HAIR: the musical: the poll

I love this musical but it embarrasses me to walk down the street with it

personally leaning towards "Easy to be Hard," which despite the hippy-drippy trappings still feels relevant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrD14jqTtAE

oh yeah it's almost impossible to listen to as an actual musical, but it contains a surprising number of very malleable jams

"Frank Mills" is one of the best songs ever written imho but the rest of this musical is stored away in the Cupboard Of Embarrassment

Nah I love "Ain't Got No" too what am I saying that song is amazing

I was in my high school's production. getting a duet ("What a piece...") staged on a scaffold in front of a full auditorium was a fun way to learn that actually I can't sing lol

"Frank Mills" is great yeah, I'd love to hear a Van Dyke Parks-assisted cover or something. Or maybe some other arranger

also if anyone is looking to seriously assess the poll options, I recommend the 1979 film soundtrack version. funkier, more percussive arrangements, easier to deal with overall. plus it throws in a couple extra tunes I'm now annoyed I didn't include as poll options.

I like how Manchester England sounds like the Sesame Street theme.

The lyrics to these songs are all hilarious, very painfully of their time down to every last detail.

yeah MacDermot really can't claim enough credit for making any of this work

gonna go Frank Mills

always thought of Black Boys/White Boys as a unified track

Probably would have made more sense, but I figured no one was gonna vote for it/them anyway lol

Babs tears up "Frank Mills"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab4wsZIHEn4

he wears his hair tied in a small bow at the back
I love him
but it embarrasses me
to walk down the street with him
he lives in Brooklyn somewhere

possibly the only truly timeless lyric in the entire musical

I don't know any other song that is such an effective marriage of a conversational lyric with a dextrous melody.

I recommend the 1979 film soundtrack version. funkier, more percussive arrangements, easier to deal with overall.

For the most part, yeah. But the title track is much too fast on the 1979 version. And the 1968 Broadway cast album has the naive charm of session hacks and arrangers trying to make vaguely "psychedelic" sounds.

I don't know any other song that is such an effective marriage of a conversational lyric with a dextrous melody.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, December 18, 2018 9:45 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just listened to this song again, and this is otm.

the movie is pretty shit, right? this is what I remember, anyway.

fgti “Frank Mills” description thirded.

Coming over from the recently active Cowsills thread to recommend their version of the title tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO8cMRbDkfE

^ this

'I Got Life' in a landslide.

i liked the movie alright in '79, but haven't seen it in forever

it felt like a 30yo period piece, instead of ten

Greatest Hairpiece, will brook no argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slSPcFHcq68

i don't know what i disliked more, the lame film or the useless music to it. in 1979 when post-punk was going on this was so anachronistic. more than ten years too late. about the schmaltziest, kitschiest crap ever recorded. rip.

my parents had both the original Broadway (IIRC) and original Australian cast soundtracks on cassette when I was a kid, and I remember liking:

"Aquarius"
"Sodomy"
"Manchester England"
"Ain't Got No"
"I Got Life"
"Hair"
"My Conviction"
"Frank Mills"
"Black Boys/White Boys"
"Let the Sunshine In"

but can't recall anything of any others, except Good Morning Starshine. would vote for Lemonheads' Frank Mills over Streisand's.

always thought Ted Leo's "Lost Brigade" sounded a bit like "The Flesh Failures."

i don't know what i disliked more, the lame film or the useless music to it. in 1979 when post-punk was going on this was so anachronistic

fortunately alex, you're an adult now and know that only children (and those who think like them) judge music by fashionability.

Isn’t it, um *rockist* to hate this music at this point?

saying Hair was anachronistic in '79 is like complaining Hello, Dolly! was.

judge music by fashionability.

but i ask myself why i wasted my time with hair in 1979 when i could have listened to much more interesting stuff like joy divison, wire, gang of four, wire etc. i didn't know existed.

Feel like the reasons I might have steered clear of it at the time was that it seemed like a show tune version of counterculture rock music. But once I realized it was actually more like funk music than rock- one of the greatest soul jazz drummers of all is on the OCT- I came around.

OCTOCR

I grew up listening to the German-language recording, not because we lived in Germany, but because my parents didn't want us hearing Bad Words. So maybe for sentimental reasons I still prefer this version. But another thing to recommend it is the performer of the opening track who, I discovered only recently, is a young Donna Summer. (First post from a long-time lurker... Here goes nothing...)

Haare--Wassermann

The 1979 film is on Amazon prime right now

Also here's a nice remembrance of Galt MacDermot by Egon of Now-Again: http://www.rappcats.com/galt-macdermot-1928-2018/

an album by his warbly-vocaled alter ego Fergus MacRoy
D’oh!

The show ran a mere eight weeks and was moved to a Midtown club, The Cheetah, were it continued for another two months.
One of many interesting details

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Just noticed the extended Hair album seems to have both the Original Broadway Cast as well as the Off-Broadway version, including the Jill O’Hara version of “Good Morning Starshine.” Although not the Oliver version of course.

Which I am listening to now for the first time in decades.

there was a cast reunion at lamama a couple years ago. brief video here:

https://www.facebook.com/Coffeehouse-Chronicles-139812629528026/videos/740354256140524

title track is my fav but there's few wrong notes on this throughout. I love Hair

The rest is silence.