#LLLPlay playlist (part 2, from first interval to end) #richardarmitage

In the previous list, I included the songs that played as the house was filling. There were many fewer musical selections in the intervals, which were only ten minutes long. Both Acts One and Two ended with music.

Act One ends with a song that is part of the action, and is playing on the television as the closing number to “Our World,” a topic of conversation in the play. Armitage tweeted a link to it, I think, or you can view it here:

1. The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love” (1967). #1 all over the world, including UK and U.S. Apparently it’s not clear whether it was written for the broadcast, with some thinking it was and some not.

The first interval then continued with:

2. Cream, “I Feel Free” (1966). #11 on the UK charts and #116 in the U.S. Found this by googling lyrics, I am sure I’d never heard it before. Cream, the Eric Clapton project, is supposedly Armitage’s fave band from this period.

3. The Beatles, “Eight Days a Week” (1964). #1 in both the U.S. and UK.

4. The Zombies, “The Time of the Season” (1967). #3 in the U.S., but did not chart in the UK.

5. Procol Harum, “Kaleidoscope” (1967; this was never released as a single, but the album it was on, Procol Harum, went to 26 in the UK and 47 in the U.S.) Thanks to DaphneHS for helping me figure this out. It’s also one of the albums Kenneth has in his hands in Act Two of the play.

Failed on this one. Did not know the song and could not hear enough lyrics to google. Heavy rock organ instrumentation. The only line I got was “don’t read in the dark” and that is probably wrong. If you remember the song please let me know.

6. The Beatles, “Help!” (1965). Main track for the film of the same name. #1 in the U.S. and UK and many other countries.

The final song of the interval is the cue for the curtain to rise on Act Two — as it does, we see Jamie playing air guitar and singing the song. Act Two also closes with the same song and Jamie in the same position although in quite a different mood.

7. The Stone Roses, “She Bangs the Drum” (1989). #36 in the UK, no chart in the US, and this is the first time I’d ever heard the song. We’re now in the realm of “alternative” music which was much less widely heard, although I’d guess that most college students in the U.S. in the 1980s might have heard this. (I was still leading a comparatively sheltered life then.) This song is specified in the script.

Only two songs in the second interval, but both of these were favorites of mine from the 1980s.

8. Fine Young Cannibals, “Good Thing” (1989). #1 in the US, #7 in the U.K. Apparently the band first performed this song in a 1987 film that took place in the 1960s.

9. David Bowie, “Modern Love” (1983). #2 in the UK and #14 in the U.S. I think I read this spring that Bowie, looking back, did not like his music that made Top 40, but, well — I did. Loved this song at the time.

A final song starts as the curtain rises on Act Three.

ETA: At some point, they seem to have added a song to playlist before Act Three.

9.5: Public Image LTD., “This Is Not A Love Song,” album remix version (1983 originally, but this is the remix from 1984, with the big horn section). PIL was Johnny Rotten’s post-Sex Pistols project. I had never heard this song before but it was number 5 in England in 1983, the group’s biggest commercial hit.

10. David Guetta, “Sexy Chick” (2009). #1 in the UK, #5 in the U.S. Interestingly, several years ago Richard Armitage cited Guetta as an artist who was often on his iPod. This song is specified in the script as well.

Toward the end of the run, this song was changed. A fan asked Ben Rosenfield at the stage door why they changed the music, and he confirmed that it was a rights issue (and that he liked the original song better).

10.5: Inspiral Carpets, “She Comes in the Fall,” (1990). I had never heard this song before, either; it reached 27 in the UK in 1990.

This concludes my list — there may be things I’ve forgotten or missed but to my recollection they played the same songs every time I saw the play.

~ by Servetus on November 9, 2016.