Original Broadway Cast – Hair (1968)

I want it long, straight,

Curly, fuzzy,

Snaggy, shaggy,

Ratty, matty,

Oily, greasy, 

Fleecy, shining,

Gleaming, streaming, 

Flaxen, waxen,

Knotted, polka-dotted,

Twisted, beaded, braided,

Powdered, flowered, and confettied,

Bangled, tangled, spangled,

And spaghettied!

When I was a high-school junior living in Joplin, Missouri, my parents subscribed to Newsweek.  That’s probably where I read about Hair, the iconic musical that opened on Broadway in 1968.  (Its official name was Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical – which is quite a mouthful.)

I ran right out to the nearest record store, bought the soundtrack album, and spent the rest of the afternoon listening to it with two senior girls who were musicians like me.  (Unfortunately, each of these girls was my “girl friend,” but not my “girlfriend” – would that they had been!)

After returning home with my new record, I wanted to keep listening to it.  I didn’t dare play it on the Magnavox console stereo in our living room – the lyrics were a little racy for my parents' taste.  (E.g., here’s the first line of one of the songs: “S*d*my, f*ll*t**, c*nn*l*ng*s, p*d*r*sty.”)  

So I closed the door to my bedroom and listened to it over and over and over on the little portable record player I had won in the local spelling bee when I was a fourth-grader.  As I listened, I wrote down the lyrics to all the songs, one line at a time – including the parts that made no sense to me.

*     *     *     *     *

When I went back to my hometown for my 40th high-school reunion, I found the three-hole, wide-ruled notebook paper on which I wrote down the lyrics.  My mother (God bless her) never threw away anything of mine  – we’re talking report cards, class photos, piano recital programs, etc. – except all my old baseball cards.  (If she had kept those cards, I could have retired early – but she ditched them, so I had to slave away at my law firm until I was 65.)

My handwritten Hair lyrics – which I hadn’t seen for 40 years – were perfectly preserved because my mother had put them in a Rubbermaid storage box, which she had placed on a closet shelf.

Here's one of several pages where I scribbled down fragmentary lyrics to the song “Hair.”  (Some of the songs on the album were easy to decipher, but "Hair" took a lot of work.)  

My handwriting was much better then:

*     *     *     *     *

To say that this record had a major impact on me is an understatement.  (Is the Pope Catholic?  Does a bear . . . etc.?)  I thought it was the greatest thing in the history of Western civilization, and I listened to it until I essentially had memorized the whole thing.

There have been a lot of great Broadway musicals – South Pacific, Damn Yankees, The Music Man, West Side Story, and Les Misérables among them – but none of them are  better than Hair.

Except maybe The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

*      *      *      *      *

Click here to buy the original Broadway cast recording of Hair – one of the ten best albums from the first half of pop music’s “Golden Decade” – from Amazon. 

Original Broadway Cast – "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" (1968)

Listening for the new told lies

With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Today’s featured song popped up on my iPod on Wednesday, while I was on a coronavirus-defying bike ride in Columbia, Maryland.

That ride took place only a few days after the birth of my sixth grandchild but first granddaughter, Eliza – whose desire to depart from her mother’s body was so urgent that there was no time for her parents to drive to the hospital.  She had to be delivered at home by a crew of EMTs from the local fire station.

The only way Eliza could be more beautiful is if she was twins:

*     *     *     *     *

Today – Good Friday – the high temperature where I live was only 48 degrees.  (The low tonight is supposed to get down to 36.)

But two days ago, it was 77 degrees here when I loaded up my bike and headed to Columbia to ride the Lake-to-Lake-to-Lake Trail.  

I started by circling Lake Elkhorn:

Then I rode to Lake Kittamaqundi:

My next destination was Wilde Lake:

After I circumnavigated Wilde Lake, I reversed course and headed back to my starting point.

*     *     *     *     *

Columbia is not a city – it’s a “census-designated place” consisting of ten unincorporated villages.

But it’s the second-most populous community in Maryland (after Baltimore), with just over 100,000 residents.

Sixty years ago, the area that Columbia’s villages occupy today was mostly farmland.  But in 1962, developer James Rouse started quietly buying up land with the intention of building a planned community.  He eventually purchased 140 separate parcels of land covering a total of more than 14,000 acres.

A statue of James Rouse and his partner (and brother) Willard Rouse overlooks Lake Kittamaqundi.  Some wag has put face masks on both statues, which are not six feet apart:

The Rouse brothers

*     *     *     *     *

“The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)” is the final song on the 1968 original cast recording of the Broadway musical Hair. 

I was a high-school junior when I bought the album, and I played it to death – but usually behind closed doors so my parents would not hear the shocking lyrics!

Click here to listen to the original Broadway cast recording of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In).”  Pay close attention at 1:42 of the track, when Lynn Kellogg and Melba Moore go to town.

Lynn Kellogg

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Original Broadway Cast of "Hair" -- "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)" (1968)

Let the sunshine,

Let the sunshine in,

The sunshine in!

Some of you came here today expecting to find the third in my series of posts about my recent Cape Cod bike rides, all of which featured songs that I had heard on the satellite radio in the $9.75-a-day rental car I drove during that little vacation.  

You'll get the Cape Cod post in a couple of days.  Today, 2 or 3 lines is featuring the final song from the Broadway musical Hair.

This last-minute change in plans has produced an inordinate amount of bitching and moaning among the members of my production staff, marketing staff, traffic department, accountants, lawyers, etc. . . . everyone's all bent out of shape.

Thank you, Robert Burns

All I have to say to them is the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley, boys and girls.  If that's not clear enough for you, how about this: you'll suck on it and you'll like it!  And if you are still uncertain, how about this: eff you and the horses you rode in on!!!  ("Get the picture?  Yes, we see.")

I had a dream the other night.  (By the way, I hate books where the main character has a dream that is described at great length.  Either the dream is impossibly surreal and befuddling, or it's symbolic in a painfully obvious way.  In any event, using a dream as a fictional device is a truly lame way for an author to reveal what's going on in his character's head.  But as my late grandmother used to say, "Do as I say, not as I do.")  

In this dream, I was skiing down a huge mountain at an amazing rate of speed.  Suddenly I realized I was actually going down a giant ski jump ramp, and a moment later I had been launched upwards and was soaring through the crisp Alpine air.  It was exhilarating, albeit a bit scary -- I've never skied in my life.  But soon my upward trajectory began to flatten, and it struck me that any second I would start to plummet downward towards the earth.  Just before that happened, I woke up.

Obviously, I never had such a dream.  The dream is simply a somewhat clumsy metaphor.  (I'm not sure that it really is a metaphor, but I know it's not a simile and I'm equally sure it's not anthropomorphism or hyperbole or an oxymoron.)  My soaring flight off the ski jump ramp stands in for the upward trajectory of success that my wildly popular blog is enjoying, and the realization that my ascent is about to turn into a catastrophic descent is symbolic of my fears and anxieties about what the future may bring for 2 or 3 lines. 

What the future has brung . . . that is to say, what the future has brought . . . are posting schedules that are planned weeks in advance, and demographic analyses, and quarterly revenue projections, and carefully coordinated marketing campaigns.  Not to mention a lot of people in suits with three-button jackets and plain-front pants, all wearing tasseled loafers and Vineyard Vines ties.

Vineyard Vines ties

Enough!  I've had it up to here with all that crap.  (Pardon my French, but I had to deal with a credit card company's customer-"service" representative today about some late fees and interest charges that I had been told would be taken off before this month's bill was mailed out, and you know how that usually goes.)  

I'll be frank.  This is my blog and I will run it as I please.  If I decide to feature "Mairzy Doats (and Dozy Doats and Liddle Lamzy Divey)" tomorrow -- which is not the worst idea I've ever had -- I expect my employees to give me a snappy salute, ask me whether I would like to be kissed on the left cheek or the right cheek, and then carry out my wishes as fast as they can.  And I expect them to do that whether they are real or imaginary.  Comprende?

On to our song, which brings Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (to use its full title) to an ecstatic close.

Most of you will probably associate the "Let the Sunshine In" portion of this song with "Aquarius," the opening song of Hair.  That's because The 5th Dimension recorded a medley of the two songs that was a #1 hit for six weeks in the spring of 1969.  But never did those twain meet in the musical.

I like "The Flesh Failures" part of the song a lot, but I can't say that I have any frigging clue what the lyrics mean, and none of them seemed particularly quotable to me.  (If you can explain the lyrics to me, please do.)

Click here to read an earlier 2 or 3 lines post about a song from Hair.

Here's the original Broadway cast recording of "The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)":

Here's a clip from the 1979 movie adaptation of Hair:

Here's a link you can use to order the original Broadway cast version of the song from Amazon: