State Fair

8 Comments

Forgot to mention in that last entry that I also recently saw State Fair (the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical version).

I wasn't impressed. The story's kinda goofy, and the songs are mostly nothing special. Nice to finally hear "It Might as Well Be Spring" in context, and "It's a Grand Night for Singing" is catchy, and there are a couple cute lines here and there, but overall nothing special.

(Quick digression re catchy music: I've been having a lot of earworms lately. In particular, I recently purchased the soundtrack to the Buffy musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling," from the iTunes Music Store, and listened to it, and "Going Through the Motions" and "Walk Through the Fire" have been running through my head for days as a result. Sigh.)

There are still a couple of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals I haven't seen: Carousel, Cinderella, maybe one or two others. But now that I look at what else of theirs I have seen, I'm not sure I want to complete the set; the only one of the ones I've seen that I actively liked was Sound of Music.

I am, though, kinda interested in seeing the 1936 version of Kern & Hammerstein's Show Boat, if for no other reason than that Paul Robeson is in it.

8 Responses to “State Fair”

  1. Jennifer Pelland

    My latest earworm? “Luka” by Suzanne Vega. A coworker just named his kid that. I’m trying to combat by forcing my brain to instead play Korn’s cover of “Word Up.” It works about 50% of the time.

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  2. Jacob

    The bit from “Once More With Feeling” that I adore (and often have in my head) is the joint reprise of “Under Your Spell” and “Standing”. Unbelievable. Joss Whedon is a god.

    Re: earworms– it’s good to have a song to use as a default antidote. For some reason, the song that works for me every time, no matter what I have stuck in my head, is “Only You”, by Yaz.

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  3. Will

    Jacob, yes! That was the moment when I became convinced that OMWF really was a musical, and not just an episode with a lot of clever songs. It didn’t hurt that Joss planned things so that the moment where two themes come together in harmony was sung by the two actors who had extensive musical theater experience.

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  4. Jed

    I meant to mention that one reason for a lot of my recent earworms is that authors keep submitting stories whose titles are in some way similar to titles or phrases from songs. (Often unintentionally.) I see a given submission’s title anywhere from about three to a couple dozen times during the period while we’re considering it, and if it triggers a particular song every time I see it, that’s a lotta earworms.

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  5. Dawn B

    Glad to know I’m not the only who constantly gets those earworms from OMWF. “Going through the Motions” is a fun one and reminds me of my first year in college. “Walk through the Fire” is powerful and clever at the same time.

    (I think this line is mostly filler)

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  6. Beth

    You seeing State Fair reminds me that I recently saw The Greatest Show On Earth. Great costumes, good cast (Jimmy Stewart among them), mediocre plot lines, but I’d say still worth seeing at some point. None of the songs caught my attention, but I guess the plus side is that I don’t have any ear worms as a result 🙂

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  7. irilyth

    I really like Walk Through The Fire here too, but will take this opportunity to mention one of my peeves about it: I think it would’ve been even more powerful if they had not ever actually said “burn”; maybe just taken a quick exit after the last chorus, when everyone’s singing together, whomp. But, that may just be me.

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  8. Shmuel

    I love the ending of “Walk Through the Fire,” but that’s because I see it (and the episode) as an affectionate satire of musical conventions; that it also works as a musical is icing on the cake. In the case of WTTF, you have the group number that sounds great despite nonsensical lyrics (just try to follow the deliberately mangled metaphor all the way through), and the bit at the end where the fire engines come by on cue is so far over the top that it’s beautiful.

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