The Benefits of British Primary-School Education

[tamaranth]

Over 35 years ago, a small primary school in Essex put on 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' as the annual musical.

I still know all the words.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I too know all the words - but to the original version, where the narrator sings half the story. I get Awfully Confused by more recent rewrites. (Also, I once saw Tim Rice lui-meme sing the role of Pharoah, in Oxford...)

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I've got a recording (alas only available on LP - no CD release) where Tim Rice sings the narrator. He's okay actually (and Paul Jones is Joseph).

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

there's a rewrite? Bah (humbug).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

They needed to turn it from a school show into a milch-cow West End touring production. So most of the narrator's part was divided up between the other characters, and they added new songs. And many reprises. I see it on an irregular basis, and I'm not sure I've ever seen the same show twice.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I know some of the words. From being in my prep school choir. And being told to mime, because I couldn't actually sing, but also not being allowed to leave the choir, because they needed the numbers ... [sigh]

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

I can remember the words of songs I learned for pantomimes when i was 10 (also nearly 35 years ago!), but not the words of the show I've been rehearsing for the last four months.

Must be getting old...

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

yes, must be age: how come I can remember all the words to this (and the Noah thing and the various British songs we did for Jubilee year) but can't remember the words of a song I've had on repeat for an hour? or what I went downstairs for?

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, did you do 'Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo?' then? I loved doing that. And yep, can remember most of the worlds (I've also got a recording of the Kings Singers performing it on a tape somewhere in the house)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I thought tamaranth meant "Noyes Fludde". That may be a generational thing...?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It may well be a generational thing, or a regional thing. (Are you implying that I am a generation younger than you? *blushes and simpers* *and larfs uproariously*)

I think my mother assumed Noyes Fludde was what we were doing, I remember her saying she didn't want to come and see it because she didn't like Benjamin Britten ... a (fairly bloody typically unmaternal) remark that has puzzled me for decades.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It was! Though I had forgotten the title and could not find it via any of the lyrics I recalled (possibly because I had no idea where the lines broke). Thank you!

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

Fun fact: the lyrics for 'Noah' were written by Michael Flanders (as in Flanders and Swann)!

I've actually got the libretto somewhere around the house...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Good grief - you absorbed it while still in the womb?

(I hadn't realised your Mum was a primary school teacher.)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

You are very suave, sir.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I try.

It makes up for the times when I still manage to be as coarsely gauche as a teenager even at my advanced age.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

it is part of your charm!

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Madame is too, too kind.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I wasn't allowed to be our school production because it was my GCSE year.

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

I blame Andrew Lloyd F. Webber. Or possibly Tim Rice. I know most of the lyrics to most of ALFW's output, via the medium of Mother having cast recordings of most of his stage shows on LP and playing them a lot when I was younger. I think something in the way he writes just burrows into your brain and sticks, whether you like it or not.

That said, I might just have a facility for lyrics from my childhood, as I have a terrible tendency to remember the words to hymns as well. Which is annoying when they're written to classical music, as it means I can no longer hear certain classical pieces without getting godly words running in my head!

[darth-tigger.livejournal.com]

A friend and I used to put the record on and sing/act along to it, taking it in turns to be Joseph.

I suspect I can still play it on the piano too.