LMM working on THE WARRIORS musical?- Page 4

[gypsy101]

Posted: 10/20/24 at 11:48pm

bwayphreak234 said: "I attempted to listen this. Rap never is / never will be a genre of music I enjoy. That beingsaid, this did absolutely nothing for me."

most of it is not rap though…

anyway i am of course obsessed with this album. lin manuel miranda has unsurprisingly done it again. just like hamilton it’s very dense so it takes a couple listens to dig into it (plus i've never seen the movie so i could not follow the plot very well the first few listens) but now that i've listened probably 10 times since it came out thanks to being able to listen to it at work i am gonna probably be listening to this almost daily for months. early favorites include amber gray’s fantastic sick of runnin’, utkarsh and phillipa and the girls harmonies on orphan town, kim dracula is amazing in each scene as luther (lin metal finally!!), the dreamy boy band doing we got you and same train home which made me cry. mercy and swan are also adorable as star crossed lovers. congrats to lin and eisa on making an amazing album. also how awesome is it lauryn hill sent in her vocals via dropbox link!?

[RSrichie]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 7:55am

How could LMM get this so wrong?  The Warriors is a testosterone driven youth angst filled story with needs to told with street music.  This is none of that.  Sorry ladies, no offense intended, but it doesn’t hit the same.  The music is not of the street.  This recording doesn’t have balls.  That’s the problem.  

[binau]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 9:00am

I kind of like the idea of a gender swap if only because it provides more female voices which as an instrument/sound give a lot to work with. And you can hear it from some of the excellent female performances on the album, such as Amber Gray’s ‘sick of runnin’. 
 

There is no one else besides Lin that knows how to write new popular music styles in the context of musical theatre with the kind of sophisticated execution you’d expect from a Sondheim disciple. This music is absolutely brilliant. Not sure about the ‘book’ or story yet (still need more time). But this music is so special. And I hate to feed Lin’s ego but the man is a genius. 

Updated On: 10/22/24 at 09:00 AM

[RSrichie]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 10:15am

This recording is not dangerous.  It NEEDS to be dangerous. 

[Kad]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 10:17am

RSrichie said: "This recording is not dangerous. It NEEDS to be dangerous."

Have you tried throwing it at somebody very, very hard?

[RSrichie]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 10:22am

Kad said: "RSrichie said: "This recording is not dangerous. It NEEDS to be dangerous."

Have you tried throwing it at somebody very, very hard?"


that’s an intelligent response.

[devonian.t]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 1:35pm

Somewhere in the City and Same Train Home are absolutely living in my head at the moment.  And I'm not a total LMM fan by any means!

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 10/22/24 at 2:41pm

RSrichie said: "How could LMM get this so wrong? The Warriors is a testosterone driven youth angst filled story with needs to told with street music. This is none of that. Sorry ladies, no offense intended, but it doesn’t hit the same. The music is not of the street. This recording doesn’t have balls. That’s the problem."

When I think about the musicals I've seen about young people and gangs; West Side Story, A Bronx Tale, The Outsiders - they feature sensitive characters who are struggling to escape their violent environment.  People, including gang members, are more complex than just being testosterone fueled and angry, and reducing them to being one note characters would be pretty boring. 

In fact, the only musical I've seen that has the BALLS agro energy you're talking about is the movie Dicks: The Musical and that's camp.      

[Rentaholic2]

Posted: 11/10/24 at 11:04pm

I finally gave this album a proper listen (or ten), and I think it's incredible.  I disagree that it's not "dangerous."  Several tracks are downright terrifying.  In the right director's hands, this could be absolutely thrilling on stage.  The stakes are so well established at the outset, and then it's a life-or-death sprint through the night.  It's like The Running Man meets the Wizard of Oz in hell. And yet it somehow has a hopeful and uplifting message in the end. LLM has completed his trifecta of NY stories with In The Heights, Hamilton, and Warriors. 

Updated On: 11/10/24 at 11:04 PM

[HenryTDobson]

Posted: 11/11/24 at 1:10am

After a few weeks of listening to this album, I've really come to enjoy it as well. It's fun and the performances are top notch. A Light or Something is LMM at his finest and Same Train Home is gorgeous. There are many great moments throughout.

My biggest quibble is the finale and just overall theme of the piece. Maybe it's the fault of the original movie, but the message of the story is unclear to me. LMM's finales typically wrap everything up so well, so I was disappointed by this ending that just sortof....ended. Happy to hear other thoughts on this though. I've never seen the movie so maybe I'm missing something.

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 11/11/24 at 9:52am

HenryTDobson said: "After a few weeks of listening to this album, I've really come to enjoy it as well. It's fun and the performances are top notch. A Light or Something is LMM at his finest and Same Train Home is gorgeous. There are many great moments throughout.

My biggest quibble is the finale and just overall theme of the piece. Maybe it's the fault of the original movie, but the message of the story is unclear to me. LMM's finales typically wrap everything up so well, so I was disappointed by this ending that just sortof....ended. Happy to hear other thoughts on this though. I've never seen the movie so maybe I'm missing something."

I think it's worth checking out the movie. I had never seen it before listening to the album, so checking it out after the fact made me understand the plot better, more specifically how close of an adaptation this is. There are a lot of passages that are taken near-verbatim from the movie. As for the ending...

 

 

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I think it's a simple ending because it's a simple set-up. The Warriors are trying to get back to their home turf and the show ends when they get back to their home turf, along with getting their names cleared for the murder of Cyrus.

 

[Rentaholic2]

Posted: 11/11/24 at 10:53am

HenryTDobson said: "After a few weeks of listening to this album, I've really come to enjoy it as well. It's fun and the performances are top notch. A Light or Something is LMM at his finest and Same Train Home is gorgeous. There are many great moments throughout.

My biggest quibble is the finale and just overall theme of the piece. Maybe it's the fault of the original movie, but the message of the story is unclear to me. LMM's finales typically wrap everything up so well, so I was disappointed by this ending that just sortof....ended. Happy to hear other thoughts on this though. I've never seen the movie so maybe I'm missing something."

For me, the primary overall theme is a pretty traditional musical theatre theme:  the power of community can strengthen us all as individuals and give us hope for the future.  As for the finale:

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

I interpret it as a reinforcement of this primary theme.  The Warriors have (mostly) survived the night, only because they stuck together and had each others' backs.  They made the journey to the Bronx in the first place because they believed in the power of the truce and how it could improve everyone's lives.  That belief was shattered, but now that they've made it home, their journey has restored their hope for what comes next. They can continue dreaming of a day when they are living, not just surviving. The last bit of music is the Warriors doing their little chant, back home on Coney Island, which really drives home the "strength of community" message.

Having read a bit more of the background for the piece, I think there are also illusions to the birth of hip-hop and how it ultimately gave way for gangs to engage in cultural battles through music, dance, etc. and less in actual turf wars and violence. I think the last line, "This is the sound of something being born" is very much about this. 

My quibble is more with the conflicting morality of the piece. We're supposed to root for the Warriors because they were in favor of the truce and seem to want to stop all the violence between gangs, and they often talk about Cyrus as this great peacemaker. But that sort of ignores the fact that the reason for the truce is so that the gangs can essentially form one big gang that will outnumber the police 3:1.  And throughout the album, the police are always the bad guys.  So are we rooting for a world in which New York is run by one giant gang and the police are powerless?  And are we to believe that these gangs are only committing acts of violence against each other, and there are no actual victims that the police are trying to protect?  I haven't seen the movie, so maybe I'm missing something, but the story seems to operate in a parallel (somewhat sci-fi?) universe where the police are oppressors, the gangs are mostly good guys if they can just stop fighting with each other, and average citizens are non-existent or irrelevant.  

[jkcohen626]

Posted: 11/11/24 at 12:44pm

I'm still totally enthralled by this album. But, I will agree that the message that the authors are trying to push feels rather at odds with the fact that these are all violent street gangs filled with criminals. 

[darquegk]

Posted: 11/11/24 at 3:11pm

That kind of ambiguity is baked into the movie too: they're in this post-apocalyptic, Running Man style sci-fi world most of the time. But then, they emerge briefly into what appears to be "the real world" and encounter everyday 1970s civilians, then dive into the dark alternate universe again.

[hak5]

Posted: 11/13/24 at 3:11pm

finally got a chance to listen to the album.

With some fine tuning and edits, I can see this working well on Broadway