Brothers, Sisters, I beseech thee. Can't we stop the fighting? Let us recall our Driftwoodian mission statement: liner notes for lovers. Ease back on the sheepskin, dig out the headphone splitter so you and your sweetheart can sashay through the hi-fi stratosphere hand-in-hand, starry-eyed. And here is the soundtrack — two who started it all for us: Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John, united always and forever in one film, one Broadway play, one life, one God. I've spent many an hour trying to imagine the cosmic cocaine forces that must have been at play in the creation of the 1980 film Xanadu. What misled geniuses thought it wise to bring together Rita Hayworth's 1947 Down to Earth, roller disco, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", musical comedy, ONJ, ELO, supernatural love, Michael Beck (the lovely from Warriors), The Tubes, and GENE KELLY! The story is a blur: the 9 muses jump in and out of immortality through a Venice Beach mural. ONJ is sent to earth to inspire a lowly Beck, an album cover airbrush artist. She does it on roller skates. Kelly and Beck, driving the moral of the tale home, hold fast to their dreams to open a roller nightclub where the muse Terpsichore -- ONJ -- packs the club with her band the Nine Sisters. Peace rules. Love conquers all.
Like eating an entire lemon chiffon pie, it was so good it made you feel sick to your stomach. Xanadu has wisely been revived as a Broadway show, the earthly form it probably always should have manifested. It returns now to remind us of what life was like before everything went to hell. And at long last the swelling subculture of folks who refer to themselves as "Xanadudes" and "Xanadames" have found a home. Two kind friends who have already seen the play four times will return for a fifth night in order to escort Lefty and myself. But for those of you living far from the lights on Broadway I offer two triumphant gems.
Don't Walk Away - Electric Light Orchestra
Suddenly - Olivia Newton John and Cliff Richard
1 comment:
As I told Lefty a while back, the words of Dewey Dell are like dispatches from the guru on the mountain. You wait for them.
Thanks for keeping us on course. In the immortal words of Sting, Rod Stewart AND Bryan Adams -- "All for Love."
Post a Comment