If you like Jesus Christ Superstar, you'll probably like the other Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice collaboration that is Evita, an other wonderful rock opera, imo.

In extension, and more 80s, there is Chess: the Tim Rice collaboration with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus (of ABBA fame). I saw that one in London at that time - very good.

Hi,

It's a nice thought and idea, however the rock fanbase and attendance has not exactly helped many of those great works take off and get better known and appreciated. In general, my thoughts are that too much of the attention has been centered on the "hero" or the "star" of the band and the number of "solos" involved.

No band has successfully done "theater" within a rock element. The theater audience gets bored with the overdependence on the lyrics for "story telling" and taking them away from the "characters". But there are some good examples, although most folks here don't usually discuss these things, since for many of the folks in this board, (and others mind you!), it is all just another song. But ANGE is very theatrical and the material redone recently by Christian Decamps shows it, although most of the early material was sung by his brother Francis Decamps. In a couple of videos over the net, they don't look good trying to be theatrical on stage, but I think the recording and video were the problem.

This story might be easier if we take a look at the light shows going back to the 60's and how they developed ... and PF gets some credit ... in their early days of Quadraphonic Sound (all around the venue!) the sound effects made you feel like you were right there ... someone would actually walk through from the back speakers to the front, and you got a really good feel for it ... and this showed up in the original WALL which was in Quad when the girl says look at all those guitars and walks from the "door" at the back, all the way to the speakers in the front ... it was excellent, and when Roger redid this he killed it ... the sound went from left stage to right and you were not "in the middle of it".

PF was the first "theatrical band" in the sense that DSOTM had a new definition to what a light show should be ... and they continued with the sound effects bit, until the sound effects actually became a movie ... The Wall. Thus, PF is not progressive. They are theatrical!

Other than that, one of the poorest of all areas in theater is the musical. Mind you there are some great ones in its history ... West Side Story is tops and one of the first to make the dancing and the idea "very real", and the best one of them all is, of course ... "All That Jazz", which is way too strong to be considered or done on stage again, due to the sexualization of the movements and the show.

I'm not a fan of the "fake" stories ... and the let's pretend that this hour and a half is a concept, or a play, or something else. In general, TLLDOB is not even close to its story that is on the sleeves. But some of it came from the early days when Genesis got to see Omega and one other European band (likely ANGE) use costumes on stage, and try to light up, or educate the feeling. Ange's "Caricatures" is a perfect album to do on stage ... and it owes a lot of its take to Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, if not Jacques Brel ... the voice style used by Francis is fantastic at least all the way to "Emile Jacotey". But progressive fans will not like it, because for Francis to do this, the "solo" is sacrificed for the continuity of the piece ... and the fans want to solos, not anything else ... thus ... no one bothers with Ange and some of the other very theatrical bands at the time.

This is a thread that can go a lot further with more ... but musical theater per se, in rock music is a bad joke, and that's not to say that "Jesus Christ Superstar" and other things are not good, but in general, they are more about getting your buck than they were valuable, important and meaningful! 

It all goes back to the idea of adding visualization to the show, which we know started (so to speak) with the psychedelic days! Or a piece to make it look like the folks in the hippie days were sexed up dolls and too stoned to know the difference ... HAIR is the perfect example, though it has some great music that several bands stole for a "hit" which busted up the meaning of the theatrical show ... which all of a sudden was worthless and The Aquarius lost most of its audience. By the time it hit London, Sonja Kristina and others were not enough.

^^SIGH

I really don't know what you're talking about this time brother. I started to reply but found myself wanting to write a paragraph rebuttal for every sentence you wrote. My head starting hurting so I stopped.

Clearly you missed the bus on the whole Musical Theatre thing. You seem to think concept albums and musical theatre are the same thing...they're NOT.

You say "No band has successfully done "theater" within a rock element"... WRONG, that's just YOUR opinion.

Next you say "This story might be easier if we take a look at the light shows". What the hell does a light show have to do with Musical Theatre...Lighting is mostly used for mood or focus.

But wait..There's the "I'm not a fan of the "fake" stories" comment. What is a FAKE story?? All stories are fake, unless they are a retelling of actual events.

"It all goes back to the idea of adding visualization to the show, which we know started (so to speak) with the psychedelic days!" Holy crap man, have you never heard of a little thing called OPERA?

Hi,

Well. one can look at all the advertisements for many shows in your town and how much is your musical theater. None! Even NY, London and Paris are not exactly very good, although one can find smaller venues that do some far out stuff.

JD wrote: ... Next you say "This story might be easier if we take a look at the light shows". What the hell does a light show have to do with Musical Theatre...Lighting is mostly used for mood or focus. ...

Hi,

All theater relies on lighting to a great extent, and it is the highlights of it that help a lot of specific details within a play. IF, lighting is used STRICTLY for mood or focus, then the play is not well directed at all because the idea and the flow of the writer gets taken out of context. In rock music, there is no "director" which is one of the reasons why it is not well done at all, and the conceptual basis is often all over the place. And the lighting? ... I wouldn't even call that "lighting" for 9 out of 10 rock bands, since the design is not even on par with the music at all. A total mess, which for me, lessens the music by the band.

JD wrote: ... "It all goes back to the idea of adding visualization to the show, which we know started (so to speak) with the psychedelic days!" Holy crap man, have you never heard of a little thing called OPERA? ...

-------------
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com

On Friday, my company had an annual outing at a local theater to see The Best of Broadway: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  There was a male singer, Terry Barber "The World's Finest Countertenor" and a female singer (I forget her name).  They sang various songs from various Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals as well some other well-known songs from other contemporary musicals.  They were accompanied by a pianist, a cellist, and a violinist.  There was mostly no performing, but the music and singing were quite good.  Phantom of the Opera is the only one of these musicals that I have seen, but they also did songs from Cats, Requiem, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat amongst others.

Although, admittedly, I kept think about how Roger Waters wanted the piano lid to crash down and break ALW's "f**king fingers".

One of the things that bothers me some, is not the amount of rock music, or jazz music out there. It's how it has hurt a lot of the classical music output. 

For many years, there were massive names in the classical music arena, be they great voices in opera, to incredible talent with an instrument, to conductors that created some incredible touches in a lot of music to the point that it is easy to say that I only do Beethoven under one conductor's hands, or Wagner under another, or Puccini under another. And it helped sell a lot of LP's at that time.

The advent of rock music incredible fame, and media attraction that started in the late 60's is a wonderful thing, but in a sense, one of the things it hurt the most is classical music, and the likes of opera. A youthful audience, that likes rock, metal, prog, rap ... will not see a lot of classical music probably for many years, and thus the development of the arts in the classical music area will suffer and the "musical" is one thing that has been hurt the most. I remember seeing Richard Harris in LA with CAMELOT ... and even he was already talking backstage about how the whole theater thing was falling apart ... and he was not complaining about getting paid ... he said he did it for half price for the love of it. It didn't matter. 

I do not, under any conditions, want to see experimental theater, musicals, dance ... lose the attraction ... why would most rock fans want to see an opera when there are vocals in rock music that are much better expressive than most rock music in the planet. And one of the major things in that rock music was "attitude" which is something that opera does not quite allow. And this poses a problems for musicals ... do you go for the traditional stuff, a la Hollywood, with the pink or blue scrims in the background to give you the feeling of emotion, or would you rather go see a PG, or MJ, or BS ... people that you know put their heart into their words and do an excellent job. All of a sudden, the "lightness" that musical theater is about, is not an attractive thing to be able to advertise and sustain for a couple of weeks so it doesn't lose more money.

So we stick to some rock folks that have done "conceptual" this or that and it becomes a sort of a musical ...heck I thought of TOMMY, QUADROPHENIA as rock operas, and even Amon Duul 2's MADE IN GERMANY was shown up as a rock opera. And I saw OPERATION MINDCRIME, and many other things, although I missed TAAB and APP by Jethro Tull, but even Laurie Anderson had some amazing conceptual stuff which included a lot of the writer Burroughs ... and that's not conceptual?

I would rather see a conceptual piece if it is true and strong. How to show it as some sort of "musical theater" is a problem ... I don't think that some pictures on the wall and lights make the whole concept come alive ... it was mostly imagined and driven by the lyrics of the singer, and we believed it. I have not heard anyone talk about MINDCRIME at all, except the band itself performing it! And the majority of the folks ignoring and saying that the band had better stuff!

But, we may have to "define" this musical theater a lot better ... if it is going to improve and stand up ... not disappear because no one knows it or has heard it ... though these days, you can just about hear everyone of those things, whereas 50 years ago, this was not the case and it was mostly impossible.

I liked things like HAIR, and it had meaning for me, although it was raped by some pop bands for hits, and then destroyed by what the media called the stench of the hippies. Like the Republicans or Democrats of today don't have it at all!

JUst like a lot of music here, there is a lot that we do not seem to take to as much as we probably should, because ... yeah ... another solo thread ... and sadder still is the listing of new things in various threads and although things are LISTED ... no one says much of anything about it, except a blurb that is not even descriptive of the music itself.

As a progressive fan, right from the start in the late 60's, there is a lot of value in the stuff ... there should also be a lot of value in the stuff that we don't exactly listen to or understand. And here comes another discussion about ... solo ... this or that! You think that "musical theater" has a chance? Think again!

Of all these, I think there are only 4 I have not seen. Lucky to be close to LA where you can have a chance to see a lot of these things, just like you would in NY.

If possible try to catch a class in any University which has a Film section. In many of them you will find a class on "musicals" and pretty much all of these (and many more!) will be mentioned or even shown.

Separating these from "theater" ... is difficult ... they all have theater, and they all have music and singing. Now, if you want to go strictly about the rock bands that did this, the listing gets really small all of a sudden, since too many of these things are not exactly a "musical theater" at all, but just idealistic concepts from the musicians hands and mind. These would not, and should not, be considered musical theater ... and "Operation: Mindcrime" is not musical theater. It's a stage show by the band! That's not to say it is bad ... it is very good and I enjoyed it on an evening with Fates Warning and Dream Theater.

Of all these, only a couple of the old Hollywood ones are not exactly my thing, but, as an example, you ought to see the insanity in choreography for "7 Brides for 7 Brothers", which is crazy but a lot of fun to watch. But as most Hollywood made musicals, they are very weak in terms of a lot of details and specially the story. For example, at least one musical was about the star to help the studio, and it really was not a great musical at all ... but it made for good screen sales and people loved the way it was filmed, which made it more appealing. "A Star is Born" was probably one of the first musicals to actually include some serious closeups to help improve the work, and it is those moments that we remember from that film.

Of these, West Side Story, is the strongest in terms of story, though if I have a favorite, it has to be Camelot, because of the incredible performances by Richard Harris. But then seeing The Rocky Horror Show in its original days, was not only cool, it was trippy and far out ... an experience that no one these days will ever get to see ... just watching Meatloaf drive through the tables in the theater to get to the stage and smell the gas over your drink ... yeah ... it was far out. And Tim Curry ... was spectacular! (Heck ... Bat Out of Hell ... should be mentioned here!

A few listings of things that are considered "rock operas", though we might not exactly think so.

Some neat stuff, though I have not heard that original Nirvana. Pippin and Hairspray, are better known for their films I think. I have not heard The Fat Boys either.

One set of films that should be mentioned, that I had forgotten ... the Jacques Demy films "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and the follow up film ... were all about all the characters singing, and this would be considered a pop opera, thus, a rock opera ... and it does not stop ... the whole story and characterizations is about the singing all the way through, which ... for me ... made it a bit tiring, but it was far out and interesting to see this ... this would qualify as PURE musical theater/film, but it will never be seen or appreciated by many ...  

The composer Michel Legrand made his name in these films, btw ... 

PS (Later): Sad that the OP has not shown up ... I tried to help add to his palate ... which I thought was very weak, for his desire and presentation ... but I know it meant well, and hope that he can get an appreciation for a part of live performance, that is called "theater" and sometimes has music! Bit, in general, rock music has tried to kill "musical theater" even though it has to be called that, but the fact that it is, still, just a rock band and one singer, takes it away from the idea of it being "theater" at all. And just thinking and imagining that it is, only hurts the actual theatrical definition of the terms, and its history! Rock music has failed, horribly, what would be considered "musical theater" and its proper definitions.

I'm no big fan of musicals, but I actually bought the Chess album at the time . 

Hi,

CHESS is an interesting combination ... I, originally, did not think that Abba and Tim Rice, was not ideal, but it worked out OK. I actually got familiar with it, with the hit song "One Night in Bangkok" in 1984 by Murray Head, someone I had a couple of his albums (Nigel Lived and Say It Ain't So), and had seen him in one film with Glenda Jackson. As good a singer, and actor he was, I thought that was interesting, but I was not aware, at the time, that this was from the musical CHESS at all, and found that out later.

One bit about "big time" musicals in the BIG city ... rarely will they not be good. Usually a lot of care is taken/given to ensure that the show stands up really well, and most of the big musicals tend to do well, specially when they have a big time cast. For most of us, that do not live in the "big city" the only musicals we know are the ones the high school does once in a while, and we usually laugh at most of them, and how silly they are. I suppose that the only thing that turns me off some musicals, are the ... over and over and over revivals of the same thing ... and I can not tell you how good they were but knowing that a big name furry animal musical closed in a couple of weeks, I imagine that folks were not impressed, or the direction and design was really cheap and poor something that might go over well in those  under 99 places in NY, but in a big time theater? No way! But, generally, those 99 places in NY can not do musicals .... by the time you get orchestra, players and everything else, you got more folks on the stage than you do in the audience! Even Sam Sheppard would have a hard time with that, unless everyone knew he was going to dump 10,000 ping pong balls on the stage! (no kidding!!!), in which case we all go over there to have some fun! Who cares about the play?