In the Heights, I can't survive without café

If you've seen the season six premiere of House, you'd probably know Lin-Manuel Miranda as the manic-depressive rapper, Alvie, who became our doctor's roommate in that episode.  Me being me, I had to turn to Wikipedia to find out more about the actor.  Imagine my delight¹ when I discovered that Mr. Miranda was quite a name on Broadway; he won a Tony Award for composing and writing In the Heights, which itself won Best Musical for the 2008 season.  It didn't take long before I proceeded to downl obtain through perfectly legal channels the cast recording of the show.  And man, was I blown away.

Note that my perception of the musical is based almost completely on the music alone, since I've not actually seen the show (duh, we don't all live in New York), but man is the music fun.  Oozing with Latin-American influence, some of the songs here you can actually dance to, in a non-choreographed, lyrical kinda way; think along the lines of embarrassing dance moves you'd see in a club.  I may also be somewhat biased² due to the amount of rapping in the musical, but hey, that's what happens when the guy who wrote it is a rapper.  If you liked Rent, you'd probably like In the Heights (Lin-Manuel himself admitted that Rent was a major influence on his work).  But hey, enough chatter-whatter, let's let a video do the talking (ignore the flashes of Alec Baldwin and Judi Dench):

Unfortunately, Carrie thinks that the musical's far too noisy (there are ballads too, y'know!), so for the moment In the Heights is my personal guilty pleasure.  Attempts to convert people have largely failed, though, but likely not for long!  A film version, starring most of the original cast, should be making its way to cinemas before the end of the year.  You heard it here first!

Eventually, I started obtaining through perfectly legal channels the cast recordings of other musicals, including:

1. Stephen Sondheim's esoteric Into the Woods, based on the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.
2. You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, a funny, family-friendly piece based on the characters of the Peanuts comic strip.
3. Urinetown, a very unconventional musical about people paying for the privilege to pee.
   
4. Chicago.  'Nuff said.
   

If you'd like to listen to any of the above (and a host of other musicals), you can obtain them through perfectly legal channels by way of me.  In short, just pass me a thumbdrive, or shoot me up with an e-mail or Facebook message.

Oh, and before I end this post, there's also something else that you might like to get from me.  This one goes out especially to all you choir peeps; first we had Glee, now we have The Sing-Off!

I wouldn't say that they're the best a capella groups I've ever seen, but the show sure is fun to watch!


Footnotes:
1 - Delight comes in many forms, but an example of the Zhen way to show it can be seen in the following photo:

2 - The very first cassette I bought, back in Form 2, was Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP.  I listened to nothing but rap music for almost two years, and friends used to make fun of me for that.  Surprise!