Lately I’ve taken such great pleasure in watching bootleg videos of unreleased Streisand recordings.
I don’t know how or where these things come from but they are –– to me at least –– mesmerizing on so many levels. [I mean, it was the pre-iphone 1988 … did she not observe someone was filming her with a video recorder –– although apparently it was because the studio was so huge the composer/conductor Rupert Holmes needed a monitor in order to see her.]
All day long, I’ve been haunted by the melody of MOONFALL –– especially during my walk with Susan and Belle on the beach –– and fascinated with the three takes this guy’s posted.
Here are things I love:
1. That she yawns at the beginning.
2. That in Take 1 she doesn’t know where to come in.
3. That in Take 1.5 she asks at the end “do you really want me to hold the note for that long?” at the end –– and then asks if the conductor wants a swell during it –– and totally delivers.
4. That for some inexplicable reason she doesn’t wear the headphones but has them on her ears upside down … WHY? WHY, Barbra … WHY?
5. That in all of these kinds of things –- spanning many years –– there are always flowers in the background. Is that her “thing” –– or do people just send them to wish her well at the start of an album?
Anyway:
I’m also fascinated since this is from THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD which was on Broadway in 1985 and had that whole thing of multiple endings –– the audience voted at each show about who the murderer was and which couples got together.
Somehow that fits in with all my crackpot multi-verse stuff –– ranging from BASHAR to the COMMUNITY episode where each time Abed rolls the dice for who gets the pizza delivery, an entirely different outcome changes all their lives.
All we can hope for is that we’re not living in the darkest Universe –– the one where Jeff loses an arm and Shirley has a nervous breakdown –- but in one of the Happier Ones….
The ones where (unlike this one) the final version of MOONFALL was released on a Streisand album.
[But apparently, that’s happening in a 50th anniversary recording thing, and –– paralleling/paraphrasing her recordings from Candide –– we may indeed be living in the “Best of All Possible Worlds.”]
And –– like the orchestra bursting into spontaneous applause at the end of Take 2 –– there is just something so GENIUS about this haunting, elusive, and unreleased masterpiece.
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