Carly Rae Jepsen and Faber Drive
“Call Me Maybe” singer Carly Rae Jepsen has a Glee-style dance choir past.
At least that’s what the guys from Faber Drive told Sarah on the red carpet at the MuchMusic Video Awards last week.
They know this how? Because one of them was in the choir with her in high school.
To read the full story, head over to AOL Music Blog and click here.
Filed under Dance, Music, Shameless Promotion
Scenes From American Idiot, The Musical
There’s been a lot of talk in the Risky Fuel household over the years about things like Pippin, Cabaret, and Hair. All of it by Sarah.
She’s moderately obsessed with musicals and has crafted a number of fake ones in her head. It would seem the enablers at AUX TV thought it would be cute to set her loose and reveal some of these ideas. The result: storylines for musicals about Bon Jovi, Arcade Fire, Rush, The Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre, Joel Plaskett, and the topper, a gay love triangle called Heavy Metal: The Musical set to Judas Priest songs.
You can read all about said musicals by clicking here.
Filed under Dance, Music, Shameless Promotion
Kidz Bop 21 is free of ANYTHING that would scare your kids
There’s a thing called the Kidz Bop series and it’s a really big deal. Basically, producers get a bunch of next generation Disney kids together and they sing reworked versions of popular Top 40 radio hits with all the sex, drugs, violence, innuendo, negativity, religion, and any other potentially controversial language smoothed out of the songs and usually replaced with the words “dance” or “dance, yeah!”
Sarah spent an unnaturally long time listening to the kidz-ified versions of songs by LMFAO, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Rihanna and a pile of others on the recently released Kidz Bop 21. She then compared the kidz versions to the originals to find out how youth-friendly they’ve been made.
You can read about her results over at the AOL Music Blog by clicking here.
Filed under Dance, Music, Shameless Promotion
Jake Epstein in American Idiot
Team Risky Fuel was so full of existential angst after checking out the Canadian debut of Green Day’s American Idiot musical that we had to dig a little deeper.
So Sarah tracked down Jake Epstein, one of American Idiot’s main performers, to get the lowdown on what it’s like channeling Billie Joe Armstrong every day. Along the way Jake, who played Craig Manning on cult series Degrassi: The Next Generation, also dished on his former castmate Drake, Glee, and subversive musical Spring Awakening.
You can read the story at Spinner by clicking here.
Filed under Dance, Music, Shameless Promotion
American Idiot cast member Scott J. Campbell
Aaron and I went to the opening of American Idiot at the Toronto
Centre For The Arts on Thursday night. He went out of a slightly
morbid curiosity. I went because I was reared on alternative rock and
show tunes in almost equal measure, and the show seemed like it was
made especially for me.
As a rocker, I was more amused than satisfied with the production. But
as a Broadway baby, I was completely entranced.
The 90 minute musical based on Green Day’s 2004 concept album of
the same name isn’t a perfect marriage of rock ’n’ roll and musicals,
but it is a very good musical that is fueled by the spirit of rock.
Much like Spring Awakening (director Michael Mayer’s other
groundbreaking show that infused popular music with a more traditional
theatre structure) used pop to express sexual frustration and coming
of age melancholy, Idiot harnesses Green Day’s fury, frustration and
passion to tell the story of a trio of friends facing a post-9/11
world.
Indeed, American Idiot is almost a companion piece to Spring
Awakening, or at least its angsty big sister. If Spring Awakening is a
pubescent teen flailing around, furiously masturbating and learning
about love and loss for the first time, then Idiot is on the verge of
adulthood, clad in combat boots and existential crises, writing angry
poetry about an empty world that is nothing like the one they were
promised.
The plot is bare bones to the point of abstraction (it’s really not
much more complex than the high concept pitch I tossed out two
paragraphs ago) but Idiot is more about feeling than story. And
everything from the choreography, the balls-out performances by the
cast, and the brilliant stage design really nails that essence. It’s
not quite as in-your-face as an actual rock concert, but American
Idiot is one of the most visceral musicals I’ve ever seen – although
experienced is probably a more accurate description.
American Idiot runs until January 15 at the Toronto Centre For The Arts
The cast will also be performing as part of CityTV’s New Year’s Eve
Festivities tonight.
