Profile for alcockell

My comment re late 70s instrumentation similar to Salsoul was based on observations made by someone on musicals.net and imdb. Steppin' onstage apparently sounded a bit like it came from the MFSB stable and as it occurs in about 1963, the scoring is 10 years too late. Hence the film took the song toward gospel inflections rather than disco. Also, One Night Only is better placed in about 1974/1975 as it more closely matches when disco grooves came in (cf The Joy of Disco, BBC).

According to the wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamgirls_(film) the film tightens the two periods to 1962-1966 finishing when "Cindy Birdsong" replaces "Florence Ballard" (Effie) and 1973-1975 starting when Deena is watching back the biog that drops the bombshell about the "Cleopatra" film project etc.

From memory, the timeline in the stage and film is as follows... act 1 - 1961 to 1969/1970 act 2 - 1973 to 1978

Geffen suggested that they move the events *closer to* the historical period in Detroit... Re anachronisms, I was referring to the book being set in 1963 to 1969 for act = but stage music being more apt for circa 1977. Or to my ear, anyway.

Out of interest, was Heavy a performance in the stage production, as opposed to the characters being in a recording session?

Musically, there are a lot of changes as well. According to the Wiki articles (and my own ears- I've been doing A-B comparisons between the two albums via my We7 subscription), a deliberate decision was made for the stage score to avoid obvious Motown references for fear of Berry Gordy's and Diana Ross's lawyers. On the back of a suggestion made by David Geffen, they did almost an alternate-universe change for the film - moving the action back to Detroit and setting the music back to its more...