The Finest Vinyl

It was a good day today.

It started with a choreography review rehearsal, not something we always have time for, but I'm glad we did. The four numbers were all in good shape -- our five women move and sound really great, and Robin has done some kick-ass choreography -- but it was nice today to have the time to polish, tweak things, change little moments, better focus a tableau, clean up a wrist, all that stuff. And by the time we left, those numbers fucking sparkled. Sexy, sassy, funny, and fierce.

Then earlier this evening, some of the boys and I met at Record Exchange to film a little video promo that Aaron Lawson is creating for us, a fun viral video that addresses head-on one of the primary questions many people have -- Why turn High Fidelity into a musical? I don't know if we'll convert any purists, but it'll give you a chuckle, and hopefully encourage some folks to come see our show. Aaron has made several viral videos and the ones I've seen are terrific, very smart, very funny, so I'm sure this will be very cool...

It was so fun being back at Record Exchange after our field trip there last weekend. Jean Haffner, the owner, is the nicest guy in the world and he let us shoot after he closed today.

AND -- only a few people will care about this, but I'm so psyched -- Zak is thumbing through some old 78s between shots and he pulls up "The Death of Floyd Collins," a song written in 1925 about the real-life caver Floyd Collins who got trapped in a cave and around whom sprung up America's first media circus. Why do I care about all this? Because we did this beautiful, incredible musical called Floyd Collins back in 1999, and at the time, Alison, the guy playing Floyd, and I went to Cave City, Kentucky, to see Floyd's cave, to understand better what happened. And while there, we found this crappy but fun little Floyd Collins Museum, which played (endlessly) "The Death of Floyd Collins." When we came back from that trip, the show meant more to us than ever. We really felt we understood Floyd and the events in February 1925. So finding this 78 today really meant something to me. And on top of everything else, we're working on High Fidelity and this is VINYL!

When I asked Jean how much he wanted for it, and why it was important to me, he gave it to me as a gift. What a good guy!

So, all in all, a pretty great day. Tomorrow night we start running the whole show every rehearsal, which is totally my favorite part of the process. Now we can find the Life and the Truth in this wonderful, smart, emotional piece of theatre.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott