Gil Hates Everything

Postponed from last week, here’s what I think of this jukebox musical, which no doubt asserts that captures the spirit of the Swinging Sixties in London, England, with a cast of five Mod girls – “mod” = “modern”, in case you’re not enough of a face or a high number to know this – who comment on their lives and their social development and the changes in the world by – of course – singing a bunch of sixties pop hits.

The script apparently isn’t very good, but there are twenty-three songs to listen to, and as usual, it all depends whether you like this stuff. My personal take on the sixties is that it seems to have been very much the best of times and the worst of times (nothing new there then)… a lot of my favourite writers have a lot of time for the goofy-yet-incredible nature of Sixties mind-expansion, and it’s not like I don’t love The Avengers and The Prisoner… but the music… hmmmmm… a lot of the songs on offer here are the “singer” pop hits, as opposed to the bands. Nothing by The Kinks, nothing by The Who.

The arrangements are a little questionable… too much going on, usually, compared to the original Mod music which often had an elegant sparseness, giving you room for your head to expand. (The practical definition of an arrangement is “when the musicians agree to not all play all the time” ;-) The songs mostly still sound danceable – ironic, given that there’s not many musicals you go to to dance yourself. But as is so often the case when you listen to jukebox musical versions, there are variations from the originals which make you twitch, or in some cases, actively convulse.

It all sounds a bit pointless. At least if you stock a jukebox musical with one artist’s songs, you can offer your audience the simple question: “Do you like this artist?” And people usually have a good idea of how to answer that. But it’s much harder to say “Do you like groovy sixties music?” because then you’re looking at a selection of ten thousand songs rather than a few dozen. It tells you nothing, and going straight to the lowest common denominator just means we’re stuck with “Puppet On A String” and “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’”.

Also, there’s a fucking terrible vocalized arrangement of “Goldfinger”. Do not like.

This didn’t impress and doesn’t justify its existence at all for me. Random Panda awards it two out of ten pieces of bamboo.

(originally posted 2009)