11-3-08 Keep Your Eyes on the Prize as you Mosh to the Higher Ground – One Neat Thing a Day’s (or at least Sean’s) PRE-ELECTION DAY SPECIAL

Show tunes are such a… rich vein for us to mine, Shanoah. For instance, can any say The Rocky Horror Show, which inspired the midnight cinema and cosplay classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Though I do want to probe that particular orifice of musical theatre deeper and deeper and harder and harder and faster and FASTER and FASTER AND FASTER! until I need to smoke a cigarette and maybe fall asleep, I shan’t… at least not today.

This post is dedicated to all true believers and all the ships at sea. This goes out to any one on either side – on any side – of the aisle, and any one who cares about where the United States are going. I don’t care if you’re voting for John McCain or Barack Obama or Ralph Nader or Tessie the Two-Ton Whale. If you’re voting, you’re participating in Our Peculiar – Very Very Peculiar – Institution, and you’re welcome here tonight. Check your guns and your placards at the door, ladies and gentlemen, and pull a chair and and a glass up to the stage.

Oh, you say you can vote, but you’re not going to. I see. Do me a favor. Please hold your American passport up to the screen.

RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP RIP

Thank you.

Your first song tonight was on Irene Trudel’s show on WFMU today and inspired this post. No matter how bad things get, how bleak the polls look or how stupid and/or mangy your pony can look on occasion, Mavis Staples remind your to keep your Eyes on the Prize.

And for those of you who can’t be bothered or don’t think your vote counts… Mavis is just gonna slap the hell out of you.

Courtesy of jhenry4242.

The next two bands you’ve probably heard before here, but they’re good any time. The first is the Red Hot Chili Peppers, reminding you to keep the election out of the gutter and take it to a Higher Ground.

Courtesy of wodchaz.

Oh, you say your mill needs a little rage and righteous fury in its grist? Eminem’s got you covered with Mosh, which was released one week before the 2004 election. The fact that it didn’t wedge out George W. Bush (the “W” is for “Waste of Oxygen”, by the way) makes only it more poignant, more angry, and more relevant.

Courtesy of simpy90.

Oh, and don’t even ask me about the election come Nov. 5, no matter who wins. I am going to do the healthy thing and wall the whole sordid thing off, like an inflamed cyst, in my psyche. That includes the e-mails, the blog posts, the attack ads, the doctored photos, the smarmy pundits who think they have God on speed dial and shit that doesn’t stink, everything. (“Did you know that Barack Hussein Obama was pissing on the American flag in an Indonesian madrassa while he plotted with Bill Ayers to impose shari’a law Islamofascist socialism on nyyyyYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHH” sound of a fist being driven through a computer monitor). And if you don’t want me to do my best imitiation of Donald Sutherland at the very end of the 1980 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchters, you’ll do well not to remind of any of it.

I did my part. I voted. Now please go away for another four years, Mr. Civic Responsibility.

NO MATTER WHO WINS!

Broadway Horror

Oh, now you’ve done it; Little Shop of Horrors is somewhere on my top list of favorite movies. Next time you see it, see if you spot Danny John Jules, the guy who plays Cat on Red Dwarf. He’s only onscreen for 5 seconds or so, but he’s there…

I think part of the reason why they changed the ending is because Rick Moranis as Seymour was a more likeable character then he was on broadway.

They also cut several songs from the Broadway version for the movie (and added one: “Mean Green Mother”). I’ve heard them; I own a copy. And now I’l play a few. The composer, incidentally, was Alan Menken. You may recognize his name from a half dozen Disney movies…

Since you started with the Dentist, he had other songs in the Broadway version as well:

I Found A Hobby

Yeah, this is bad quality, but, hey, it’s more background for Orin. Into bondage at 13. Makes sense for his character. This was bonus material on the cd; it didn’t actually make it on Broadway. It feels like an alternate song for “Dentist!”.

And don’t you think his character deserved a long drawn out death scene? He got one originally:

Now (It’s Just the Gas)

I love this duet. I kind of wish I’d gotten to see Steve Martin do this song. This song just has great twists of phrases in it.

That’s not all they cut; there was originally more backstory, a lot of which seems to be on the net in the form (sigh) of Anime AMVs.

The Worse He Treats Me

This twisted little song was another that was cut from the Broadway play, but ended up on the Broadway cd. I don’t know what it says that I’m not totally sure if this is about Audrey & Orin or Seymour & Mr. Mushnik…

Mushnik & Son

And yes, Mushnik actually decided to adopt Seymour when he got successful in the Broadway version. You should be glad it cuts off where it does; the cd included another minute that was rather silly…