Monday, March 26, 2018

Your Monday Moment of Words Fail Me

From 2014, please enjoy Shakey Graves and Heather Maloney and the most radical re-imagining of a song originally warbled by John Travolta and Olivia Neutron-Bomb (or whatever her name is) you'll ever hear.



Question: Why the hell hasn't that band been a musical guest on SNL? I mean, James Bay or The Migos get the gig, and these kids don't?

On a less contentious note, I should add that I saw the original Broadway version of Grease in preview (Barry Bostwick had the Travolta part, and he was hilarious and brilliant) and you may find this hard to believe, but the show then bore very little resemblance to the film. In fact, it was barely a nostalgia piece; instead, it was a very sharp satire on the difference between American culture as it actually was in the 50s and the representations of it in the television and movies of the period. Of course, once the satanic Robert Stigwood got his hands on the stage play, it was a foregone conclusion that he was gonna stick some crappy and obviously anachronistic disco song over the credits and rewrite the ingenue part to be an Australian exchange student.

[h/t Matt Mitchell]

2 comments:

Dave said...

Great stuff. Especially liked the male vocalist, who I’m unfamiliar with.

The original Chicago production of Grease had a different title song that was dumped for the NY production that you saw. It might have been anachronistic, but I’d hardly call the song, “Grease,”crappy. To me, it’s a classic Barry Gibb song with killer Frampton guitar and Valli at his non-falsetto best. I like it better than any song in the show.

Dave F

Anonymous said...


once again proving it's the singer not the song.

captain al