Rue Plumet

As you may already know, I am a total Les Miserables freak. It is by far my favorite musical and I listen to it on a regular basis. But just recently I finally got around to doing something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I took all of the recordings that I have and listened to each song from each recording back to back to find out which recording I liked best for each song. I have four recordings of Les Miserables in English and two in French, but I just stuck with the English ones for now. With four versions of each song, and considering that for many of the songs I had to listen to them all more than once in order to make a decision, it took me a really long time to get through everything. I’d say I probably took me around 30 hours to finish everything. I can do that much more easily now because I don’t have to take customer service phone calls at my new job, so I can listen to music for long periods of time without interruption.

The four English recordings I have (in order of release) are the Original London Cast (OLC), the Original Broadway Cast (OBC), the Complete Symphonic Recording (CSR), and the Tenth Anniversary Concert (TAC). As you might be able to guess from the name, the CSR contains the musical in its entirety (and therefore requires three CDs), while the other three recordings pretty much contain all of the songs but leave off a lot of the connecting material (and as a result those recordings are only two CD’s each).

In a broad sense, I discovered that there are certain things I really like about each recording, except for the OBC. There is not a single song where I thought the OBC had the best version, and there were only a handful where I thought it had the second best version. But don’t take that the wrong way. If the OBC was the only version available, I’m sure I would absolutely love it, but in comparison, I think it lacks something compared to the other recordings.

The most obvious difference about the OLC is the fact that it has some songs and lyric sections that do not appear on any other version. The OLC was the first recording to be released (since the show opened in London), and since then the writers have made several alterations to the show. There are two songs on the OLC that do not appear in subsequent recordings. The first is “Little People”, which is a short song by Gavroche that appears just before “Red and Black”. The second is “I Saw Him Once”, which is sung by Cosette before “In My Life”. ISHO is a lead-in to IML where Cosette talks about seeing Marius for the first time. On subsequent recordings, that material is reworked into an extended beginning to IML. The most obvious lyric change is in “Heart Full of Love”. In the OLC version, Marius says “for shame, I do not even know your name” and then a few lines later sings out “Cosette, Cosette”, which makes no sense. In later versions, that sequence was reworked so that Cosette tells him her name in between those two lines.

Another big difference about the OLC is the fact that many songs on the OLC have a different tempo than the tempo that is consistant across the other recordings. Some songs are slower than the “standard”, and some are faster. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. For example, the OLC has a noticably slower version of “The Confrontation”, and I think it’s fantastic (my number one pick). It also has a slower version of “Red and Black”, and in that song it just really makes things drag along, even though the singing is wonderful.

The TAC is a totally different listening experience than the other three recordings because many of the songs end with audience applause. I know it was a concert and perhaps the applause is appropriate to include on the recording, but it certainly takes away from the flow of the musical in a significant way. The worst offense is the audience clapping along for almost the entirety of “Beggars at the Feast”. The applause and clapping just pulls you out of the story. The TAC also contains more material than either the OBC or the OLC. I suppose that’s because the TAC was performed on stage before an audience, so they made a greater effort to tell the story as the musical moves along. Though it does not approach the CSR, it certainly contains a lot more connecting material than the other two recordings.

So that leaves the the CSR. If I could only have one recording of Les Miserables, at this point it would certainly be the CSR. I think the primary reason for that is because I have seen Les Miserables so many times and I really like the story and the CSR is the only recording that has everything. There are various lines and sections that I really like that only appear on the CSR.

As far as cast selection goes, the CSR does very well. It’s not perfect, but it is very good. The CSR has Gary Morris as Valjean, where all of the other recordings have Colm Wilkinson. I realize that Wilkinson is considered the definitive Valjean, but Morris really holds his own, to the point that I even prefer him on a handful of songs (that may cause some of you to write off my opinions right there). All in all I think Philip Quast does an admirable job as Javert. He is outdone on “Stars” on some of the other recordings (particularly Roger Allam on the OLC, who really knocks it out of the park), but his voice is good for the part (just the right amount of sinister and snarl) and I like the emotion he brings to the role.

The CSR has Michael Ball as Marius, which is a must in my book. He also appears on the OLC and TAC, but seems in particularly good form on the CSR. Tracy Shayne is a wonderful Cosette on the CSR, and I generally prefer her to all of the other recordings, especially in the critical “In My Life / Heart Full of Love” sequence. I’m not as crazy about Kaho Shimada as Eponine, which is unfortunate because I really like that part. Lea Salonga (who appears on the TAC) would be my personal choice as far as the other recordings go. Debbie Byrne as Fantine is good on the CSR, but Patty Lupone on the OLC or Ruthie Henshall on the TAC are probably my preferences. To be honest, even though I know some people love Fantine, that’s probably always been my least favorite “main role”, which certainly plays into my pick of the CSR as the best overall recording. If Fantine is your favorite role in the whole musical, you might prefer one of the other recordings.

And I just want to say that even though I am being picky about cast selection in the previous little bit, all of these artists are wonderful and their work is fantastic. Each of them has particular sections where they outshine the others, just absolutely nailing certain lines exactly the way I would want them to be. I could never in a million years hope to sing as well as any of them. But in trying to pick favorites, I have to make some kind of decision. So the comments above are not intended to slight any of the artists in any way. They just reflect my personal preferences.

In trying to sort out the results of all of my listening, there are several ways to look at things. The first thing that seems prudent in trying to compare one recording to another in a more detailed sense is to ignore all of the songs that do not appear on all four recordings. That takes the total number of songs from 56 (on the CSR) to 34, which is still a fairly sizable number. If we count how many songs in each recording were my number one pick we end up with:

CSR: 18 top picks
OLC: 9 top picks
TAC: 7 top picks
OBC: 0 top picks

So that places the CSR in the lead, with the OLC and TAC coming behind with fairly similar numbers, and the OBC trailing. Another way to look at things is to assign 4 points for first pick, 3 points for second pick, 2 points for third pick, and 1 point for fourth pick. That rewards excellent recordings that don’t quite manage to take the top spot for an individual song. Doing that, we end up with:

CSR: 110
TAC: 95
OLC: 88
OBC: 47

Those results still show the CSR in the lead with the OLC and TAC once again following behind with similar numbers. But this time they seem quite a bit closer to the CSR, and the TAC has also managed to jump ahead of the OLC, suggesting that it may be a more even recording overall, whereas the OLC may have more individual standout songs.

So those song-by-song numbers seem to support my overall impression of the CSR as my favorite recording. Once I finished listening to all of the songs individually, I also listened to each recording in its entirety without interruption, and that also reconfirmed that I personally prefer the CSR. I think that’s kind of interesting because if you had asked me before I started all of this, I would have guessed that the OLC would have been my favorite overall. I think that’s partly because the OLC is the first recording I purchased and listened to over and over again, so it sounds the most “familiar” to me.

When I mentioned to Joy that I was doing this she pretty much thought I was crazy. But I’ve always been curious how I would compare the various recordings song by song, and I guess now I know. I also know how to construct my own “perfect” Les Miserables by selecting the “best” version of each song from the various recordings and combining those together to reconstruct the entire musical (which I have done with a playlist on my computer).

In closing, you can find my detailed song-by-song breakdown after the jump.
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Joy had an ultrasound this morning and we discovered that the new baby on the way is a boy! Wow! That will give us a girl and a boy, so we will have the blessing of the experience of raising both. Joy thought this baby would be a girl, and pretty much everyone else (including me) thought it would be a boy, so I can’t say that I too terribly surprised, but it is fun to know. It looks like we’ll have lots of girl’s clothes to give away and we’ll get to find some new boy’s clothes with cars and trains and dinosaurs and other fun boy things. :-)

Click “more” to see a list of all of the interesting web sites I found this week. I keep track of my favorite sites using del.icio.us, a free web site where you can access your favorite links from any computer and share them with friends. You can also see all of my favorite links (not just the ones from this week).

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“You have to ask yourself which ‘can’t’ wins. Is it ‘We can’t launch it like that because it’s not quite right’ or is it ‘We can’t spend any more time on this because if we do we can’t launch’? The outcomes of those two scenarios are night and day, yet they both sound like there are no alternatives. In this context, can’t kills priority which is why it’s an especially dangerous word.

And that’s the problem with using absolutes in debates. They can be healthy when a decision absolutely needs to be made, but they can also box you into corner by pitting two opposite absolutes against each other. Can’t squeezes out middle ground when there is usually middle ground to be reached.

Moral of the story: Be careful when attaching absolutes to your position.”

(Jason via the 37signals “Signal vs. Noise” blog)

We had some people from our small group over to watch football and play board games on New Years Day and we all had a lot of fun. I’m not too interested in football, but we visited and talked about our holidays during the game, too, so it was nice to catch up with everyone. When we got around to playing board games, we once again decided on Settlers. We played the basic game with six players (and even then a few of the “players” were teams). I was soundly beaten this time around. I had seven points at the end of the game, but no real chance to increase that number any time soon. I tried to use an ore-wheat strategy, but ore ended up being pretty scarce throughout the game, so my 2-to-1 ore port initial placement didn’t really do anything useful for me. Curtis won the game without the largest army or the longest road. He managed to build four cities and two settlements (and only seven roads), helped quite a bit by a 2-to-1 sheep port and several placements on fields. We used the dice instead of the new event cards, and it once again demonstrated that the random dice throws can sometimes be very off balance. We rolled considerably more 12’s than 6’s, which was pretty crazy. I think it might be nice to use the event cards for the dice rolls but just ignore the special events on the cards. That gets you a better distribution of numbers but doesn’t disturb the normal game flow that people are used to.

You may recall that in the distant past (aka last January) I posted about an RSS feed to read through the Bible in a year. Well, I am happy to report that I successfully read the whole Bible last year. I hadn’t done that since college, and I’m very glad that I did. I think it was a good experience, and one that I will try to do more frequently. I’m not sure if I’m going to read through the entire Bible again this year or concentrate more deeply on a smaller portion instead. I’m currently leaning towards the latter, but I need to decide soon since the new year is already under way.

Charis was much more interested in Christmas this year than she was last year. I guess that’s to be expected since she was nearly 20 months old this time compared to about 8 months last year. Anyway, she liked opening her own presents as long as we pulled up a corner of the wrapping paper for her to start with. She tended to tear it off in small strips, but she certainly enjoyed herself. Her “big” gift this year was a wooden kitchen (thanks Granny!) with we also got a bunch of wood appliances and stuff to go with it. I put the kitchen together Christmas Eve after she went to bed, but she opened the appliances Christmas morning. In addition to the appliances, Joy and I also also got her several books since Charis loves reading books and mom and dad needed to add some more variety to her current library in order to keep our sanity. About half way through opening her gifts on Christmas morning Charis turned and looked straight at Joy and I and said “thank you”. I have to say, that was pretty special. She knows a little bit about thank you, but she doesn’t say it very often yet, so it was neat to see her do that all on her own. When everything was open, she went back over to the now empty boxes from the appliances, put her hand on one of them, and then asked “again?”. I think it’s safe to say she liked the whole experience. :-)