Adam Should Win American Idol: [American_Idol_Extra] Sing Along Sunday: "EASY TO BE HARD" from "HAIR"

Sing Along Sunday

"EASY TO BE HARD" from "HAIR"

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy.^[1] The musical broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-In" finale.^[2]

Hair tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the "Age of Aquarius" living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society. Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done, or to compromise his pacifistic principles and risk his life by serving in Vietnam.

After an off-Broadway debut in October 1967 at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and a subsequent run in a midtown discothèque space, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances. Simultaneous productions in cities across the United States and Europe followed shortly thereafter, including a successful London production, which ran for 1,997 performances. Since then, numerous productions have been staged around the world, spawning dozens of recordings of the musical. Some of the songs from its score became Top 10 hits, and a feature film adaptation was released in 1979. A Broadway revival opened on March 31, 2009, earning strong reviews and winning the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for best revival of a musical. In 2008, Time magazine wrote, "Today Hair seems, if anything, more daring than ever."^[3]

^Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_(musical)

Literary themes and symbolism

Hair makes many references to Shakespeare's plays, especially Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, and, at times, takes lyrical material directly from Shakespeare.^[49] For example, the lyrics to the song "What a Piece of Work Is Man" is from Hamlet (II: scene 2) and portions of "Flesh Failures" ("the rest is silence") are from Hamlet's final lines. In "Flesh Failures/Let The Sun Shine In", the lyrics "Eyes, look your last!/ Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you/ The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss" are from Romeo and Juliet (V: iii, 111–14).^[78] According to Miller, the Romeo suicide imagery makes the point that, with our complicity in war, we are killing ourselves.^[49]

Symbolically, the running plot of Claude's indecision, especially his resistance to burning his draft card, which ultimately causes his demise, has been seen as a parallel to Hamlet: "the melancholy hippie".^[79] The symbolism is carried into the last scene, where Claude appears as a ghostly spirit among his friends wearing an army uniform in an ironic echo of an earlier scene, where he says, "I know what I want to be ... invisible". According to Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis, "Both [Hair and Hamlet] center on idealistic brilliant men as they struggle to find their place in a world marred by war, violence, and venal politics. They see both the luminous possibilities and the harshest realities of being human. In the end, unable to effectively combat the evil around them, they tragically succumb."^[80]

Other literary references include the song "Three-Five-Zero-Zero", based on Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra",^[81] and, in the psychedelic drug trip sequence, the portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara, from Gone with the Wind, and activist African-American poet LeRoi Jones.^[51]

Partial Plot, Act One :

Two tribe members dressed as tourists come down the aisle to ask the tribe why they have such long hair. In answer, Claude and Berger lead the tribe in explaining the significance of their "Hair". The tourist lady states that kids should "be free, no guilt" and should "do whatever you want, just so long as you don't hurt anyone." She observes that long hair is natural, like the "elegant plumage" of male birds ("My Conviction"). She opens her coat to reveal that she's a man in drag. As the couple leaves, the tribe calls her Margaret Mead.

Sheila gives Berger a yellow shirt. He goofs around and ends up tearing it in two. Sheila voices her distress that Berger seems to care more about the "bleeding crowd" than about her ("Easy to be Hard"). Jeanie summarizes everyone's romantic entanglements: "I'm hung up on Claude, Sheila's hung up on Berger, Berger is hung up everywhere. Claude is hung up on a cross over Sheila and Berger." The tribe runs out to the audience with fliers inviting them to a Be-In. Berger, Woof and another tribe member pay satiric tribute to the American flag as they fold it ("Don't Put it Down"). After young and innocent Crissy describes "Frank Mills", a boy she's looking for, the tribe participates in the "Be-In". The men of the tribe burn their draft cards. Claude puts his card in the fire, then changes his mind and pulls it out. He asks, "where is the something, where is the someone, that tells me why I live and die?" ("Where Do I Go"). The tribe emerges naked, intoning "beads, flowers, freedom, happiness."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_(musical)

Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night is an American rock band best known for their music from 1968 to 1975. As of 2010, they are still recording and making live appearances.

The official commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975 states that vocalist Danny Hutton's then-girlfriend June Fairchild suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground whilst embracing a dingo, a native species of wild dog. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and if a night was especially cold, it was a "three dog night".

The band started in 1968 with three lead vocalists, Danny Hutton (who got his start with Hanna-Barbera Records in 1965), Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells (who landed a recording contract with Dunhill Records). They had made some early recordings in 1967 with Brian Wilson and initially went by the name of Redwood. Shortly after abandoning the Redwood moniker, the vocalists hired a group of backing musicians--Michael Allsup on guitar, Floyd Sneed on drums, Joe Schermie from the Cory Wells Blues Band on bass, and Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards--and soon became one of the most successful bands in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Dog_Night

Easy To Be Hard Lyrics

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend, I need a friend

How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend, we all need a friend

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
Easy to be cold, easy to say no
Come, on, easy to give in, easy to say no
Easy to be cold, easy to say no
Much too easy to say no