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defrogSpeaking of Iowa ...
I’m not big on musicals, unless it’s Rocky Horror. But for the most part, "proper" musicals don’t really do a thing for me.
The exception is Meridith Willson’s The Music Man.
Why? Partly because my mom had the Broadway soundtrack and I used to listen to it a lot. Which is probably why I’m the only person on Planet Earth who doesn’t hate barbershop quartets on general principle.
But it’s also loaded with the sort of themes that appeal to me: the power of music to change society for the better, how ignorance makes you easy to swindle, and a satire of Midwestern small-town American moral values of church, family, conformity and self-righteous intolerance that conservatives to this day wish we could go back to.
Which brings us to this clip, where con man Harold Hill needs an angle to sell boys’ marching band equipment to the people of River City, Iowa (and make off with their money). His solution: whip up moral outrage over billiards, which will lead to gambling, beer drinking, ribald jokes and dancing with scarlet women at the armory.
It’s a great song and a classic scene. And it’s one that I’ve seen repeated in various forms over the years. Replace “pool” with “television”, “marijuana”, “rock’n’roll”, “heavy metal”, “rap music”, “video games”, “MySpace” and “the Homosexual Agenda®”, and it’s pretty much the same routine.
Amazing how people still fall for it.
So’s yr old man,
This is dF
I’m not big on musicals, unless it’s Rocky Horror. But for the most part, "proper" musicals don’t really do a thing for me.
The exception is Meridith Willson’s The Music Man.
Why? Partly because my mom had the Broadway soundtrack and I used to listen to it a lot. Which is probably why I’m the only person on Planet Earth who doesn’t hate barbershop quartets on general principle.
But it’s also loaded with the sort of themes that appeal to me: the power of music to change society for the better, how ignorance makes you easy to swindle, and a satire of Midwestern small-town American moral values of church, family, conformity and self-righteous intolerance that conservatives to this day wish we could go back to.
Which brings us to this clip, where con man Harold Hill needs an angle to sell boys’ marching band equipment to the people of River City, Iowa (and make off with their money). His solution: whip up moral outrage over billiards, which will lead to gambling, beer drinking, ribald jokes and dancing with scarlet women at the armory.
It’s a great song and a classic scene. And it’s one that I’ve seen repeated in various forms over the years. Replace “pool” with “television”, “marijuana”, “rock’n’roll”, “heavy metal”, “rap music”, “video games”, “MySpace” and “the Homosexual Agenda®”, and it’s pretty much the same routine.
Amazing how people still fall for it.
So’s yr old man,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2009-04-05 10:32 pm (UTC)That is a great musical, btw