Hamilton (on Disney+)

[Mister Six]

Is the first album Midcity for you, or are you saying that about Clppng?

either way both are fuckin sick as

I was thinking of Midcity, and specifically the intro, which is just two minutes of white noise. Didn't want people to be put off by that so was hoping they might jump ahead to Splendor & Misery or something before coming back around.

As for me, I stumbled across Story 2 last year while listening to the Spotify radio for... I dunno, maybe JPEGMAFIA or Ho99o9 or someone. Thought it was amazing, and was delighted to discover that the rapper was the star of Blindspotting, which I'd watched on a plane with almost zero expectation or foreknowledge and absolutely loved.

Only after that did I learn that Daveed Diggs was already famous for Hamilton and yet again one of my exciting new discoveries was actually something everyone already liked, granddad.

Have you heard this unreleased Clipping. b-side? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=punrsuK62fM

Haha, ya got me. That is not a good advertisement for Daveed though. Is someone off-camera trying to make him laugh?

[JaDanketies]

maybe JPEGMAFIA or Ho99o9

hey you're pretty cool to me, pops

you might like Ghostemane, he's a bit on the mumble-rap side, so you feel really young if you enjoy him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntah-ttnz80

[Mister Six]

Ooh cheers, I'll look into him!

[JaDanketies]

Ooh cheers, I'll look into him!

https://moodieblackdeath.bandcamp.com/ is good too for noise-rap. Apparently they've been going for longer than anyone you could name. It seems relevant to CaB at the moment to note that the lead rapper is 'non-binary trans femme'; this album is about their experiences coming out as such. https://moodieblackdeath.bandcamp.com/album/lucas-acid

I discovered them Googling for 'noise rap Facebook', they're criminally under-listened to. Ghostemane was gonna play a big venue in my city until coronavirus happened, the same venue as Death Grips. These guys could potentially support Dalek in a tiny venue.

[Mister Six]

Awesome, thanks for this! That's tonight's dog-walking soundtrack sorted then.

[touchingcloth]

I've watched this about five times since it became available. I've loved the soundtrack for ages, and this does not disappoint in the least. As a fan of musicals this has some of the most ridiculously inventive, complex and thrilling numbers I've come across, and there's hardly a dud in there. Yorktown, Non-Stop, The Room Where it Happened, the overlapping lines in Farmer Refuted - Fucking Yes.

Was very neutral about this.
The king's songs were a ripoff of Daydream Believer (Monkees song)

That's kind of the point. The whole thing is littered with references to musical genres and even specific songs (too many to mention, but I love the reference to The Message with Jefferson's "You don't have the votes / ah ha ha ha" and his Juicy-riff: "If you don't know / Now you know, Mr President"), with 60s popular British music being used for the king to a) root Britain in the past versus the majority of genres, and b) portray the Empire as staid and dusty - George features three separate times, always singing the same old tune. All of the characters have their own musical styles designed to link them to a place or a mood, e.g. the Schuyler Sisters' themes draw from the likes of Alicia Keys, Mary J Blige, Beyonce, and Jefferson is given jazzy themes which I always like to imagine do double duty in linking him to the South, and the French part specifically.

I also like the reference to Welcome to The Beautiful South with the casting of Phillipa Soo as Eliza.

This is now getting a kicking on Twitter for its glossing-over of how much all the characters loved owning slaves. As much as I try to disagree in my head, I suppose I can't really. Despite the color-blind casting it is very very kind to people that, in the current BLM climate especially, we're being more honest about in our reevaluations.

I keep wanting to just think 'ah it's a kneejerk reaction to something being popular' - and there are definitely people of that ilk absolutely loving it getting a kicking, and diving in to talk bollocks about the music - but I can't fault or disagree with it. It's still an incredible, once-in-a-generation musical, but I can't forever pretend it can't be critically evaluated like this.

I disagree. There are numerous explicit references about the abolitionist/manumission-ist characters, who are pretty much all portrayed in an overall positive light (e.g. Laurens' "And but we'll never be truly free / Until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me / You and I / Do or die / Wait 'til I sally in on a stallion / With the first black battalion", of which I've heard it said that Laurens went into battle alongside revolting slaves, and was killed in action meaning that he did and he died. It's admittedly tucked away a little, but the whole thing is sung through with no dialogue so there are loads of things which fly under the radar a little especially when they're not pivotal to the story of Burr v. Hamilton), and people on the opposite side are denounced for their stances (most notably Hamilton to Jefferson "A civics lesson from a slaver. Hey neighbor / Your debts are paid cuz you don't pay for labor / 'We plant seeds in the South. We create.' / Yeah, keep ranting / We know who's really doing the planting", which is delivered in a pointed way, and I imagine slightly sacrilegious to some American audiences to call out Jefferson like that in a show which doesn't really list any of his positives.

The most un-woke parts of the show to my mind are of this nature:

Having listened to/watched it multiple times, the bits that stick in my craw are now more noticeable. Most of the female characters are wet flannels and are defined by their love of Hamilton.

Eliza is properly fucked over by Alexander three times in relatively quick succession - an affair, not seeming to try to talk his son out of duelling, heading off for a duel himself - and the worst she does in reaction is to - privately - burn the letters he wrote to her, and soon after forgives and mourns hard for him.

I find the lack of commentary on the nature of duelling and codes of honour an interesting omission in the show. A good proportion of the lead characters are prominent Enlightenment thinkers whose names are often mentioned alongside words like "reason" and "rationality", and Hamilton in particular is lionised in the show for his brains, and yet he goes willingly into a fight to the death over a...do you know, even reading around about the subject I still don't really have a clue what specifically Burr was angry about, or why Hamilton didn't just go "nah, you're alright". At least his son's duel was over an identifiable insult.

That disconnect between Enlightened thinking and reality is something which interests me about Jefferson, too - he penned the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal", yet even among his peers he sticks out for not manumitting his slaves during his life or in his will. When I meet him, I'm going to compel him to include black men (but not women) in the sequel.[nb]WORK[/nb]

Washington is one of my favourite characters in the filmed version, which surprised me because he doesn't leap out on the cast recording. The scene where he tells Alexander to go home to New York ("meet 'im inside") was fantastically acted. Right Hand Man on the cast recording also has a little flourish I always need to rewind - after "Guns and horses, giddy-up" there's a neigh with a record scratch effect to it.

I'm a little sad that Trump is probably going to lose this year's election, as the one bit of solace I found in Hillary's defeat was singing "she's never gon' be president now". Not that I enjoyed her losing, but sometimes you need to make hay.

[MrMrs]

The fact that he went to his death over nothing kinda speaks to the whole motif of the show: people are hypocrites and the individual is ruled by reason and emotion.

[phantom_power]

There is a really good episode of the Strong Songs podcast that dissects Satisfied and how all the characters' themes are woven into the melodies of the song and how it counterpoints the more upbeat Helpless

[Cuellar]

Saw this the other day. Bit boring and 'hey kids, you like that rap music? Well, what if HISTORY rapped???' Very first(?) lines some of my favourite though:

"Alexander Hamilton, son of a whore and a Scotsman". Poor bastard.

Cringed inside out at the 'Immigrants - we get the job done!' line. The job, in this instance, being the creation of an inherently racist society built on the genocide of one race and the enslavement of another. Mawkish, sentimental.

As to the historical Hamilton's pig-thick shittery of letting his own son die in a duel and then going on to die in exactly the same manner, well.

[MrMrs]

Don't post

[Cuellar]

I wish the guy that wrote Hamilton hadn't 'posted', and by that I mean, posted his thoughts onto a piece of paper and then shared it around

[MrMrs]

Plenty

[EOLAN]

There is a really good episode of the Strong Songs podcast that dissects Satisfied and how all the characters' themes are woven into the melodies of the song and how it counterpoints the more upbeat Helpless

Enjoy it on the album but was by far the lowest point of the actual show for me. Both on West End attendance and watching the film recently.

[phantom_power]

Really? I thought the way the time rewound and replayed was brilliantly realised, and the song itself is really catchy and the way it was performed was really energetic and interesting

[touchingcloth]

I found Satisfied to be one of the most powerful numbers in the stage show. It's poignant enough on the album, but she really acts her way through that one, and the physical and musical rewind help tell the story of Angela's heartbreak really well. I was confused by Helpless into Satisfied on the recording because it has the "...by all means, lead the way" bit repeated, and on a casual listening it sounds like Alexander, Angela and her father are all at a dance and he approaches the dad to ask for her hand all in the same evening, but it's one of many songs in the show which tell a story quite economically.

Another great moment for that is Yorktown, which has one of the best lines in the show "How did we know that this plan would work? / We had a spy on the inside, that's right / Hercules Mulligan!
A tailor spyin' on the British government!", with the ace internal rhyme of work/Herc. I'm going to come out and say I think Miranda is a musical theatre talent comparable to Sondheim, especially when it comes to complexity of lyrics and music, and devotion to scansion. There aren't many clangers of rhymes or meter in the show, and even really good musicals tend to be littered with them. Most musicals barely contain one number which is complex in both its music and staging, but Hamilton is packed with them - Helpless/Satisfied, Ten Duel Commandments, Yorktown, Non-Stop, The Room Where it Happens, The Reynolds Pamphlet...those are all numbers that any writer, director or choreographer could be proud of.

[EOLAN]

Really? I thought the way the time rewound and replayed was brilliantly realised, and the song itself is really catchy and the way it was performed was really energetic and interesting

I think I was happy enough with some of the scenes with Eliza to show his family side; and set up for the later breakdown of that with the Reynolds Affair. But it was too much of a focus on a non-existent love-affair that just dragged on and on. It was a song and a staging that could be very much admired; but in the middle of a production; it literally halted any momentum of the story and took a backward step. All clever and stuff but me personally felt in line with Frank Skinner's criticisms during this song the most.


Would have much preferred if it focused on the far more likely "romance" with John Laurens which would have also added to the wokeness points. As Thomas Jeffererson would say "Can we get back to politics" (or at this point a bit of the show some war-mongering). 


Mind you; I probably just a contrarian because i couldn't stop laughing at LMM's gurning during the end of "Quiet Uptown" song. I am a guy who does tend to fast forward on some "romance element" scenes with historical action films (Just totally cut out Julia Roberts from 'Michael Collins' makes it 20% better).

[touchingcloth]

^ I dont think I halts momentum, it's a good bit of quietness and belting halfway through the first act and divides the first half of that act's setup from the action which takes place in the second.

I do think Miranda got a bit carried away with the Schuyler sister's, though, and I think I read somewhere that he just wanted to use them in the show as much as possible, so crowbarred bits from the Chernow book about Angelica's friendship with Hamilton and built it into something more. Definitely an ahistorical depiction of that family though - Angelica has a line about how her father has no sons, when in reality he had several.

The bit in the show which makes me cringe most is in he bit about the Federalist Papers. One author wrote 5, another 29, but the way Burr tells us that Hamilton wrote the remaining 51 is ridiculous.

[Ferris]

The bit that always makes me laugh is "Gotta start a new nation! Gotta meet my son!"

...which is just fucking absurd, it's like a cartoon character jumping up and down and telling you their motivations directly. I do really like the musical, but that is a clanger.

[touchingcloth]

There are a few bits where Hamilton is portrayed like an overexcited puppy, another one is when he squees over going to the Constitutional Convention. He's 19 yet his nappies molder.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Someone's made a new version of Hamilton, with the difference being that it's sung by (his impersonation of) The Muppets. Which sounds gimmicky, I know, but damnit I'm ten minutes in and still enjoying it a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZzDP-vQXao

[touchingcloth]

I'd love to hear the Muppet Mulligan.

[Dex Sawash]

Was very neutral about this.

Correction: too thick to appreciate this

[touchingcloth]

For any American verbwhores out there, how much of the Hamilton story is familiar from you from school and cultural Osmosis? Is the battle of Yorktown a widely known thing? Is Aaron Burr a household name?

[EOLAN]

For any American verbwhores out there, how much of the Hamilton story is familiar from you from school and cultural Osmosis? Is the battle of Yorktown a widely known thing? Is Aaron Burr a household name?

And how many people thought that Hamilton guy on the $10 bill was a President. Made its way into one of the earliest scenes in the Wire.

[Dex Sawash]

Yes I know what an Aaron Burrs are, but only because of this commercial
https://youtu.be/QLJ2Vjv2x18


I don't think Hamilton is very well known and wasn't subject of much focus in school.

Yorktown isn't one of the big fetishized battles, maybe because the French had an important role.
Actually only civil war battles are fetishized to any degree, I guess.

[Ferris]

And how many people thought that Hamilton guy on the $10 bill was a President. Made it's way into one of the earliest scenes in the Wire.

Literally the only thing I knew about Hamilton prior to the musical was from Wallace.

[studpuppet]

That disconnect between Enlightened thinking and reality is something which interests me about Jefferson, too - he penned the words "we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal", yet even among his peers he sticks out for not manumitting his slaves during his life or in his will.

Yeah but when they talk about men they mean free men only - see Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 o' tha muthafuckin' Constitution (with thanks to Toby from The West Wing).

[phantom_power]

Isn't Burr seen as a bit of a historical villain, and part of Hamilton is to redress this a bit and give him a bit of humanity? As well as telling more about Hamilton himself of course

[mjwilson]

He literally says "I'm the villain in your history" so you're probably onto something

[touchingcloth]

I don't know anything about Burr apart from what is in Hamilton, but I think the show does a good job of showing that he was neither a villain nor a great guy but had elements of both of those things. When I watched the filmed version it struck me that he's basically a clone of Salieri in Amadeus.