Astonishing

I am absolutely, 100% not tired. I hate nights like this, especially ones that are followed by wonderful days of sun. I think tomorrow may be one of those days and I was trying to get a good night's sleep so I could enjoy it. Lies. The lines from "When You're Good To Mama" from "Chicago" keep running through my head; I just rediscovered the CD. Granted, Renee Zellweger is not a very good singer, but the show is much better than I gave it credit for back when I received it (the movie recording if you didn't catch that yet) back in 2003 or thereabouts.

Yeah. Watch that! My cousin Megan turned me on to it a couple months ago. This is a truncated version of the song, but you can see all of the girl's faces and I really like that about it. Sutton Foster is so fabulous.

Speaking of Sutton Foster, I've also been listening to "Chess" a whole bunch. While it has a lot of rather poor '80s bits, songs like "Nobody's Side" and "Heaven Help My Heart" can really take a listener by surprise. One of the strengths of "I Know It's Today" is the really modern arrangment, instrument choice, particularly that acoustic guitar at the end. "Chess" on the other hand seems to really hold on to the electronica in the recordings I've got my hands on. I think it would be great if "Chess" had some sort of revival or revamping that updated the sounds. You know what else should be revived? "Aspects of Love." While Andrew Lloyd's last show didn't smash like many of his have, I think that the world loves drama and love triangles and "Aspects" has always felt like an episode of "The Real World" to me. Perhaps a nice update might give it an audience - but who can replace Michael Ball. Oh right, no one. My biases are so obvious because I was first introduced to Ball in the 10th Anniversary Concert of "Les Miserables" when he played Marius brilliantly. "Les Mis" is my all-time favorite show and the 10th Anniversary is probably the very best recording out there, including the original cast.

 

I guess I'll stop rambling and just keep YouTubing Sutton until I feel sleepy :)