Recycled Sentiment

(I'm not nearly finished writing about my trip, but I'll sneak this one in out of sequence.)

One of the few benefits of my current incarnation as a slug is seeing obscure movies on TV that I would never even intentionally change the channel to watch. If the right scene happens to be showing as I surf through, however, I'm hooked. I have stumbled onto some really good movies this way. Some pretty bad ones, too, but that's just slug tax.

Last weekend, my first one at home in about 2 months, I stumbled onto a movie that, while not unknown to me, I had never bothered to watch. It was the American tribal love rock musical (or some such appellation), "Hair." I don't think this was ever a very popular movie, but it had been a very popular stage production and was the first I ever saw on Broadway. It was in 1968, in the thick of the war it was written to protest.

When I saw the play I was awestruck. Partially by the whole Broadway experience, but mostly by the talent, the music, and the strength of emotion and conviction conveyed by that talent and that music. I saw the play again many years later at the Honolulu Community Theater, but out of its context it just didn't have the same punch. It was reduced to campy nostalgia. I expected the movie to be a bad interpretation of the play, so made no attempt to see it. I bought the original record album in the 70s and I bought the CD in the 90s. The DVD is now on its way from a discount house. It's great music even if you pay no attention to the lyrics.

I wasn't entirely wrong about the movie. The adaptation tried to give it too much of a logical story, which seemed to water it down. The war protest theme, however, now has a new context. The choreography and cinematography were both excellent and a couple of the singers were even better than the original cast members. The most notable of those was Cheryl Barnes, who sang "Easy to be Hard." She was a hotel maid whose friends talked her into auditioning for the movie. She never did any other professional singing, but in this movie she was fantastic. Three Dog Night made this song famous as a single, and I would've said that their version was unbeatable. I was wrong.

This musical was created in a context of strong anti-war sentiment, amidst daily news stories, with film at 11, of soldiers being killed in Viet Nam. Daily body counts. Today a similar sentiment is building, also amidst daily news stories, with film at 11, of soldiers being killed in Iraq. Daily body counts. Even people in Bakersfield, recently named California's most conservative city (and second-most in the nation), is losing its resolve. People who were once fierce cheerleaders for dubya and his war are finally turning on him. One of the great lines in the movie went something like, "The white man is sending the black man over to kill the yellow man in order to protect the land he stole from the red man." Plug "oil" into there somewhere and we are up-to-date.

I felt compelled to write this because the music from this movie will not leave my head, even after nearly a week. Maybe I need some kind of drug to solve this problem.

It is often said that if you remember the 60s, you weren't there. I guess I wasn't there.