, she wanted to be one of the big time celebrities that everyone talked about, she wanted to be a household name, somebody that everyone had an opinion of, good or bad, somebody that was discussed on television all of the time, she just wanted to be a somebody. However, although she consumed gossip magazines as if she were addicted to them, she knew that there were major downsides to fame that she most likely couldn’t handle, mainly the lack of privacy. Maria was a very, very private person and rarely left her house, causing a lot of her family members to either think that she was agoraphobic, or involved in some sort of illegal operation, but she never told them one way or the other, it wasn’t their business, it made her comfortable knowing that she had a life that only she knew about, so the potential of having people root around in her trash, having pictures of her taken whenever she actually goes out in public, having every little bit of useless information published about her in the gossip magazines that she loved, the potential of having her personal pictures (none of which were sexual, she had no sex drive and didn’t understand the appeal of nude photos) stolen and put all over the internet, for all to see, it was just too much for her. Like a lot of people without real lives, Maria would get lost in these fantasies of hers, and started to feel like they were already real. Since she wanted, so badly, to become famous, it was only, in her mind, a matter of time, so it was more important for her to solve the issue of privacy.

Anonymity wasn’t an option, because that would have required her to be very talented in some field, but the fame she sought out wasn’t related to talent, or skill, it was all about existing, and people loving the fact that you exist, needing to watch television shows of you simply existing. Plus, how could you become a household name if nobody knew your name? And, nobody really knew her name already, so its not like, in her mind, she would have achieved anything at all, she would just be in the same position that she currently was in.

Laying on her couch, staring a coffee table that was completely buried in magazines at a television that was never turned off, constantly running talk shows, game shows, entertainment news channels, reality television, etc, as she would stuff her face with small, circular shaped microwaveable pizzas, Maria tried, desperately, to think of a way to solve her problem, she didn’t know how much time she had left, living as a shut in, until she was suddenly famous, and became lost in a whirlwind of paparazzi, slanderous rumors, companies that wanted her to become a spokesperson, and adoring fans. The fear of becoming famous would give her anxiety, sometimes even panic attacks, and she would walk around in circles, sometimes peeking out the windows, all the while with her lights off, so that nobody would know that she was home, in case it finally happened. At one point she considered buying a gun, a rifle or a shotgun that would look big and threatening, to scare off any adoring trespassers, but that could also have the downside of giving her bad press, like, career ending bad, and then she could end up, again, exactly where she was now, shut inside a house for weeks on end, with only two or three people knowing that she even existed. At that point, she thought, she would have to use the gun on herself, because going from being a somebody to being nobody is, she assumed, a trillion times worse than continuously being a nobody.

For some reason, the thought of plugging herself, when her career was over, seemed like a good idea, but she couldn’t tell why.

One night, after she had used eye droppers to ensure that she wouldn’t cause any damage from the prolonged exposure to the light of her television, she was watching a game show, one of those singing competitions that were hard to figure out what made them different from the others, and the contestants, that week, were supposed to do their songs while dressed as some celebrity from the 1970’s and earlier, as a part of some sort of desperate attempt to cash in on the nostalgia of the teens and middle aged viewers who made up a large majority of the viewer base. One of the contestants had dressed up as Marilyn Monroe and did a cover of The Sound of Silence, which was completely ruined since she tried to display her vocal range and strength, making the song feel like she was trying to sing the national anthem, in the showiest way she could, with ill fitting music and lyrics, but the crowd went wild anyways. It was around 9PM, and at this point in the night Maria was usually sitting directly in front of the television, on her knees, just so that she could reach out and touch the screen whenever she liked what was happening, and it usually took until late into the night for this to happen because she would get tired of laying on the couch all day, and would require a change of scenery, even if it was something as small as moving closer to the television.

As her fingers traced the outline of the fake Marilyn, she thought how sad it was that such a great woman (Maria had never seen one of Marilyn’s films, and had hardly seen any films at all, since she was mostly obsessed only with the celebrity aspect of it all, and whenever she saw films all she could never immerse herself further than “Oh, Brad Pitt is doing a funny accent” or “Why do they keep calling Scarlett Johansen by the wrong name, and why isn’t she getting upset by that?”), such a natural star, had taken her life so early on, being unable to grow into old age where she could- and all the sudden Maria couldn’t continue on. What would have happened to the woman if she did continue to live? Would everyone remember her as an older woman, or would she have stopped being a fashionable age, and would have aged right into obscurity, making her a wrinkled nobody. Would she have ended up like Madonna, desperately clinging to fame, hoping to cash in on her former self as long as she could, causing Maria to cringe every time that she heard Like a Prayer (Maria hardly listened to music, but often watched music videos, just so that she could stay in the loop when some had turned out to be scandalous. Most of the time, they would just be muted anyways). And then, in some leap of logic, she had realized that Marilyn had been a genius, because she had ensured that she would die young, beautiful, at the hight of her career, going out with a bang and sealing her fate as a legend. All legends had to die young, and all legends were house hold names.

That night, after finding a piece of paper that wasn’t covered in practice autographs, Maria scribbled this down:

The best way to become famous is to die at the peak of your fame, and then everyone will always have to remember you for your highest point, you will never ever never have to go down, back into B-List, C-List, or all the way to the lower lists that like stop having letters, past Z, and have to start using numbers, like 3-List. If your a 3-list celebrity, you might as well be an orphan, like an orphan that works in a coal mine or something, to ugly to be famous, having to make sure that their faces are covered in coal dust to hide their shame, hoping to die of black lung or whatever animals lurk around in coal mines, like alligators or whatever. And if you think about it, Jesus was the first person to understand this. He got a bunch of followers, everybody loved him, Christianity became a thing, like he gave “cult following” a whole whole new meaning, and then he was like “Hey, I’m going to crawl up on this fucking cross and die so nobody will forget me” and now there are like armies of fuckers of wear crosses around their necks, bringing him from the household to the worldwide, and its really just a stroke of genius, what he did. And like, his name also is a swear word, even people who don’t want to worship him use his names in moments of angers, the crafty fucker has woven himself into our language, but how can I do this? How can I take this model of fame and use it to sky rocket myself into legend status. What is the most famous I should be before I kill myself?

It was an answer she had trouble finding.

One of her biggest problems was that she wasn’t sure how she could tell when she had truly hit her peak, since most celebrities wouldn’t find out that they had peaked until it was much too late. That also happened to nobodies, especially all of her old friends from high school who used to be incredibly popular (although, Maria was the undisputed queen of the school) and now, whenever she ran into one of them, which happened about once a year, she would see that their lives had become pathetic, they were nearing their bottoms, but they would keep talking about all of the great things they were about to do, making Maria want to pat them on the shoulder and say, “Oh, sweetheart, you’re prime is dead and buried. You were great in high school, but that was high school, and now you’re in your thirties, like that makes this all of this just unbearably pathetic. Get your shit together, and accept where you are.” So, not wanting to end up like one of those people, after she would undeniably become famous, she had to think of a way to calculate the perfect amount of fame to commit suicide.

After some searches of dead musicians online, she couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be more important: wasted potential or legendary send off of people who seemed to be around forever. One one hand, you have people like Kurt Cobain and Tupac, who supposedly (she couldn’t have named one of their songs, but could prattle on for hours about her theory that Kurt had faked his suicide, had some facial surgery done, and is  now living his life pretending to be Rivers Cuomo, of the band Weezer, who she has actually heard a song of, which was “Beverly Hills”) made wonderful music, but died before they could make any more, and people always thought about what could have been. On the other hand, you have people like David Bowie and Kanye West (who isn’t dead, she just gets her news from some very sketchy sources) who were in the industries for a long, long time, who might have changed a lot of things, she wasn’t sure, but seemed to be even more loved as they died, giving them perfect endings. And, don’t forget Michael Jackson who went from being a disgusting pedophile, to suddenly adored, just from dying.

After spending a day accumulating that information, she was a very slow reader, it lead her to realize that she didn’t know what any of the information meant, she didn’t really have an idea of how fame worked, and only knew that she was destined for it. However, through a couple accidental clicks and a stroke of luck, she realized that there was a whole section of celebrities that she had never thought of before: assassins. These were her notes on the subject:

In a way its a genius ticket to fame, like, all you have to do is find somebody who is extremely famous and kill them, then you instantly get their level of fame. Like you have Richard Kennedy who was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, and no every time that people think of the dead president, they think of the man who got a couple shots in on him. Not only that, but suddenly that dumb fucker who was only known as “Lee”, like gets his full name used all of the time, like people can’t just say “Lee Oswald” they have to say “Lee HARVEY Oswald”, like he has a whole special level of infamy. Same goes for Jesus, who only goes by his first and last name, which makes him a chump, even if people pray to his mother to stop their periods or whatever they do, like, because like the guy who killed him, Judas Wilkes Booth, has his full name used, and people always associate him with the big J. There’s something about infamy that people have a certain amount of love for, like World War Two was supposed to be such a big deal or whatever, but the only thing that I know happened was that Hitler killed some Jews or something like that, and he is supposed to be the villain of that whole war. Who talks about the good guys? When the big drug dealers go down who like talks about the people who caught them, like the FBI agents who had to go through car chases or whatever to get the drug lords

And if you think about it, infamy (just learned about this word) is even bigger than fame, because theirs more letters in infamy than they’re is in fame. Two extra letters to be exact. So, I’m young, I’m almost thirty but I can lie about my age, and all I have to do is kill somebody as big as Jesus, kill myself afterwards to maintain a perfect peak (so not only will I have maximum fame levels but I will also never have to worry about having my privacy invaded because I will be dead, which is like the perfect kind of privacy) and then I will become somebody that people wear masks of. I will become a swear word. I will be a popular Halloween costume, people will get tattoos of my face on their body, maybe they will even tattoo my face onto their face so that they will look like me, or rich girls might even get their noses done to look like my nose.

There was another problem in her plan, which was she had no idea who was, right now, as big as Jesus. Would any head of a religion do, or would she have to kill one of the heads of a special religion? What were any of the big religions, right now? These were questions she couldn’t answer, so she just decided to watch reality dance shows, then reality dance shows where children danced while their unkempt mother’s yelled at them, then singing shows, then reality shows where people just existed, and that was when Maria realized who she could kill. She would find one of those reality shows, walk onto the set while the cameras were rolling, then kill the whole cast, gun them down, on live television (she thought that reality television was live, and figured that the differences in the times in real life in the show were due to “Time Zones”, which she didn’t really understand either), in front of the whole world (she assumed that everyone had the same habits that she did, except they were way less special than she was) and become Jesus/Judas levels of famous. If the cast of Rich and Spoiled were her gods, then they were the people she would have to kill, and since there was a lot of them she would soak up all of their individual fame, allowing her to transcend the current fame boundaries.

Maria believed that you had to be able to brutally murder the ones you loved in order to put yourself in a better position, but she wasn’t antisocial, she just had been isolated for so long, mainly interacting with people in extremely disconnected ways, that she kind of forgot that other people were real in the same way that she was, which was one of the reasons she believed that she was destined to be famous.

Buying a gun was the hardest part of her plan, mainly because there was a ten day waiting period to get her handgun, so she had to sit around in her house, staring at her television, knowing that she would soon be famous. In preparation, she always stayed close to her television, trying to feel what it would be like to be where the celebrities were. Sometimes when the cast of Rich and Spoiled, who she nightly dreamed of mass murdering (usually with a gun, sometimes with an axe, and, in one dream, she killed them with lasers that came out of her hands, but that also disintegrated her hands after they were all dead, so she couldn’t zap herself and had to continue living, slowly fading into obscurity, which caused her to wake up in a deep sweat and leave the lights on for the rest of the night, to fearful to go back to sleep), were talking to each other, or were involved in some pointless form of drama, she would talk to her television as if she were there too. This lead to her starting to forget that it was initial practice, and she would occasionally believe that she was actually a part of the drama, which had often made her so angry that she would threaten to hang out with her good friends on E!, but this was mainly a bluff since when she did switch back to R&S, she would find everyone hanging out without her, having a good time, and it made her afraid that she had peaked.

On a few occasions she had tossed her drink at the television screen, when she was upset at one of her friends, and once she clawed at the screen, trying to pull one of the girl’s, who she had believed to have insulted her, hair out. None of this felt any different than what she had already been doing, they were still as real as she previously believed them to be, and it made her feel as if she were some sort of spy, becoming buddy buddy so that they wouldn’t expect it when she opened fire on them. By the eighth day, she realized that she might have started to become famous, since she was hanging around all of these celebrities, and figured that she probably was having new levels of fame to add onto all of the ones that she would absorb, when she sacrificed the cast. The idea made her mouth water, and for the first time in her life she felt an urge that could be described as sexual, in her eyes, but was actually caused by a rash that was forming on her groin.

On the tenth day, when she finally had the gun, she paced around in her living room, waiting for the show to come on, half worried that they had caught wind of her plan and were hiding away from her, planning on never airing and successfully hoarding their fame all for themselves. In a moment of paranoia and desperation, she considered flipping over to MTV and killing whatever pop star may have showed up on the channel, but she knew that now wasn’t the time to be impulsive, assassins only had one shot to make, and if they missed it would all be worthless, and if they picked somebody who was hardly famous, then they would fade into obscurity in a matter of years. Certain kinds of fame had expiration dates, and trying to kill those types of celebrities would only be a temporary solution, and knowing this allowed her to stay away from the music channel.

Finally, as she was walking in circles around her magazine pile that was hiding her coffee table, she heard the theme song of Rich and Spoiled, spun around and dropped to one knee, aimed her pistol at the screen, and waited until the opening sequence was almost done, waiting for the part where the whole cast was standing side by side, and when she finally saw it, no time was wasted and she sunk five rounds into her television, shattering the gas and causing it to smoke. Then, already feeling her newfound sense of fame start to fade, she put the gun into her mouth, pointed at its roof, and pulled the trigger.

Almost a year had passed until anyone had found her body. There was no mention of her death, not even in the obituary, since her mother felt like it had been to late to be appropriate. There was no funeral, what remained of her body was cremated, and its ashes were left with all of the other ashes of the people who nobody cared about.