[Updated album list, 28th June 2009 -S]

That’s actually a misquotation from Casablanca, but it’s so ingrained in our contemporary ethos that no one really cares (she actually says “Play it, Sam, play ‘As Time Goes By‘, one of the most sappy songs of all time). Bogart’s ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ wasn’t in the original screenplay either — it was something said from Bogart to Bergman while he was trying to teach her poker in between takes.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about music. A wide, all-encompassing love for every kind of music. Except for death metal, which just doesn’t count as ‘music’. Maybe if they turn their amps down, they might be able to hear the shit they’re pumping out.

I know this is a touchy subject. Everyone has their own taste in music, which they are often irrationally proud of. ‘Yeah, I listen almost exclusively to Norwegian Death Metal, nothing else is even worth listening to.’ Most people firmly believe that their taste in music is approaching some kind of divinity, and anyone that doesn’t like their music (Impossible!!) can go stick it where the sun don’t shine.

The thing is, in general, ‘good music’ can be quite easily defined. There are a few bands and a few genres that are widely accepted as ‘good’. You won’t often find the Norwegian Death Metal lover saying that ‘Ah yeah, that Bacharach song was shit’ — some music is just so perfect. Some songs hit all the right spots, in all the right places, at just the right times. It’s this wide-scoped genre of music that I like to think I am an aficionado of. I’ve spent the last 10 years or so trying to locate, listen and identify all of the greatest albums ever made. I think I’m completely spoilt, being able to listen to some of the best music ever made, at any time. The power of digitising your CD collection!

So what makes music ‘good’? What can turn a piece of mediocre music into something truly ‘awesome’?

• An element of excellence. Be it vocal excellence like Whitney Houston, or an instrument like Ben Folds’ piano antics, or even excellent lyrics (though this is often a subjective measure, so I’m not really going to use it as a metric for measuring ‘good music’)
• Major tonality. This is slightly harder to get your head around, but generally this dictates ‘happy sounding’ music. Most of the anthems that you know will be in a major tonality, with some key-change later in that drives you up to the ‘next plane’ of the song. Pandora actually enlightened me to the fact that almost every song it chose for me was of ‘major tonality’ — sadly it’s a USA-only service due to licensing restrictions. Blah.
• Does the music take you places? Do you feel positively stimulated by listening to the music? More energy? More relaxed? Often a good album (not necessarily a song) will take you on some kind of ride through the thoughts and emotions of the artist. The music needs to appeal on enough levels that it gets you involved — it needs to be intellectual, emotional or spiritual (or all 3!) . I’m not talking about just the lyric here either — the music itself can take you to all of these places too.
• Most importantly, the music has to be so well made and so well engineered that you can listen to it time and time again, each listen-through granting you a new facet of the music, a new understanding and thus more appreciation. I’m still amazed that I can listen to a song by Marvin Gaye for the 100th time and pick out an instrument that I’ve never heard before. The quality of the recording is important here — the mixing and mastering has to be very well done so that it never detracts from your enjoyment of the music. All too often music is mastered for playing in cars — it’s heavily compressed so that you can still hear it over the driving noises, which means you’re probably never hearing what the artist wanted you to hear.

So, given the above attributes, you can start to pick out good albums (I’m not going to pick out ‘good songs’, as it’s pretty easy to make a good tune — look at Burt Bacharach and Hal David, or the Elvis Presley — it’s making a good album that’s the tricky bit).

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I can almost guarantee you will enjoy each of these albums. You’ll even want to listen to them again and again… and again. It is no surprise that they are are also some of the best-selling albums of all time.

In no particular order:

• Marvin Gaye – 1971 – What’s Goin’ On
• Miles Davis – 1959 – Kind Of Blue
• Miles Davis & Gil Evans – 1958 – Porgy and Bess
• Elton John – 2008 – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Remastered)
• Paul McCartney & Wings – 1973 – Band on the Run
• Fleetwood Mac – 1977 – Rumours
• Bruce Springsteen – 1975 – Born to Run
• Ben Folds Five – 1997 – Whatever & Ever Amen
• Michael Jackson – 1979 – Off The Wall
• Michael Jackson – 1982 – Thriller

There are a few other albums which I feel could make the list, but they would most likely be very controversial. My inclusion of Ben Folds Five into a list of ‘historic greats’ is no doubt a bit dangerous, and it’s certainly a lot more ‘eclectic’ than the others in the list. Though, any album which I can listen to once a day, for 3 years, without being bored has to be a prime example of ‘good music’.

And now… I am going to slide my Grado headphones gently over my ears, press ‘play’ on my iPod, and dance around in the rapidly descending snow like a lunatic. It doesn’t get much better.

In my effort to discover yet more good music I downloaded the entire Earth Wind & Fire discography. You probably know a few of their great hits like ‘September’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’ (and ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Boogie Wonderland’!), but this is just a tiny fraction of their vast wealth of awesome songs. They’re often described as a delicious fusion of… well, everything that exemplified the 1970s: Disco, soul, R&B (the good kind) and occasionally some African ‘world music’. And their songs are LONG too — they go places! None of that 2-and-a-half-minute-radio-wankfest that many bands succumbed to from the 60s onwards.

Anyway… Soul and R&B have the same kind of underlying tone and story: sex. I’m not talking entirely about… you know, fornication, but that does play a big part; especially for bands like Boys 2 Men where all they ever sing about is sex (go watch the ‘Honest R&B Song‘ if you haven’t seen it already). And where they want to have sex. Even the occasional song about their favourite positions… chrikee! But, as I was saying, this kind of music is about sex — men, women, their interactions. It’s about people, I guess, as they find themselves, or God (often God with the black Soul groups). Actually, I guess it’s called ‘Soul’ because it appeals to your soul… which is a spiritual thing, right?!

Sooooo… All this soulful and rhythmic music actually got me thinking. It actually… got me a little horny. Randy, baby. So, as you might’ve guessed from the subject of this post, I’m going to talk about SEX!

I’m sure most of us know where we are and what we’re doing once we get into the sack; hell, we can do almost anything in the bedroom and get away with it. Something magical happens when you have two naked people in a bed. You’ve already pushed through most of the barriers and inhibitions — the courtship, the embarrassment of early fumbles and awkward silences. Then that moment finally comes: you kiss. Not one of those normal kisses though — that passionate kiss. The kiss that speaks volumes; that lingering kiss that you just know is going to lead to sex.

Before you know it, you’re fumbling with each other’s clothing and trying to get naked as quickly as possible. You’re trying to navigate your way to the bedroom without losing your lip-lock (there’s probably a term for that kind of thing — Siamese Lovers, or something). Then you’re in bed, either under the duvet, or above, contorted into some kind of twisted meshed embrace where you can’t tell which limbs are yours.

And then that magical moment occurs… you can do anything. You’re both stripped away, mentally and physically. Your bodies are extensions of one another. There’s no peer pressure, no prejudices — you can just do whatever the hell you like.

I think that’s what I love the most about sex: the intimacy. Intimacy actually describes that moment perfectly — it means ‘to become familiar with’ and ‘innermost’. You’re both there, becoming very familiar indeed, baring everything, even your innermost secrets and desires.

There, I’ve shared what sex is like for me. That’s why I don’t have sex with just anyone — I want it to be special and intimate, damnit! Why not write about what sex is like for you, if you have a blog?

I wanted to share one more thing with you: a flow chart for dialogue during sex (from FlowingData). I never have a problem finding the right things to say during sex, but I understand it can be a problem for couples where one person has more experience than the other. Maybe you’re uncertain if you’re making the right noise; is that a grunt of pleasure, or pain? Perhaps you’re just not very talkative during sex, and you want to improve in that department. Dirty talk during sex can be very saucy, let me tell you! When a girl talks dirty to me… well… it ain’t pretty. But that’s another topic, for another day.

Can you say ’shoehorned alliteration’? I can!

(There are photos in this entry… scroll down if you have a short attention span and just wanna see the goods)

I thought ‘Musical Monday’ would be a little vague, so here we are — Musical Theatre Monday. Don’t assume this will be some kind of regular, recurring feature because it probably won’t be. I’ve touched on my love of musicals in the past (it’s actually one of the most popular entries on my blog — go figure!) but now I want to talk a little bit more about musicals, their past, their future, and their place in contemporary society.

I’m just going to focus on the golden oldies in this entry, because the history of musical theatre is rather vast. Perhaps I can do a couple more entries in following weeks!

That’s one of my photos, from Little Me. Obviously I’m going to take advantage of my blog and do some shameless self-promotion, but getting back to the plot: let’s start by going way back, right to the beginning, to the ‘golden age’ (you can pretty much ignore anything before 1943, it’s mostly operetta rather than musicals — but there are a few highlights from that era such as Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess, or Cole Porter’s Anything Goes). In 1943, Oklahoma was released. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a very good musical — because it’s not — but it had a couple of nice songs, a rousing chorus and a fun story. Then came Carousel and South Pacific – the former containing some really beautiful songs, and the latter being one of the most boring musicals of all time.

Which brings me neatly onto this cute little story about South Pacific. The credit for this story goes to my lovely cousin who is a sound engineer (with very nice, large, aurally-exemplar ears, I might add) that’s currently touring with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Apparently South Pacific is so boring that… people die while watching it. During the last tour of the show, something like ten (10) people died while watching the show! I wish I was making this sad story up, but I’m not. Apparently the average age of the theatre-goers was simply too high. Their hearts were failing left, right and center.

Of course, they joked that the sound was too loud and it was frightening these poor biddies to death. Perhaps there’s a grain of truth there.

Some of the recently-decreased were actually lifted up and carried out of the theatre in the middle of a musical number. How delightfully morbid.  Let’s face it, it was probably a whole more interesting for the audience to watch their corpses being dragged around than to actually watch South Pacific though.

Thinking about it, those that grew up with musicals from the 40s will soon be an extinct species — it’ll be like those World War Veteran marches, where there’s just 1 or 2 old guys in wheelchairs left — soon South Pacific tours will open to an audience of just 3 wrinkled, senile geriatrics who are ‘just there for one last jolly’. I’m sure Sondheim or Porter could’ve had a field day with a story like that!

After South Pacific we were treated with such gems as Kiss Me Kate and Guys & Dolls, which is incidentally my favourite musical of the 40s and 50s. Finally the music became more popular and less operatic. Lingering thematic reprises started to become all the rage, with underlying melodies and riffs coming back to haunt and tickle you throughout the show. And then along came My Fair Lady, the popular adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. My Fair Lady was to remain the most popular show for almost a decade, until Fiddler on the Roof turned up (which is a surprise, considering how inferior a show it is — perhaps musical theatre was still developing and cultivating an audience during My Fair Lady’s stage run). Or perhaps there were just lots of Jews in New York…

Anyway, the 60s were a fairly dark, boring period, with the only important event being the appearance of Stephen Sondheim with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He wouldn’t write his best stuff until the 70s and 80s though, and that’s a topic for next Monday! Sondheim’s heyday, and the advent of the rock musical.

For those of you that got this far, here’s another cute photo I took of a stage production:

I didn’t actually want to write about this today — I have other, more important things that I should probably be writing about, or doing. However, not being one to back down on promises or obligations, here’s the successor to last week’s post on musical theatre!

Last week I looked at the birth and the ‘golden age’ of musicals. It reallywas all fluffy bunnies and lovely string orchestral reprises until 1968… and then Hair arrived on stage. Its full title ‘Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical‘ was perhaps the first sign that change was indeed here. Out went the violins; in came the electric guitars. Gone were the glorious sets and scene changes; now it was all going to be about the rock music.

Hair itself wasn’t great. You probably know one very popular song from it, and not much else: Aquarius (followed by Let The Sunshine In). Rock musicals are not generally masterpieces, but they do become cult classics (there’s something about big-haired and wild cross-dressing musicians from the 60s and 70s that just gets people going, I guess).

Hair was swiftly followed by Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell and The Rocky Horror Show. As you can see, not exactly musical juggernauts, but very popular nonetheless! Thankfully, they were enough to keep the masses quiet for the rest of the 70s and 80s. The genre would have to wait until 1996 and the appearance of the rock powerhouse Rent to be re-awoken (Rent deserves a blog entry of its own, so I won’t write anything more about it here).

The end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s saw the first ‘power musicals’ or ‘pop musicals’. These were almost entirely European creations, mainly by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, and Andrew Lloyd Webber who between them have crafted the biggest-selling and longest-running musicals of all time. Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, CATS, Evita… you get the idea. Most of these ‘pop musicals’ are exemplified by very poppy musical themes (often with 1 or 2 singles even being released into the charts) and incredibly strong stage direction: chandeliers falling onto the audience, or pieces of the stage rotating and rising, that kind of thing.

A nod should also be directed in Disney’s direction for their film-to-stage adaptations of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, both of which are magical, but hardly genre-defining. The Lion King is perhaps the biggest visual spectacle you will ever watch or take part in, and Beauty and the Beast is even more magical than the film! You know that transformation scene at the end of film? Somehow they do that on stage… and better! Their latest production, Mary Poppins is actually one of my favourite stage musicals of all time, and I urge you all to go and see it if you get the chance.

The final thing of note that occured during the 80s and 90s was the arrival of Stephen Sondheim. Now, Sondheim has written an awful lot of trash, but when you take into account that amongst the trash he’s also written more good musicals than anyone else, it’s OK! I mean this guy has penned 20 musicals! His illustrious career is only sullied by the fact that he mentored under the Great Jew himself, Oscar Hammerstein II — the guy that wrote the snooze-worth South Pacific… but he wrote other good stuff too… like The Sound of Music.

Sondheim wrote or composed West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (imagine the posters for that show…), Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods…  We could easily be talking about every ‘intelligent’ musical of the last 20 years. What a pro!

Sondheim’s work is possibly only overshadowed by that of Andrew Lloyd Webber. It really comes down to whether you like immensely-intelligent musicals with size-8 lyrics shoehorned into a size-6 shoe, or if you like the ‘easy listening’ musical that Webber has perfected.

With Sondheim covered, I think that brings me up to the last decade and the creation of ‘Jukebox Musicals’ (the value-added act of wrapping a minimal plot around some existing songs, and calling it a musical), and the current splurge of ‘film to stage’ musicals like Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man and so on.

Oh, and of course Avenue Q! But that’s for next Monday…!

(I probably should save that title for another, better blog post… but what the heck!)

As you all probably know by now, I’m in the middle of a huge ‘Motown and Disco’ listening/musical education spree. The Supremes, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye and of course Stevie Wonder.

Now, I’m just going to go out on a limb here and claim he wrote one of the best love songs ever. Being completely lyric-retarded, I don’t actually know what the song is about, but I’m sure it’s about something nice (I’d be ever so grateful if someone would give me their interpretation of it…)

Anyway, here it is: Stevie Wonder & Syreeta Wright (who was his wife for a short period, and of ‘With You I’m Born Again’ with Billy Preston fame) — ‘If you really love me.

If you don’t start tapping your foot, grinning like a fool and/or dancing around like an idiot I’ll be incredibly shocked.

I want to tell you a story. It’s not a particularly exciting story, but it perhaps goes some way to explaining why I didn’t kiss a girl until I was 18, and until very recently didn’t know which hole was the ‘right’ one.

You see, I was never given ‘the talk’. I can only assume this was because my parents noticed just how little testosterone I had. A soggy noodle probably had more testosterone than teenage Sebastian. My skin was clear, with spots only developing under my long, froppy fringe (bangs). When my voice finally decided to break, it took about 5 years; my balls just didn’t know when to stop their voice-deepening descent!

See! I look like a damn girl! I even have a beauty spot, like that damn super model Cindy Crawford! And I TOLD you that bowl-cut would continue to haunt me for years to come!

Looking back, I probably should’ve asked my mother for hormone injections or something; I have her to thank for my limp-wristed effeminacy that ensured my complete lack of  action at school — zero, zilch. Even if our school had a bike shed, I would’ve had no one to use it with (I made up for that when I got to college, though — I had sex behind a bike shed! Hah!) On Valentine’s Day I would always be the one sending flowers and getting nothing in return; only ’secret’ love notes from my lovely mother. I blame my young, undefined, pretty face! Moving along now… (I told you I would post a picture from my teenage years!)

I was quite afraid of girls throughout my formative years; a fear that today shows itself as an awful lack of confidence when it comes to the actual ‘pulling’ of a girl. While all of my friends were playing spin the bottle and playing that ‘5 minutes in the cupboard’ game (where you were meant to come out with switched clothes! Were we the only kids that played that game?), I was sitting at he edge of the circle, or in the corner, praying the bottle didn’t land on me. As it turns out (and I wish someone had told me sooner, as I might’ve tried to change!) girls really dig a confident guy. Above all else maybe, girls nearly always want a guy that knows what he’s doing; and that certainly wasn’t me.

So, my teenage years, with a complete lack of sex or even sexuality were dull. That isn’t to say I didn’t do anything interesting, just nothing teenagery and interesting. I won competitions, and both my education and vocabulary were both growing at an alarming rate but… but there was no damn sex! Occasionally a girl would look at me with her big eyes and look downwards, blushing… but at the time, I had no idea that she liked me. No one told me what girls do when they like you! As I’ve said before, it was only after I left school that my sister told me about all these girls that had crushes on me…

But, you know what? I don’t blame my complete lack of sexuality entirely on my apparent lack of testosterone, or my ineptitude at talking to women. Sure, it would’ve been nice to receive ‘the talk’ from my parents, or at school, but I don’t blame that either.

I blame a certain teacher. A teacher that treated sex like a sin that would send you directly to Hell, without even the briefest glimpse of Purgatory. The kind of teacher that took a black marker to our textbooks and removed everything that could in some way be related to sex — even the novels we had to read for English! I remember picking up Pride and Prejudice and finding chapter upon chapter with blacked-out blocks of text.

It’s unsurprising then, as a teenager, I might’ve thought sex was a bit like the MI5 or the secret police: you know it’s going on, somewhere, somehow, but you don’t talk about it, and you certainly don’t act upon any urges you might be experiencing.

Now, the great thing about most schools is that even if you get a bad teacher, you know that next year you’ll have a new one! You know that no matter how bad it was, and how awfully you might’ve behaved, next year things will be better — you’ll have a new teacher, and a clean slate.  It was the same logic which drove me, on the last day of the school year, to spread glue on this teacher’s chair and laugh in her face when she tried to get up to write on the blackboard.

Imagine my horror when, after a gloriously long summer break, we swung the classroom door open to find the same teacher grinning at us from behind her big, mahogany desk. Our mouths hung open in what she can only have assumed was awe, but was in fact 10 kids displaying their combined rictus of mortal terror. ‘Welcome back, little children of God, to my shrine of celibacy and all things pure’ she said. Well, she didn’t really, but that was the thought racing through all of our minds. Would we really be having another boring year of sexless education?

Sadly, we would — another year passed; another year without even a lingering hug from a girl, or a nervous grope from my shaking hands. I was now 14, and whether I liked it or not, my voice was starting to break. I was starting to find hair in new and exciting locations. I was having to stay seated behind my desk while the class emptied with increasing, and alarming (but not unpleasant) regularity.

And then, the impossible, through some wicked twist of fate became… possible. The infinitely improbable somehow occurred. Someone, up there — the God of Schadenfreude, if she exists — was obviously having a rather hearty laugh at our expense.

We had the same teacher for the third year running.

By this stage, most of the girls were already wearing burqas and avoiding unnecessary contact/communication with the boys on pain of death by stoning. The boys had pretty much forgotten what a crafty, under-the-desk erection felt like. I was fully expecting to be handed a chastity belt as I walked into her classroom for the third year running; a chastity belt that had no key and was sealed with an unbreakable resin glue.

Some way through the third year, it was someone’s birthday, and it was normal for us to have a little birthday party on Friday afternoon to celebrate — you know, some music and decorations, some cake and ice cream. Normally someone would bring in the latest-and-greatest pop album and we’d dance and laugh for hours. This time though, someone had a great idea, a great idea that would resonate through the ages: let’s make a mix tape… a mix tape with naughty songs on it. Songs like… Let’s talk about sex, by Salt-n-Pepa.

God, looking back, we were so excited about the prospect of one-upping our draconian, prude, preacher freak of a teacher. We talked about it for days in hushed whispers during class. The giggle fits which inevitably followed only resulted in the removal of yet more privileges, which eventually led us to behave. We were mortified that she might actually cancel the party and ruin our glorious, immature plans!

The day of the party finally arrived. The girls had dressed prettily. The sporadic and not wholly unwelcome erections were back. Spontaneous, girly giggles could be heard regularly; lingering touches could be felt during and after hugs. After the party, with hot, red blood coursing through our systems and with pheromones thick in the air, surely this was it. Surely this was going to be my first kiss. At worst it would be my first tentative grope. I was ready; this was it. Bring it on!

4pm came and class finished. I got the tape player out with a bounce in my step and a grin on my little (effeminate!) face. I pushed the symbol of our freedom into the machine, pressed play.

She’d got to the tape.

Somehow that witch of a woman had got to our mix tape. There was a rather severe lack of Salt-n-Pepa; instead, the soft, sultry tones of Cliff Richard wafted into the air. The soft, completely devoid-of-sexuality notes of Summer Holiday hit our ears like a sonic boom; the silence that followed was deafening. The sexual tension that had positively thrummed throughout the day dissipated in an instant. Today wasn’t going to be the day of my first kiss; it wasn’t even going to be the day of my first sweaty-palmed grope. It was to be yet another disappointing day in the life of teenage Sebastian.

Fortunately, just a few months after that party, and after three long, boring years, the winds of luck finally changed: we got a new teacher!

For years afterward though, the playing of Let’s talk about sex as loud and as often possible was the signature prank of my class — preferably from outside her window.

I’ve talked about music before — musicals, really — but what I haven’t told you is that I, like most grown men, have dirty, dark secrets hidden away in my music collection.

Secreted away, in places that even a competent government agency would struggle to find, I have music by artists such as William Shatner, Meatloaf and even, though I hesitate to admit this, Dashboard Confessional (that folder is hidden and encrypted, for obvious reasons…)

If that wasn’t dank and disturbing enough, you could dig even deeper. Delving further, you would find another directory; a directory with just a single file in it. The file is ominously titled ‘Unimportant-Dont-Click-Me-Please.mp3′. If you’d found this file, and saw through my epic ruse, you’d be be greeted with this:

Yes, I love Beyonce’s ‘If I were a boy’. Don’t ask me why… I just do! I don’t really want to discuss it, so I’ll just move on to the actual point of this entry — I’ve re-written the lyric to ‘If I were a boy’. A cute little American songwriter, upon reading the re-worked lyric blurted out that: ‘You have talent, Seb!’

I’m not too sure about that, but if you even laugh once, I’ll consider it time well spent. As the lyric is, er, geeky, I’ve hyperlinked some of the more esoteric terms, so you an understand it fully!

Press play and try to sing along… it fits… just about!

If I were a geek — sung by Beyonce Knowles, written by Tony Gad & BC Jean

If I were a geek even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the evening
And throw on a black t-shirt
And go ‘round  Sheldon’s with dice

And chase after elves
I’d roll dice as much as I wanted
And I’d never get a girlfriend but it
Doesn’t matter ‘cause neither does he

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a geek
I would turn on my iPhone
Tell everyone it’s awesome
‘ Cause I can watch porn when I’m alone

I’d swing my sword first
And read the rules as I go
‘Cause really, no one questions
A geek with a sword, and lightning bolts, lightning bolt!

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

It’s never too late for you to go back
Say it’s just a mistake
You should take it right back
If you thought Hilton hotter than Leia
You thought wrong

But you’re just a geek
You don’t understand
(And put the Gaiman book down, oh)
How it feels to love a girl
Someday you wish you went out more

You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause you took the chinaman for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
But you’re just a geek

***

I am currently in talks with a talented singer to perform the song with my new lyric… I will of course post it, when she does so!

Ever since I started writing here on this blog, I’ve been trying to work out the best way to tell you.

I alluded to it with numerous posts about musical theatre, and incredibly insightful articles on the inner workings of girls; something that a straight guy could never do, at least not with such alarming accuracy.

I even tried to tell you through my constant use, and love, of pink. My pink t-shirts, my pink scarves, my pink fluffy love-cuffs — I tried it all! Somehow… somehow you kept holding on, praying that it was all a ruse, a lie. He must be straight, surely…

I even thought it might’ve been the beard, so I shaved that off too.

I’ve told you tales of me waxing off my leg hair, and you’ve seen the photo of me with the handlebar moustache and hot-pink shoulder-padded jacket — that’s what I wear most weekends!

And then, of course, there were all those stories — the one about me turning a girl gay, or the next girl running off to become a priest. You didn’t actually think they were real? They were mere fabrications; figments of an imaginary world that I have lived in for the last decade. A world that I conjured into existence in an attempt to convince my family, my friends and myself that I’m straight.

Well, I’m not straight.

I’m gay.

Gay, like Boy George rolling up at Mardi Gras in a baby-pink Mini. Gay.

Time and time again I have sat down to dinner with my mother and father, unable to look them in the eye. ‘Got a girlfriend yet, Seb?’ followed by the words I’ve had to repeat each and every time, year after year: ‘No, not yet, Dad…’

Being a wimp — though, finally coming out must surely be the first step to getting some balls? — I thought I would post this entry, instead of telling my parents in person. They both read this blog.

So that’s that, then.

We have a family dinner tonight. I just know my father won’t be able to keep a straight face when dessert is served and I ask him to pass me the hot fudge sauce.

(The days of the week are merely a consideration of time. There’s no real reason why today can’t be Monday. In fact, considering we’ve probably lost days and weeks, or even years, back during the Dark Ages, today might actually be Monday. Who knows, and who cares — today is Musical Monday, whether you like it or not.)

It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully worth the wait. I’ve finally made it to the last stage of this little lesson in musical theatre history: contemporary West End and Broadway shows!

We had the golden years in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. I’ve discussed the birth of rock musicals in the 60s, and their eventual maturity with masterpieces such as Rent. The 70s and 80s were full of Sondheim masterpieces and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s ‘power’ and ‘pop’ musicals. And now, we have the new millennium. The musical composers that kept the stages and audiences around the world buzzing for the last 50 years have proverbially taken their last bow and left the stage. It’s been a long time indeed since Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera debuted. That’s not to say we’re without good, contemporary musical writers — there are a few, and I certainly remain hopeful to see a second smash hit from Wicked’s creator Stephen Schwartz — but there has certainly been a bit of a creative slump in recent years. The same stagnation that’s plagued the popular film industry has seeped into musical theatre.

Today, it’s all about brand re-use. It’s all about value-added productions. Why bother to spend time and money on something that might fail? Today more than ever, commercial success is vital — gone are the days when musicals might only run for a week or two. Experimentation is not something that goes down well with investors! Couple this with the world’s  ‘need’ for bigger productions, shinier productions — moving stages, sinking ships — and it’s no wonder we’re seeing consolidation in the musical industry. With the recession, it’s almost a certainty that we won’t see any new, refreshing and big productions. In fact, Wicked was probably THE last great, original musical — at least until the end of this decade, I would’ve thought.

Now, this ‘consolidation’ (vertical integration) is nothing new, and it’s borrowed directly from the multimedia industry. When you make a blockbuster film it makes sense (for the publisher at least) to piggyback video games and merchandise on the film’s marketing strategy. The number of video games sold on the back of the Harry Potter and Spider-Man films is huge! It was only inevitable that musical theatre would go the same way, which is why we’ve laboured through such 3 1/2 hour epics as Lord of the Rings: The Musical and Titanic: The Musical. It’s why we’ll soon have to struggle through Spider-Man: The Musical.

This isn’t to say that screen-to-stage adaptations don’t work! Look at My Fair Lady, The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast — all huge hits on the screen, and then the stage. Though, there’s one major difference: they were already musicals with fantastic scores! Sunset Boulevard is one of the only non-musical-film-to-stage adaptations that’s been a large success and funnily, Lloyd-Webber’s musical version is  scheduled to become a film again. That’s not new though: The Producers did it too with fantastic results: Film, musical, and finally becoming a musical film.

Somehow I can’t see Spider-Man: The Musical being adapted for the big, silver screen though. Unless Toby Maguire can sing, then we might see it after Spider-Man 5. Maybe. Though, I get all excited, thinking about the harness work they’ll do on stage for Spider-Man. The acrobatics in Mary Poppins, though very simple, were incredibly effective. On a larger scale, it might be very impressive indeed. I do wonder if a singing Spider-Man could be taken seriously though. Crowd-pleasing, full-chorus numbers lamenting his inability to get the girl, or control his sticky web issues.

Anyway, the other popular musical production today is the ‘jukebox musical’. It’s a format that has existed for a while, but only really lifted off with Mamma Mia! in 1999 (which recently became a film, completing the circle of life!) In 2002, the genre was firmly cemented with the truly awesome production of We Will Rock You by Ben Elton and Queen. But what is a jukebox musical exactly? It’s when an enterprising person takes an existing body of pre-branded music and shoehorns it into a totally wacky, nonsensical story. And it works — just. If you’re an ABBA or Queen fan, you’ll love it; if you’re not, you’ll probably leave the theatre a little worse for wear, and very confused. Fortunately, the music industry is massive and there’ll always be enough fans to drive these jukebox musicals for years and years.

Though, saying that, there’s a depressingly large list of jukebox musicals that have been produced, or are in the works. Musicals based on the works of John Denver — OK, I can kind of envision something Calamity Jane‘ish. But really, would people go to see a Green Day musical? Or Boney M? Or even… Take That? (OK, the Take That musical is actually quite good; don’t hurt me, girls, please.)

The future looks pretty bleak for musical theatre. Recent years have only seen a handful of musicals that would make their ‘golden years’ brethren proud. We can pray that musical theatre doesn’t follow in the footsteps of the other media industries, but I think that would wishful thinking — everything in this world is becoming larger, globalised, monetised and capitalised upon. You can guarantee that if a studio spends 10 million on the marketing of a film and video game, they’re going to make a stage production too!

As always then, it comes down to a few enterprising composers, or an investor that see that little glimmer of potential that everyone else missed. Unless we want to be plagued with the third and forth revival productions of classic productions, something has to change. More risks need to be taken. It’s down to you Stephen Schwartz; make your Jewish musical masters proud.

I know I’ve painted a grim picture, but it’s worth noting that musical theatre is more popular than ever (which must be a good thing?) The problem – at least, in my eyes — is the quality of productions. Musicals have become  ‘a special, expensive trip to the cinema’ that a family might do once a year. Musicals should be more than that! They shouldn’t simply be part of our entertainment consumption regime; they should be part of our culture, and the future culture of our children.

No, it’s not a review… I haven’t actually seen the film — I probably should… — but I know enough about it to make my OWN!

The premise: a list of things that you’d like to do before you ‘kick the bucket’ (die, for you non-idiomatic types).

I know it’s a flogged-to-death idea, but the thing is… I want to do a lot. If I don’t write down what I want to do, I’m going to forget something. I’m like a kid that sees a butterfly outside, opens the door, stumbles and shambles across towards the butterfly… and then spots a football on the ground, so I run towards that, pace quickening, but before I get there, I trip and fall, face-planting into the soft grass — but that’s OK, I’m now up-close and personal with an ant hill, I’m watching the ants scurry around, living a completely different life to mine. I crawl around for a while and there are worms, rabbit holes, acorns and dead leaves, each one interesting and magical in its own way.

I smile and pick myself up, still marvelling at the other world I’d just discovered.  The butterfly’s flown off and I’ve completely forgotten about the ball, but the journey wasn’t in vain.

I’m an impulsive guy. I think of something I want to do, and do it. I see something or someone that I want, and go and get it. Incidentally, in the words of my mother: ‘Sebastian, you are the single worst person in the world to buy a birthday present for because you’ve already got everything.‘ (It’s my birthday next week, by the way, and I’ve been kind enough this year to leave a couple of things unobtained, just so my mother has an easier time of it…)

The problem with being impulsive is those butterflies get away. Those footballs remain unkicked. I might have an incredibly diverse body of knowledge tucked away in my head, and a lot of worldwide, well-tested wisdom — but sometimes I let the simple things pass me by. When I die, I don’t want to be the authority on ‘Invertebrates In The Sub-Amazonian Delta’ (actually, that’s a lie, I’d love to be the authority on anything, but hang on). When I die, I want to have experienced everything. No matter how big or how small, how expensive or cheap, how important or frivolous — the world has so much to offer, and I don’t want to pass any of it by.

And that’s what my bucket list is for.

Sebastian’s Bucket List

N.B. I reserve the right to re-shuffle this list at any time. I also don’t have to justify any of my choices, though I might be convinced to do so at a later date. This list is also not exhaustive… I’m sure I’ll come across more ‘Oooh shiny!’ butterflies as life goes on. Lots more.

1. Get married in a large cathedral –  we’re talking St Paul’s Cathedral, or St Peter’s Basilica. May entertain the idea of moving to a state like Utah where multiple marriages are acceptable, if potential secondary wife has contacts that enable use of aforementioned cathedrals… (do I have to marry a Princess/Queen?)
2. Live in a castle, one with turrets and multiple wings – a wing for my parents… and an even more distant wing for the in-laws. A turret that I can stand atop and survey my kingdom, like in The Lion King.
3. Lunch with a comedian — don’t mind which, I just want to see who’s funnier in person: me or them. For the longest time, I wanted to have a date with Eddie Izzard, but his recent Twitterings suggest he might be a bit… dull when he’s not being a comic genius on stage.
4. Hold a tiger/lion cub – don’t judge me. Boys want to do this too! Admittedly, an emasculated boy, but…
5. Go back to Italy and eat more pizza — this will make more sense after I write about my trip to Italy, and my 10-day epic journey full of trials and tribulations in an effort to find the BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD.
6. Obtain some kind of super power – a little out there, but I firmly believe I’m of the generation that will live for ever. We can’t, therefore, be that far away from ’super powers’, even if it’s something ’simple’ like heightened empathy. Flight would be neat (personal jetpack might be an easy solution to this one?) but I guess Magneto-like powers are out of the question, right?
7. Get a piano lesson from Ben Folds — favourite musician, favourite instrument. If he then played ‘Emaline’ to me I’d probably swoon and he would catch me. Later, upon waking up in his arms, I would ask him to marry me.
8. Try to make a cola variant that’s better than Coca-Cola – I’m a Coke addict, and proud. But after 24 years of chain-slurping Coke down (yes, my mother was a druggy at the time, so I was even breastfed coke), I’ve begun to wonder if, possibly, there’s something better out there. Maybe… I could make Coca-Cola even better? Unlikely, but I’d like to try.
9. Drive a rally car at high-speed around a mountain track – similar to the previous item, I also love speed. Hah, just kidding. I mean ACCELERATION! G-force! Wild-eyed, edge-of-the-seat, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants break-neck SPEED! If you’ve ever seen the ‘World Rally Championships’ and the kinds of conditions that they do 100MPH in… well, I want to do that.
10. Kiss The American one more time — self explanatory.
11. Dress up in a realistic dog costume, and actually convince someone that I’m a really large dog – don’t ask.

That’ll do for now, I’ll add more as I think of them. I’ll cross them off as and when I do them — and trust me, I’ll do all of them. I told you I was impulsive.

Did I miss anything obvious? (Hah, you all thought I’d miss out the dog-suit one… HAH! I bet you’re all out of suggestions now…)