Hamilton

Anyone heard this? I was skeptical (history nerd!) but holy shit it's awesome! Hamilton's theme song being "I'm not throwing away my shot!" is dark hilarity on its own.

The Les Mis cast also decided to welcome its new neighbor

edited 6th Oct '15 10:39:50 PM by Phoenixflame

I first heard this last night.

In less than an hour, I had become Hamilton trash. I have sobbed to Burn, It's Quiet Uptown, and Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story. And I got ready this morning to My Shot and Non-Stop.

I may have also told at least four coworkers about it, and played like five songs for my sixty-six year old conservative dad.

Yep.

Lol, me too, down to the conservative dad! This dad happens to be a history nerd of epic proportions who has a weird undying fanboyishness for Aaron Burr. So, when I said Burr was basically the narrator and a tragic antihero type, he was psyched. "When it comes here on tour, we're sure as hell seeing it!!" I burned him some C Ds (poor fellow hasn't advanced to Bluetooth) and am awaiting his full cast recording impression way more than I should.

"Guns and Ships" and "Yorktown" get me PUMPED!

Also, Lin-Manuel wins the internets.

edited 22nd Oct '15 7:54:26 PM by Phoenixflame

I convinced my sister to see it with me.

We're seeing it JULY FOURTH WEEKEND. OH MY GOD.

Non-Stop is my cannot-stop-replaying-it-at-all-nope-gonna-listen-until-I-die jam.

My favourite song from this musical so far is "Wait For It." I found a really good cover of the song, so here:

AH! I love Hamilton, my teacher from ap gov showed us a video 2-3 years ago of Lin-manuel singing the title song at the white house. It wasn't until 4-5 months ago I heard about the musical.

Have you seen his previous musical "In the Heights"?

Me? Nope. I hadn't even heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda until everybody on Tumblr went on about Hamilton.

Been kicking myself since. Man rocks.

This show better cross the Pond. Or I'll try and find a way of causing the same ruckus that Bostonians caused when they dumped all that good tea in the Harbor.

Yes!

I loved "In the Heights" (adjust hipster glasses and mutters "before it was cool" comment) so I was excited to see was excited to see what Lin-Manuel Miranda was up to now. Hamilton is a masterpiece. The music is excellent, and as a history nerd I was ecstatic that it was completely historically accurate. And usually when people do "historically accurate", they make it as vague as possible, mentioning things vaguely so they won't get anything wrong, but Hamilton did no such thing. They even used first-hand sources that must have been near-impossible to get.

Five out of five stars.

Apparently Lin-Manuel's not very pleased that someone's dicking around with Alexander Hamilton's Wikipedia page:

http://squeewentthefangirl.tumblr.com/post/140296626309/bahahahamilton-he-should-see-john-laurens

I'm in the weird situation of being a foreign Hamilton fan, a Canadian one. Which usually makes the foreign thing less pronounced but given are history with the American Revolution I find myself in an odd situation. Also, also I've only listened to the songs but they are all awesome I love "The Schuyler Sisters".

I really love "The Schuyler Sisters," too. But I'm also partial to "Wait For It," "Satisfied," "Burn", the last part of "Non-Stop" where everyone's lyrics are overlapping (I know there's a word for this, but I don't really remember it), "My Shot," Angelica's verbal bitch-slap to Hamilton in "The Reynolds Pamphlet" (the rest of that song is good, but that's definitely my favorite part), and wow, I think I'll just end up listing all the songs of the musical at this rate, haha.

Trust you? The only person I can trust is myself.

I'm Hamilton trash and I'm a Scottish person, living in Scotland, who speaks with the kind of Scottish accent one could cut with a spoon.

Listened to the soundtrack on a 4 hour drive home and I am now Australian Hamilton trash. Too bad it'll literally never come to Australia =P

I also know literally nothing about American history (they didn't teach me my own country's history let alone other countries') so this has been both confusing and interesting.

I love Farmer Refuted, Wait for It, the battle for Yorktown one, and Meet Me Inside. And the duel one. And... okay there are too many good ones.

edited 1st Apr '16 1:17:37 AM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

Oh I love "Wait For It" also "The Room Where It Happens" and "Satisfied" and "Dear Theodessa" (I don't even have a kid but I mean he said he was thinking of his dog when he wrote it so) and I better stop before I list the entire musical besides "Helpless" and I even like some parts of that.

My grasp of American History is pretty good I took a course on it in college. It's just before that this is generally not how the American Revolution is covered I mean it kind of was how we covered it in highschool (I mean sympathetically not through a musical) but only because my teacher argued that our textbooks were biased and we should get a more well-rounded view. Though of course every kid would grow up consuming American television and media.

edited 6th Apr '16 11:39:53 AM by phantom1

I love that he was thinking of his dog when he wrote "Dear Theodosia." I guess owning a dog is kind of like having a kid? I wouldn't know though, I haven't had either.

Some interesting analysis on what "throwing away your shot" means.

edited 6th Apr '16 12:57:03 PM by DeathsApprentice

Trust you? The only person I can trust is myself.

@Apo I had a dog, but he died, I have a cat now (there was a brief overlap time, where the dog was very old and the cat was very young and the cat would groom the dogs fur and we occasionally had to stop the cat from harassing the dog). I also have a niece and nephew I don't think it's really the same thing, but there is still the feeling of love and wanting the best for them and to protect them as much as possible yeah, but of course with a child you have more in mind what they will be like later when they grow up, you have to want them to grow up.

Also when you have a child one or over reasoning with them or explaining things they are scared of works i.e. "if you climb up there you will fall and probably knock things down or "that loud noise was a helicopter" where as a cat will just look at you. Source have trouble getting out of the mindset from looking after kids to talking to my cat and thus try to reason with and explain things to my cat.

edited 6th Apr '16 2:44:38 PM by phantom1

Reviving this to say I love the story. I'm not much of a musical guy, I like some but I tend to find them pretty inaccessible to newcomers or those not invested in the technical aspect, but Hamilton's the modern man's musical, with some delicious burns and freestyles, and some show-stopping solos that would satisfy both the traditionalist and someone who's new to the genre.

I really find myself hard-pressed to pick a best song. "My Shot" is amazing, but I replayed it a dozen times in the span of two hours, so I'm getting a little burned out on it, but then I remember some beautiful shit like "Satisfied" and "nonstop" and I get excited again.

Everyone on the cast recording's just so confident and into it, it helps this started as a Concept Album, and it can work just fine as one without seeing the show with how much polish went in the sound design.

But yeah, I guess I'm trash too. Double Hamilton Gem trash, since I took the plunge after seeing a Steven Universe parody of "Alexander Hamilton".

edited 8th May '16 6:32:25 PM by darkabomination

"No will to break."

I didn't even consider that, but now that you mention it, that is very true. You can still very much follow the story without having seen the show, which isn't necessarily true with most musicals. That's pretty much why the only other musicals I've gotten into were ones that I've seen performances of. Hamilton is the first musical I've gotten into without having seen it performed.

Trust you? The only person I can trust is myself.

From what I know of, most cast recordings aren't so lucky and either omit songs, compress dialogue that isn't a part of a song, or don't have the original cast. Supposedly, Hamilton's not necessarily rare but uncommon to have very minimal spoken dialogue that isn't part of a song. There's asides, but those go along with the beat and tend to rhyme.

"No will to break."

Most cast albums do have the original cast and most, if not all, or the songs. But dialogue is almost always omitted. The practice of including compressed dialogue seems to have arisen mostly in the past decade.

Most notably I remember the original recording of Assassins, which included the entirety of the Lee Harvey Oswald scene at the end, making the penultimate track ten minutes of dialogue.

edited 8th May '16 10:44:46 PM by Pannic

Fanfiction I hate.

MOST Cast Recordings Ommit Dialogue unless its something short and to the point. They'll otherwise just cut straight over it but that becomes hard for the orchestra who then have to skip all of the music that they'd have played during that part. Dancing Through Life from Wicked is a 10-15 min number and the Recording Version skips most of it because large portions are dance numbers. It doesn't skip Fyero asking what the best place in town is because its a two line moment, but the entire DANCE of the number where Nessa and Boq dance, Glinda and Fyero Dance, Glinda and Morrible talk, and then Elphaba is shamed by her classmates before dancing with Glinda are all cut from the recording.

At the same time, there ARE musicals to which there is no spoken dialogue. The Last Five Years is full and complete with NO spoken dialogue at all. Cats has no dialogue as well which makes sense to its more... episodic nature. Which means that basically the entire show is there in audio.

There are a few that to contain spoken dialogue, but not a very significant amount. Once on this Island, Phantom of the Opera, Rent, and Next to Normal come to mind.

There are even one or two musicals that can be both depending on the production. Chess' script really only contains the music and the actual script is written by the production crew so some versions might be all song and no dialogue.

edited 7th Jul '16 1:31:18 AM by InkDagger

Not true. For example, between verses in "See I'm Smiling" you have Jamie on the phone with his agent (the film version put it right before "Moving Too Fast") and in "Moving Too Fast" you have Cathy on the phone with someone trying to find a job, as well. The play does have interspersed bits of dialogue, or at least monologue.

The recording of Rent also does omit most of what little spoken dialogue there is. Mark's introduction before the first tune-up and I believe the short bit after Angel's funeral.

A lot of recordings from the recent Sondheim revivals do include bits and pieces of dialogue (Follies, Company, Assassins), but not a complete script. One notable case where a cast recording did contain all the dialogue was the Donmar Warehouse recording of Parade.

From what I've heard (I haven't been able to verify it), the recording of Hamilton is essentially the entire show (i.e. it's a sung-through show with no dialogue), with the exception of the John Laurens' death, which was omitted. So that's pretty nice.

edited 14th Jul '16 11:05:35 AM by Pannic

Fanfiction I hate.

The production I had seen of The Last Five Years didn't have any dialogue.

I'd like to point out that Last Five Years and Hamilton are both considered 'Fully Sung-through musicals' on Wikipedia.

EDIT: I just perused the YMMV page and found...

"Bonus points if you imagine his (Lafayette's) involvement in that other popular broadway show that was set during the same time period." referring to Les Mis.

However, Les Mis' revolution is the 1832 June Rebellion. The French Revolution was from 1789-1795/1799. The two events don't take place anywhere near each other with a 30-odd year gap. Would anyone be bothered if the entry were to be removed?

If one were to really turn to history, Lafayette was offered the chance to be dictator of France. He continued to support the monarchy and supported Louis-Philippe the first until L.P the first became more autocratic in nature.

edited 14th Aug '16 2:39:18 AM by InkDagger

My favourite moment of Awesome: the Whiskey rebellion.

"YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED (WOT!), OUTMANNED (WOT!), OUTGUNNED (WOT!), OUTPLANNED (PAY YOUR FUCKING TAXES!)

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.