This is a story about "Jesus Christ Superstar". The Andrew Lloyd-Webber rock opera. The one in the brown album cover (you know which one I'm referring to, don't you?!?). My mother purchased the album in 1970 to use as material for a religious ed class she was teaching. I was sure that she, and by extension, me, were going to Hell for this (not just hell, but hell with the capital "H"). She told me to listen to it sometime. Well, the extremely short story--I was hooked. To the point that I could sing every line and every word of every song. To the point that later on in life, I could boast of having 7 different recorded casts/versions of it.
At about this time 10 years ago, Carroll College was in the rehearsal stage for the performance of "Superstar". Pretty heady stuff for a Catholic institution, but we didn't have any lightning bolts strike us down or anything. I directed the pit orchestra for this, which consisted of a rock band, string section and brass and winds. As music director, I was also at the auditions, though more interest was paid to dramatic ability over vocal ability (which never made any sense to me...). Anyway, it was obvious who would play the major roles, and no one even came close to stepping into the role of King Herod. For those of you who don't know the music, or haven't seen the movie, King Herod has just one appearance. He provides a bit of comic relief, and his song is a honky-tonk plea for Jesus to work just one miracle for him. As the auditions ended, and each of us mentally placed actor to a role, the director turned and looked at me, and he didn't even need to verbalize it--I was to be King Herod. So in addition to the leading of the band, I got to sing and dance my way into the audience's hearts. In keeping with the spirit of the era in which it was written (late 60s), we all started growing our hair and beards and basically channeling the hippy in each of us. Granted, some of us relied on our past--the rest of the cast had to go ask Mom and Dad what a hippy was...
Ah, look at those curls! All natural, thankyouverymuch!
So what does that have to do with HNT?? Well, one of the fortunate individuals to experience my King Herod was none other than Moose. She got to see the long hair, the comedic dancing, and most of all, the god-awful purple and white striped pants I had to wear (think sort of like MC Hammer--can't touch this!). Anyway, the Broadway tour of "JCSS" is coming to Minneapolis in May, and she snagged us a couple of tickets in Row 4!! Starring Ted Neely as Jesus (he was Jesus in the movie version)! The only thing that would make it better would be having Carl Anderson in the role of Judas, but he died in 2004. Neely is twice as old as Jesus as it is!
So here I am, ten years later, with my confirmation printed out for my plane tickets! Sort of blurry like the old picture. Sans the curly hair...
This week’s mystery guest is that oh-so-rare of mystery guest genders…MALE!He’s a native Bostonian transplanted to NY but wishes to soon seek warmer climes.
This long time HNTer is a musician, writer, artist, and all around bon vivant/renaissance man who hopes to make it big and settle down on a sailboat in the Caribbean to watch the sun go down with a virgin daiquiri and a pair of sexy not-so-virgin female crewmates.
He'll be revealed in the afternoon, but if you can figure it out, go say hi to him! Well, this one wasn't apparently too hard to pick out. That's the way it goes sometimes.... Of course, it's Keyser Soze! Go say hi if you haven't been over there!
Another nice selection for "...the Other HNT" this week. Be sure to stop by and check out your fellow HNTers! Yes, it's NSFW.
For those who have expressed such an outpouring of concern...I am currently using my newly acquired power cord!
Saturday marks the third anniversary of this blog. If you're so inclined to celebrate that, then go right ahead! I don't plan to. Let me just say that my Sitemeter count hit 600K last week. I find that mind boggling! Now if I really just had something to say...
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