Hope all of y'all had an enjoyable 4th. We did not engage in the main American pastime of blowin' shit up (or the closely related "watching other people blow shit up") instead opting for the less explosive grilling of cheeseburgers on ye olde Weber. After some misadventures caused by poor planning that involved two separate trips to two separate grocery stores by two separate people to secure all the necessary components. But in the end burgers were grilled and enjoyed. I kicked off the evening with an oh-so-veddy-British gin & tonic and then declared my freedom from colonial rule by switching to local microbrews. Now we're watching 1776. Which I seem never to have mentioned is a favorite of mine. Not so much cos it's a great movie but because it was the first musical I ever saw on Broadway. One of the advantages of having grown up in NYC is that I got to take school trips to see Broadway shows. Well, only twice (probably would've been more if I'd ended up being a theater geek instead of a band/orchestra geek) but still not too shabby. I had the Playbill from that show kicking around my folks' house for a long time but I'm pretty sure it got tossed in some mad frenzy of cleaning at some point over the decades.
One thing which I first noticed last year when TCM showed 1776 with the restored footage of "Cool Considerate Men" (apparently cut from the movie at the request of Nixon) is that the number (which I'd forgotten about after multiple viewings of the movie had gotten in the way of my memories of the play) is anachronistically using the right/left political spectrum. Dickinson and his boys sing that they're "to the right, ever to the right, never to the left." But the idea of left and right as we understand it today is generally thought to have come from the French Revolution. Or about 13 years after the movie takes place. Oh well. The number is rather obviously more about the political realities of the 1960s than the 1770s. But if it's not a great song, it is a pretty good number with all the minuet-ing and then everyone driving off in horse drawn carriages waving walking sticks in the air.