(no subject)

Oh, god. I appear to have made a terrible mistake.

. . . okay, in the scheme of things, it's a minor mistake. But I wish to rectify it anyway.

Here's the thing. In my last post, which like two of you probably read, I do believe I misidentified one of the productions of Evita that I discussed. See, one of the albums that I downloaded procured through entirely legal means was marked as the original 1978 West End show in London. However. What I have is a complete recording, containing bizarre subplots involving Che the Pesticide Inventor (no, seriously, not making this up), which research on Amazon indicates actually matches the original concept album. Apparently, the London soundtrack only contains highlights, not the full show. Also, they got rid of the pesticide subplot before it hit the stage. (Which, seriously, good move. I thought I'd temporarily gone insane when I was listening earlier and Che started going on about his pesticide. WTF?)

So. I think what I have is the original concept album, which makes sense on about a dozen different levels. I was, for starters, amazed by all the changes that had apparently taken place between London and Broadway.

It also means that I owe a few apologies.

To David Essex and Joss Ackland: I am very sorry that I attributed some seriously unfortunate performances to you. I will try to get hold of your ACTUAL performances and evaluate them more fairly.

To Julie Covington: I am sorry I put Elaine Paige's name on your amazing performance. You ARE Evita, and while I have yet to hear Paige's performance, I will be very surprised if she manages to outshine you.

And I also owe some raspberries.

To Paul Jones: Sorry, your Peron still sucks. I can appreciate that a concept album may be different from a stage performance, but that does not actually alleviate the suck.

To Colm Wilkinson: WTF. Okay, first, sorry I didn't recognize your voice when I first listened to this album. Trust me, I'm suitably embarrassed. What can I say, the twenty year gap between this album and the Les Mis tenth anniversary concert made a major difference in your ability to sing the sound of your voice. And since the concert is the performance of yours that I've listened to the most, it's my major point of reference. But once I knew you were on the concept album and I fired it up for a quick listen to confirm, yeah, I recognized the signs. You always were headed in the Sean Connery direction, weren't you?

This does not in any way change my opinion. Look. There's a reason why you are the Jean Valjean of the English-speaking musical world. You do the whole noble martyr thing really well. The fiery future revolutionary thing? Nooooot so much. The inappropriate casting is not really your fault. That said, your Che still sucked. But not as bad as Paul Jones's Peron.