I’m sure you probably have something like this… there’s an album, or a band, or a song or even a whole musical with which you cannot, even under threat of death, prevent yourself from singing along. Regardless of where you are, with whom you find yourself or what you’re actually doing, you find yourself humming or singling along quietly. Or, for the worse afflictions, you must sing full-voice, loudly too, along with your favorites.
This, dear Reader, is why I only allow myself to listen to The Complete Symphonic Recording of Les Miserables, featuring an all-star cast singing the entire operetta, within the confines of my home office or alone in my car.
Les Miserables is the first Broadway show I ever saw and I completely fell in love with it. Shortly after I saw it, this recording was released. I splurged the $30 for three cassette set instead of buying the $10 soundtrack that only included a handful of songs. In college, I wrote papers with Les Mis as my soundtrack - almost 3 hours of epic drama is definitely useful to keep my brain going. At my first couple of jobs, I would listen it to it in my cube on my little walkman tape player thing.
I sang along quietly at first.
By my second job I was getting looks from people over the cube walls.
That’s when I started limiting where I could listen to these tapes: home, car, or otherwise alone.
At some point, I misplaced the tapes with my other cassettes then sent them to be sold in a yard sale.
The time of cassettes has passed, and I never did get a converter to digitize my tapes anyway, so earlier this year I found and re-purchased the same recording from iTunes. Guess what? It’s cheaper now than it was 17 years ago! But it’s just as wonderful as I remember it. And this recording is still excellent when I need to get things done. Like today, or any other time things are particularly crazy. The intensity of the music keeps me from getting too distracted - I can either pay attention to what I’m working on or the music. There is little else.
And after singing to it all again this afternoon? I still think Marius and Cosette are spoiled children who need to get a clue and my love for Fantine’s and Javert’s songs persists.
Oh, and I’m totally pretending no one can hear me when I sing in my home office.
tags: les miserable, singing
