Wissenswertes

Andere Namen: RADOMSKI, James
RADO, Jim
RADO, James
Geburtstag: 1932-01-23
Todestag: 2022-06-21
Geschlecht: male

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Hair von Gerome Ragni and James Rado

Ragni and Rado were very lucky to find Galt MacDermot, is all I can say. Have just seen a performance of Hair; the concept is paper-thin and the scenes with dialogue---mercifully few---lame and clichéd. Complete absence of nuance in any adult character. Sexism and racial stereotyping quite apparent, fifty years on. But the songs are always catchy and sometimes enduringly great. Nothing on the page, however, unless you need an aide-memoire before belting out "Age of Aquarius" in the shower.

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booksaplenty1949 | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Jan 25, 2019 |

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical von Gerome Ragni & James Rado

Picking this up nearly randomly for forty-seven or -eight cents at a used book shop after glimpsing through it right quickly and being drawn into the zany-looking chanting of HELL NO WE WON'T GO and WALLA WALLA GOONA GOONA, things appealing to the naïve counter culture novitiate, already a fan of Kesey and Pynchon and other iconic literary figures of the sixties and seventies, I come away--the only way I can--slightly or more than slightly disappointed, but to the extent that this is, as the title suggests, a ****ing musical (reminder: naïve; novitiate), which in no way can be the most fun thing to experience in written form, especially when I as a reader am incapable of picking up on the rhythm of the twenty-five-page-long songs that pop up after every five pages of dialogue as printed in size twenty-seven or thereabouts font, and only consist of six lines repeated over and over (i.e. HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA/KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE/HARE RAMA HARE RAMA/RAMA RAMA HARE HARE/LOVE LOVE/LOVE LOVE/LOVE LOVE/LOVE LOVE/DROP OUT/DROP OUT/DROP OUT/DROP OUT/BE IN/BE IN/BE IN/BE IN/HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA/KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE/HARE RAMA HARE RAMA/RAMA RAMA HARE HARE/BEADS FLOWERS FREEDOM HAPPINESS/BEADS FLOWERS FREEDOM HAPPINESS...&c., &c., &c., as quoted from pages one hundred and seven to one hundred and eight) with hardly a story to act as background to the thirty-plus pages of dialogue: Something about a bunch of hippies who burn their draft cards and reject the war (except one of, who goes off and dies, apparently--something I missed in all the singing) after having a healthy amount of sex, with some pseudo-drama and -characterization thrown in the form of every hippie loving the wrong person and some glimpses of the recent past, including a dramatic lack of a high school education, of one character.

I imagine this musical-play is something wild to witness, and I would love to see it sometime, but I can't really recommend that others pick up the book and skim through a bunch of musical numbers, including the famed "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" (AKA "The Age Of Aquarius"), the origin of which was a great pleasure to learn (I had no idea before picking this book up, nor did I even have a clue after I finished it [reminder: skim]).

Final Verdict: 45%

Edit, six months later: How the hell has not a single other person added this in the last many months? /end

Edit, post-edit: After clicking "save!" it has separated my copy of Hair from the 29 other users that owned it. What the fuck. Seriously. (I'm sure it's the "[w/ James Rado]" but come on, why all of a sudden like that? Why even do that? It's annoying!)

[29 other copies @ review time]… (mehr)