Being Alive

#1

Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:45pm

it has just surpassed "Advantages to Floating in the Middle of the Sea" as my current favorite Sondheim song. I love this song! I never fully appreciated it until i heard Patti sing it during Wall to Wall.

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"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed

#2

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:47pm

I saw Patti do it live a dozen years ago or so at the Sondheim Celebration at Carnegie Hall.

#3

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:47pm

Bernadette's version does it for me. What an amazing amazing song.

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"I hope you're all happy, keeping Alan off the team. Couldn't you, for once, open your minds and hearts and hear something that he couldn't see? I, for one, am glad that Alan is blind, so he can't see what, I am so sad to say, you can't hear." -Jerri Blank

#4

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:48pm

my jaw dropped, i mean, i had never heard the song sung with so much...gusto? it was breathtaking.

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"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed

#5

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:53pm

There is a very well done version of it on Matt Bogart's album "Simple Song". Very well done indeed.

#6

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:55pm

I love Max von Essen's version.

#7

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 2:59pm

I've been meaning to get that Sondheim at Carnegie Hall CD for quite some time now--just to hear Patti sing that song. I too absolutely love this song. Fantastic lyrics. Bernadette does a fine job with it on her Carnegie Hall CD.

#8

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 3:13pm

Anything from Company is a favorite of mine. I have to say my favorite version of Being Alive is Patti's though. She gave me chills when she sang it at Wall to Wall. After Wall to Wall I had to go rush to my Sondheim Collection Box Set DVDs I got for Christmas and put in the Sondheim Carnegie Hall DVD and watch Patti sing the hell out of that song!

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You're always sorry, You're always grateful, You hold her, thinking: "I'm not alone." You're still alone.
-"Sorry-Grateful" Company

#9

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 3:17pm

this is my all time favorite sondheim song of all time. very few things move me. this song did from the first time i heard it.

#10

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 8:07pm

*Points to icon* I love the arrangement of it in Putting it Together, but Bernadette's version is an extremely close second.

I need to get the Carnegie Hall CD too...

#11

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 8:12pm

Sondheim Celebration at Carnegie Hall is fantastic!
Lucky you MEF, to have seen it live.
So many goodies that night. Ballad of Booth, Not Getting Married Today, Back in Business, Sooner or Later, Children Will Listen and yes - Being Alive. So glad I have it on video.

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" ...the happiness in the tune convinces me that I'm not afraid."

#12

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 8:51pm

The highlight of my night was Harolyn Blackwell's "Green Finch and Linnet Bird".

#13

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 8:52pm

Ah yes! I remember it well (on video).
How could I not have mentioned it?
Just so mamy goodies that night!

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" ...the happiness in the tune convinces me that I'm not afraid."

#14

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 8:59pm

'Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall' is one of my all-time favorite DVDs and I watch it at least once a week.

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"One no longer loves one's insight enough once one communicates it."

The opposite of creation isn't war, it's stagnation.

#15

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 9:10pm

And it's the only Sondheim DVD that I don't have.

#16

re: Being Alive

Posted: 3/27/05 at 9:23pm

Yeah, that song is so amazingly beautiful and just perfect. It is perfection incarnate