Various – Hair

Is the year wrong here? Should this be 1993? My copy of CD sounds quite muffled and bad, listen before buy if possible.

What are the extra photos of? Did it come with a brochure/booklet or something?

I have and edition from UK 70's. Cat nº SHM 683

By far the best recording of Hair, all other versions are a bit boring or don't have very much "life" to them. The London cast recording IS THE BEST IN MY OPINION.

There is absolutely nothing whatsoever about this album infused with sunshine pop singles that represents the counter culture movement that was going on at the same time in our nation’s turbulent 1960’s.

That being said, allow me to give you a short backstory of the music. Hair, both the musical from which the album rises and the play, tell the tale of a group of young hippies crashed out in New York City living a bohemian lifestyle, rebelling agains the war in Viet Nam, the establishment, dueling with their parents, all while attempting to discern who they are and their place in not only America, but in the world, and what values they wish to instill in themselves and the culture at large.

Yet the reality of the situation was that the counterculture movement and all it stood for had been hijacked, co-opted here by the very same establishment, not for the youth of the day, as we, those of us with a Doors record under our arms, all found this album to be hilarious and funny, as it as all scripted and designed to draw in those mildly older who fancied themselves hip, decked themselves out in a Nehru jacket, flared paints, Beatle boots and some love beads, trotted down to the theater district to see and be seen, to be part of the spectacle of the well-heeled and not the actual kids who were on the actual streets, standing up to the man, living in bug infested cold water flats and living a life that was rather jaded and traumatic.

Allow me to assure you, that over the years, loony future productions of this music and musical became mere parodies of themselves, to the point where there is nearly nothing recognizable from the initial outing other than perhaps the songs, and those have also been updated and revamped to the point where the music and the play are nothing more than an excuse for a theatrical production steeped in big money backers and first rate talent attempting to be and bestow the values of something they can not and will never be able to relate to.

The music has been laid out to be bright, uplifting, sensitive and introspective, delivering an overall senses of well being and satisfaction, traveling down the same path as the television show, The Partridge Family, sonically similar to any of a dozen smooth and easy harmonic background bands of the times who were also out to make a buck at the expense of the counterculture, thus widening the sense of tribalism in this nation, raping the values, be they perhaps silly and naive, yet they were the values many of us held as we faced the onslaught of this nation into one of its most disted and darkest periods.

There’s not an estate or garage sale that I stop at that doesn’t have his album for sale, and often the compact disc as well, leaving me to wonder what they were actually thinking as these subversive songs spun out on their turntables, or if they even understood the subversive nature of these songs, if they truly believed this is what kids in the 60’s were thinking, or if this is how they’ve come to envision us, because I was there, and the music of Hair was not something I could relate to. The only exuberance on this record comes from aspects of the theater, not from reality, as it’s all about as real as a lysergic hallucination.

As with all music and plays of this ilk, there is no honesty to be found lingering around any of the corners, it’s all just a compelling manifestation of something imagined, something that didn’t exist, that has come to define my place in the world during those heady years.

Or … we could gather up the music of television commercials and talk about how decisively honest brilliant and compelling that music is.

Review by Jenell Kesler