Hamilton: Surprisingly Not Overrated!

[rachelmanija]

Lin Manuel Miranda performing the opening number of Hamilton - his history geekiness is so endearing.

The whole thing on Spotify for free.

I am slowly listening to this. It's very dense, especially since I'm not familiar with that period of history other than reading Gore Vidal's Burr and getting briefly obsessed with the duel and the question of who shot first (Burr. Also, Hamilton's shot went wild because he'd been hit, not because he deliberately fired into the air, give me a break) and I just have the album - there doesn't seem to be a video available. It's pretty great though. If you like Sondheim, you would like this. I'd say listen to the first three tracks (through "My Shot") and see if you like it. I love the way it combines hiphop with Broadway, both lyrically and musically. It's really clever and catchy.

Comments

Commended to your attention

[rydra_wong]

https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/with_replies
http://linmanuel.tumblr.com/

LMM's social media presence is reliably entertaining and full of joy.

(Does obviously contain spoilers for parts of the show you may not have heard yet.)

[cahn]

It is coming to LA in 2017!! [ETA: I see below that other people have said this too. Anyway! I am definitely going to try to see it!]

[hederahelix]

I would love to. I heard the NPR story at the same time as Reccea, and we had already planned to try for tickets. If you don't mind it being the three of us, that's cool with me and with her.

(She and I already share a kind of ridiculous love for the musical 1776, so as soon as I heard about Hamilton I sort of assumed she would be all over it. In fact, she was the one who showed me 1776.)

[rydra_wong]

Yes, it's definitely going to be coming to London -- apparently they're aiming for 2017:

http://www.broadway.com/buzz/182100/lin-manuel-mirandas-hamilton-aiming-to-land-in-londons-west-end-in-2017/

[rachelmanija]

Yes, of course!

[rachelmanija]

I would, please.

Re: revolutionary manumission abolitionists

[rachelmanija]

Yeah. I am hoping that I still I have a shot.

[rydra_wong]

Ah, I see someone's already linked you to the B-roll. There's also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6gtZ2huUWc ("Burn")

There are some more bits in the CBS report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wboCdgzLHg

And the 60 Minutes doc:

http://hamiltunes.dreamwidth.org/6000.html

Btw, http://thefederalistfreestyle.tumblr.com/ seems to be good for round-ups of links from all over the place.

So glad you're enjoying this! I find it unfathomably cheering, somehow -- just that it exists and is such a splendid creation. And LMM and the rest of the creative team and cast are relentlessly adorable.

[cahn]

I just finished the Chernow biography, and there certainly is controversy about whether Hamilton intended to deliberately miss Burr or not. Chernow does conclude that Burr probably hit first and the shot went wild because of that, but he also has a fair amount of (circumstantial) evidence that Hamilton also intended to deliberately miss him, enough to convince me, at least -- one of which was that he (accurately) predicted that if Burr shot him, it would ruin Burr, so why would he do a thing like that? And if so, then he shouldn't gun down Burr...

(Chernow definitely is a fan of Hamilton, so he is not an unbiased observer, although he certainly doesn't shy away from calling out Hamilton pretty strongly when he was being stupid and idiotic.)

[rachelmanija]

Hmm. That is indeed a persuasive argument.

Burr was one weird dude.

[dhampyresa]

I like the idea that Hamilton "threw away his shot" and Burr didn't "wait for it" at the duel FOR MAXIMUM TRAGEDY :D

[rachelmanija]

Yes, history aside, I love that for tragedy. NO ALEX, DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR SHOT.

[rachelmanija]

I knew I heard an influence!

[rmc28]

Arrrgh yes :-)

[lorata.livejournal.com]

It took me a few tries to get into it because I kept listening while doing other things, and you really can't, not the first time. Then I listened to it once and was like "I like this but it doesn't give me feelings", but then I kept listening to it and kept listening and now it's been like 6 weeks and I don't think I've NOT had the songs in my head/on my iPod for one single day since.

There's a lot of changes made for entertainment/theatrical reasons, and a lot of them are annotated on the Genius Lyrics page (cosigned by LMM himself!) if you're interested. (Things like Angelica already being married by the time she met Alexander, or the fact that they had 8 kids, or blah blah blah) I like it the way it is, really, and also because it lets me pretend it's not related to real life at all. When I remember that in reality it was a bunch of privileged (and often pro-slavery, hello George Washington) white dudes I immediately stop caring. But when I pretend they really were POC and this is the world they inhabited, I can't get enough.

[rosefox]

There's no film version of the show (yet), but the 60 Minutes pieces on the show have a lot of clips, if you want to get a sense of the visuals:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hamilton-broadway-musical-60-minutes-charlie-rose-2/

And here's ten minutes of B-roll footage (shh) from those pieces:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5xrgi1dubiv0a3/Hamilton%20Musical%20-%20B-Roll%20Video.mp4?dl=0

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I would love to get tickets for this but it's nigh impossible. As soon as a block goes on sale, it's sold out.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I've been in love with Hamilton for the last few months! I desperately want to see it, but it's currently sold out through October. I've even been to the lottery a few times (if you haven't heard of this, they hold a daily raffle where they give away 20 tickets for $10 each by drawing names out of a hat) but since it's regularly attended by over a thousand people, I have never been lucky enough to win.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I saw some interviews with Miranda and was charmed by how he obviously was well-aware of those issues, and yet also saw his own story in Hamilton's. I have such a soft spot for that sort of thing as I too identified very strongly with a historical figure with whom I had nothing and everything in common.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Keep trying! You might get lucky!

I love how successful this is. It so deserves it, and I am in love with Miranda. He is such a delightful geek. Did you see the clip of him wearing a shirt saying BURR SHOT FIRST?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

not because he deliberately fired into the air, give me a break

There's a word for that! It is called deloping! I know this from my learnings! *ahem Georgette Heyer ahem*

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Learn something new every day!

(I still don't think he did it.)

[sunlit-music.livejournal.com]

The lyrics are so well thought out, and Hamilton sounds very inspirational. :-) Plus Miranda is very likeable and a brilliant performer. Thanks very much for sharing this!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

He is! And has many charming t-shirts that I am so jealous of.

Have you seen this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aToj9Jrbkeo) of him? He reads the opening of the biography that he based the musical on, and starts crying. It's so absolutely sweet and geeky.