Singer Nerd has a SERIOUS case of Hamilton fever. And cats. #andpeggy
I warned you. Remember when I told you last month that I’d listened to a certain soundtrack 3 times in a week on the road? Well I haven’t stopped. I have an acute and probably highly contagious case of Hamilton fever. I can’t remember the last time I was so consumed and inspired by a body of musical work. It's so, so, SOOOO good. As a listener I’m moved to shouting, singing, dancing and tears. Every. Single. Time. And as a writer? I am sat-the-fuck-down-can’t-even-spell-fathom-much-less-actually-fathom how Lin-Manuel Miranda did that. Every. Single. Time. (Note to LMM: if I meet you I will probably blubber incoherently and pee a little cuz holy #writercrush.) The fact that it took him 6 years to write this musical offers a teeny bit of consolation, but barely. It's an absolute masterpiece in lyric, rhyme, wordplay, melody, groove....GAAAHHH!
I freaked alllll the way out when I heard this particular track for the first time. Once I stopped hyperventilating and yelling "YAAAAAASSSSSS" through tears of joy, I knew #singernerd had to get her hands on this one. I finally started it just over a week ago – got the arrangement worked out in pro-tools and only had time to record two video squares: bass and beat box. OH HELL YES I SAID BEAT BOX. (!!1!) But then I had to fly to NYC for some shows with Lynda. (Carter….as in Wonder Woman, in case you missed that singing BGV’s for her is something I do. It’s kind of ridiculously awesome.) And, well,….lemme back up a second.
After watching me completely spaz out over this musical for a month straight, my precious, patient, generous, thoughtful husband said to me: “you really should see it when you’re in New York.” Tickets are sold out until 2037 or some shit so it hadn’t occurred to me that it was even a possibility. But Lynda always flies us in a day early (bless you, LC), and I’d have a free night, so I started looking into re-sale tickets just on a whim. HOLY BALLZ those are NOT cheap. Hubby: “it could be your belated birthday present.” Me: “you’re amazing and I adore you. But it’s SO many moneez...” This went on for about 2 weeks. Long story short, hubby (and my obsession) won.
TENTH. ROW. CENTER. I grinned like an idiot and bawled like a baby.
Back home again, still agog at having seen it on actual real live Broadway, I dove back into the singernerding. Behind the scenes nerd shit: back on song 3 when I tackled Freddy Mercury (whew!!), I did a breakdown of my process for these things. This time I added to that list. True confession: I bought the sheet music. Partly to save some time, partly because that bass line is dope and I wanted to nail it as closely as I could, and partly because there’s so much going on and I wanted desperately to make sure I got it all right and didn’t miss anything. Extra nerdy shit that particularly titillated me: copping the keyboard line during Aaron Burr’s second rap, copping (-ish) the string parts after Angelica’s first rap, and learning that while I won’t be winning (or even entering, thank you) any contests, I could pull off a not-terrible beatbox track. Big LOLz @ that. And that crazy-three part riff the sisters do at the end is #singerporn at its most delicious. Double bonus points for bribing Calvin (siamese, center square) with treats WHILE RAPPING so he'd stay in my lap long enough for his cameo appearance.
7 pages of my charts + 14-page score. #workwork
If I actually recommended this soundtrack as highly and as often as I'm compelled to, you'd file me under "overzealous nutter" and avoid me on the street, so I'll say this just once: GO GET IT RIGHT NOW OMG. You can thank me later. And if you have a chance to see it live? Seriously - sell a spare organ if you must. Imma shut up now. </scene>
If you're here for the first time and are wondering "what on earth? is this chick mental?", here's what started it all. Want to suggest a song for next month's video? Click the button at the bottom to send me your idea! I already have a cool growing list of suggestions, but gimme some more! Now that I got this one out of my system, I'm eager to get back to your ideas. Comments section is always open and I love hearing from folks there. "Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now." Peace out, nerds! #andpeggy