The Ramblings of Elyse

I did get this ages ago, but I am writing about it now, because I can...

A topic at the request of Snix, here it is....


I saw it once.

It was a cold Saturday night. I was at home.

Actually, I don't remember if it was cold, I just remember it was a Saturday night and I was bored watching TV.  It was when it had first been released or just doing the rounds.

As a musical fan, I'm a fan of musicals and thus enjoying watching them. I had heard things about this new phenomenon crushing the tweens with dance and thought "A musical? How refreshingly awesome..."

I checked with my Musical Peeps about the standards of it compared to actually good musicals. One said it was good and that I'd love it, the other said it what shit and to run, RUN AWAY!

I was torn, they are my two most trustworthy sources and who was I to believe?

But I decided to not just take the words of advice from my most trust allies and to go into the abyss and watch.

Oh, I watched.

It was atrocious.
To this day the one thing that I can not get over is the enemies of Zac Efron and Vanessa whatever her last name is, I could look it up and ruin my repuation as an unworthy news source but I'm too lazy for that. Oh wait... Vanessa Hudgens. Thank you for being in many Disney scandals and posing topless on the internet a lot to feature in trashy mags so I can eventually remember your name.

Oh.. Character names... Troy and Gabriella? Is now!

Well, their enemies.
They are brother and sister. BROTHER AND SISTER!
Now, I'm sure many people are thinking that I should get over the fact that people on television do sometimes have siblings. Not that often, but some times they do and I should move on.

Normally I'd agree but the point of the musical and why the Brother and Sister have something against Troy and Gabriella is that they are going for the leads in the school musical.

I'm someone that knows a lot about musicals. Your typical musical, especially your typical musical that is going to be performed by a high school is the quintessial love story. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, something horrible happens meaning they can't be together in the end and then they get together at the end, everyone lives happily ever after.
That's how it goes.


Your leads in a musical?
They play that boy and girl.

People you don't want playing the leads in the musical... A BROTHER AND SISTER!!
That is wrong and disturbing and just no.

I could sustain my disbelief no longer after that.
Seriously?
What the hell?

ESPECIALLY, ESPICALLY since how much they play the we are the leads in the musical together and when we sing we make beautiful together that we will continue off stage and off screen as not to offend any parents, but man, those front hugs will be hot.
To play that card continually and then throw the fact the people rthat used to be in those roles are siblings?
Yeah, that is not right.

When it comes to my opinion of High School Musical my opinion is so clouded due to that, that I don't remember most of it.

As a result of this most of my opinion then comes to the aftermath and consequences... Which one side I kind of enjoy because if it means that there is a surge of popularity in musicals that means that in Sydney it won't be one musical every couple of months, but more than one?
Like West Side Story and Wicked both showing in July!
That is something I can get behind.
Though, that is far more likely to do with the absolute steam rolling of everything that Wicked is doing.

I'm all for more musicals.
Things I am not behind...

Did you know they made a stage version of HSM?
A STAGE VERSION!
Do you know with that stage version they are doing amateur versions of it?
That is disturbing.

At uni the other day I saw a flyer for an amateur version of it in like Chatswood or somewhere and I'm not going to lie, part of my musical loving heart died a little.

The rant that goes with this is the Jukebox musical. I hate them as well, I'm looking at you Mama Mia! Jersey Boys! The Wedding Singer! Shout! The Dusty Springfield Story.
I find these an afront to musical theatre.

The Wedding Singer in particular, if only because they killed my favourite joke from the movie in there. They tried but they obviously couldn't get the rights to use the Culture Club's Do You Really Want to Hurt me.
But still...

Write your own fricken musicals! Don't just use songs that are already a commerical success and write a dodgy story to make them work because it doesn't and I don't care for it.


But back to High School Musical.
I think they tried to go with some ironic kind of humour with "musicals aren't cool and I'll tell you why- through song!" thing. I think it's humour. I'm really hoping it was because other wise, those writers are fucked and need to be taken out and shot.

Now, the only song I remember was I think the big dance number which I've conveniently stolen from YouTube to destroy your ears, eyes, heart and soul...



That is the only song I can remember and it informs me that I should follow the rules and stick to the status quo. Well, the status is not quo and fuck you High School Musical for contributing your filth to the pop culture vernacular and making people confirm to what are the apparent ideals of high school.


Ok, maybe it hasn't hit the pop culture, but this is going to be like the Grease of the next generation or atleast that's what they were going for.
This is going to be involved in shaping the youngin's pop culture and it makes me sad because Grease?
Grease is hilarious.

I at least knew Grease was taking the piss. I'm pretty sure HSM is not.

Even though I like to forget High School Musical ever plagued the world, I do like the guy that bakes.

I do enjoy writing my Inadvertently Ask Elyse section, which is just what I call it in my head but it was my last post but something I discovered thanks to the comments is that one of the search terms, "Elyse and the Aftermath" is actually a band.

Elyse from Elyse and the Aftermath kindly informed me of this, thanked me for the shout out and then said was going to read the rest of my blog. Which made me feel horribly guilty because as far as shout outs go. That really isn't a shout out at all because I wasn't aware they were band until this afternoon when on the bus I read my email and giggled heartily to myself.

Thus, I decided that hey, I'm going to check out this AWESOMELY named band, because come on "Elyse and the Aftermath" AWESOME. I think I want that on a shirt.
Not because of the association with the band, just coz it's a little bit hilarious.

I particularly like their website because it these quotes:

"Elyse' s soaring vocals and introspective lyrics engaged an enthusiastic crowd that would shout back responses during the between-song banter. The group put on a performance like they were playing for a packed stadium."
Kristin Hauser - LA Music Blog ""

And it cracks me up a little bit to read because it's totally referring to me.
You know how it is.

I actually decided to do a review and I'm not sure if I should be scathing or not in case it gets read by the band and then I realised that is a bit of a cowardly dog move...
My review isn't actually scathing.

There are four songs on the website, that I'm currently listening to.
Three are from the album, which I totes stole the cover of from the website:


It's available on iTunes, which also makes me feel LESS guilty for the stealing the picture.

So, from what I've gathered from the site, it's a four piece band.

Vocals, guitars, bass and drums.
And my first thought it is "wow, those are some clean sounding drums", which is a weird first thought and yeah, I'm totes gonna be the best sound engineer ever.

Shut Up Listen- I have no idea what is going with the synth, but it's very 80s and kind of bugs. It actually reminds me a little bit of the Pseudo Echo version of Funkytown and contrasts a lot with the chorus.
Yeah, I can't even block it out now.
Other than it's the rock fare, but with a nice contrast of someone who can actually sing on vocals, which is a nice change .

So yeah, good kind of pop-rock type sound.
Good sound.

Good name, good sound and who doesn't love some independent music?

Apparently, I also shouldn't feel bad about no doing proper shout outs, but I do like to have topics to write about and considering today was performance day at uni and I spent my afternoon at a pub listening to live music, I'm feeling the music love.

Plus, seriously, they are called Elyse and the Aftermath?
I can't pass that shit up!

So yes, people of the internet feel free to take advantage of my guilt.