Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Brigadoon

Looking for that Edward Villella Sword Dance I got deep into the Brigadoon videos on YouTube.  That was a mistake.  I have had "Waiting for my Dearie" running through my head the last few days.  It's not a good song. I had forgotten it these many years, even though it was Glenn Close singing it when I was in the chorus. And yes, she could hit those notes crystal clear.  Fabulous voice. I am hoping to exorcise it by putting it here.  Most likely I will just ruin the next week for all of you instead.


Listening to the various songs, I was impressed with how little the tunes were much reminiscent of anything Scottish, nor did they even have much Celtic undertone.  The lyrics used a lot of Scots dialect vocabulary, but the music was straight 1940's popular.  Even the lyrics, I suppose, could be seen as "Scots English filtered through American Musical Theater in both theme and sentiment," but it's at least something.

They had bagpipes.  There's that.

The other fun thing is that we always did bawdy parodies of any show's songs for the cast party, and had some people who were quite good at writing them.  So I have had "Jeannie's Shacking Up, Jeannie's Putting Out" in my head as well, trying to recapture those lyrics, dim in memory.

3 comments:

  1. I had a theater history professor who claimed that "Brigadoon" was the worst musical ever written. I agree with her when trapped watching a production and they are on the 43rd verse of "Go Home to Bonnie Jean."

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  2. You NAUGHTY boy!!

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  3. I think your assessment is correct. Technically fine, but missing something.

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