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A strange pick this week. If you watched the pilot of this season’s House, AND stayed around for the closing credits, you’d have heard this already. If not, here it is below (this is different from the one he did with House at the talent show).

Well, I came across such an odd choice because I watched a play this weekend that made reference to Alexander Hamilton, but I didn’t know who he was (aside from the fact he’s an important US historical figure). My friend told me to watch this to learn about Alexander Hamilton, which apparently is a Lin-Manuel Miranda rap of Hamilton (who’s head shows up on the $10 USD bill) that he performed for the Obamas.

Snow Patrol released a compilation album a few months back called “Up to Now”. Apparently it is not their “Greatest Hits” compilation, but more a compilation of songs over their past albums that documents their style and growth for the past 15 years, since apparently they’re going to switch styles and try for some new sounds in their next album, so they’re releasing this as a milestone. 3 new tracks on the CD, 1 of them is a cover, below:

Any one recognize who did the original version of this song? I definitely know the song when I heard it, but couldn’t pinpoint who did the original and where I heard it from since it was somewhat different. Search for the name online if you can’t figure it out… which is what I did eventually 🙂

Saw this on the “vanity card” after yesterday’s Big Bang Theory, thought it was kind of interesting… copied from Chuck Lorre Productions.

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #277

Belarus is a small, land-locked country next door to Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. According to Wikipedia, one of its major exports is cattle by-products. Which begs the question, what horrible shape are the cattle in, if all they’re good for is felt hats and wallpaper paste? But Belarus does have a bustling TV production industry. One of their most recent hits is a sitcom about four nerdy scientists who live next door to a beautiful blonde waitress. The characters are named Sheldon, Leo, Hovard, Raj and Natasha, and the show is entitled, The Theorists. Each episode begins with a rapid-fire montage of images which takes us from the dawn of time to the present moment. Keeping with that theme, the montage is scored with what is probably the worst piece of recorded pop music since the dawn of time. And finally, each episode appears to be a Russian translation of a Big Bang Theory episode. When we brought this to the attention of the Warner Brothers legal department, we were told that it’s next to impossible to sue for copyright infringement in Belarus because the TV production company that is ripping us off is owned and operated by the government of Belarus. Having no other recourse, I’m hoping that this vanity card will be read by the fine folks making The Theorists, and, wracked with guilt, they break down and send us some felt hats. The Kyrgyzstan version of Dharma & Greg already sent me some wallpaper paste.

EDIT: courtesy of sadd3j, you can watch Belarusian Big Bang clips here.

Guess I’ll do some musical reviews too after reading the Rent review sadd3j and teewee made. I’m definitely piling up on the number of Playbill programs I have =), but this will be another way of keeping track of what I’ve saw. Oh and I decided to be a season subscriber to one of the musical theaters here too ;).

I went to see a touring, revival production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific last night. Rodgers and Hammerstein are definitely the classical Broadway masters – the “Andrew Lloyd Webber of the ’50s”, to help paint the picture. Rodgers is the composer and Hammerstein is the lyricist, and they collaborated on a whole bunch of musicals including Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, Carousel, The King and I and of course, South Pacific. Random trivia bit: Richard Rodgers is one of 2 people in the world that has an EGOT + Pulitzer prize =P.
Anyhow… South Pacific is a very classical broadway show I would say. The music is very complete but classically styled – a lot of reprises of themes, which makes it very well rounded. Amazing baritone lead with his French accent and the soprano lead is fairly decent. There’s a surprising amount of French dialogue in the show – one of those instances that I’m glad I got a Canadian education, where at least I could understand enough of what they’re saying to catch the gist of what’s happening. Otherwise, the story was very flat – nothing dramatic like Rent or Wicked (granted it is a little unfair to compare to my 5 star musical selections), and people just fall in love at first sight – not a lot of character development. There’s also a very unexpected theme of racial prejudice that shows up in the second act regarding interracial marriage. My initial thoughts were since South Pacific is an older musical from the ’50s, maybe segregation is still a big issue back then and hence the characters made a big deal out of interracial marriage – but on further thought, that seems to be something we (especially as Asians) still struggle with nowadays.
The musical is just shy of 3 hours long with intermission, which is quite lengthy, especially when the plot isn’t moving. 3 stars for me.

This week’s pick is definitely something I’ve been looping a lot in my playlist lately. One Republic’s “All the Right Moves” – has a “Phantom-esque” theme to it – I think I’ve watched this video like 10x already!

One Republic is not an unheard of band anymore (thanks to “Apologize”) and this track comes out of their sophomore album (do I speak like an American now?) released last Nov (2009). I gotta say – One Republic is on my top 3 favorite bands (you can guess what the other 2 are) and primarily because of Ryan Tedder (their front man), who is probably my favorite artist. He’s definitely a talented performer (can sing and plays multiple instruments, piano being one of them), but I think I like him most because of his songwriting and producing background – he writes One Republic’s songs, but moreover he pens a number of chart toppers for MANY other artists (Beyonce, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Leona Lewis, to name a few). He definitely has an identifiable style in his arrangements, which I probably appreciate the most. For example – listen to the arrangement for “All the Right Moves” above – the instrumental at 2:40, then the piano/vocal solo at 2:53, then the double snare to drums/vocal at 3:06, then the cutout “Yeah, we’re going down” at 3:18… ah so creative!

Ryan Tedder’s bio is very inspiring as well – a story of tenacity. He was an intern at Dreamworks singing demo tracks, and was soon offered a publishing deal, but he wanted to be an artist (more than just background producing work). So at age 21, he entered some MTV hosted singer-songwriter competition ran by Lance Bass (N’Sync), and he ended up winning the competition. As a winner, he’s supposed to get a contract with a recording label, but this did not materialize as Lance Bass’ company folded soon after the competition – Setback #1. After that, he continued to work behind the scenes doing production work for other artists, apparently working with Timbaland from 2002 to 2004.

2002, he formed One Republic with his high school buddy, and at that point he had the choice of being a producer, or going to be an artist. “I was offered two publishing deals within two months of being in Nashville…I could have just written songs and lived a carefree life, but I knew that I had to be an artist. I wanted to form a rock band and create my own sound.” And then Setback #2: “The band had previously been signed to Columbia Records, and their album was due to be released in 2006, but this did not occur. Tedder explained, “Crap happened. People got fired. Labels merged and politics abounded”.[24] Subsequently, the band was released from their deal with Columbia, and they were signed by Timbaland in the summer of 2006 becoming the first rock band to be signed to Mosley Music Group.”

Hehe too bad he isn’t an outspoken Christian (not sure if he is one), or else another ++! But he was brought up by an extended family of missionaries and pastors, so maybe, who knows!