Ten Little Chances to be Free

I don't really want to talk about anything (except how mmebahorel and ladybranwen are awesome and took me out when I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and fed me sorbet and took me to see a deliciously wicked play), so here's another Les Mis audio. Day before London cast change. Features lots of Mark Dugdale being ridiculously epic--it wasn't his last show, but it was his last performance as Enjolras.

Les Misérables
London
18 June 2010

Simon Bowman (Valjean), Hans-Peter Janssens (Javert), Rebecca Seale (Fantine), Nancy Sullivan (Eponine), Alistair Brammer (Marius), Emily Bull (Cosette), Mark Dugdale (u/s Enjolras), Martin Ball (Thénardier), Lorraine Bruce (Mme Thenardier)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SZQVBGUZ

mmejavert has very kindly given me a list of all her active Megaupload links and instructed me to share them around. Which means METRIC FUCKTON OF AUDIOS under the cut, free for the taking.

( Seriously )

Now that I am home with a lot of time on my hands and a fast internet connection, I declare open season on my bootleg collection!

GIANT LIST OF BOOTLEGS

Pick an audio off my list. Hell, pick a few audios (keep it reasonable though). If they haven't disappeared into the foggy mists of "where the hell did I put that again?", I will upload them for you. The links will be public, so anyone can trawl through the comments and download everything.

This is partly for fun, partly because I realized the trading world has changed a lot. Most of the people who racked up absurdly huge collections around 2006 are now on permanent hiatus--myself included--due to bootleg saturation, boredom, or disgust with the commercial turn the trading world has taken. But their lists are still around to tantalize newbie traders, their rare and interesting recordings are moldering on archive discs and external hard drives, etc. So when I say open season, I mean ask for anything you want, even if it's rare. Especially if it's rare. This is also why the links will be public; this post isn't to give some people trading leverage by ensuring they are The One And Only active trader in possession of that 1987 Basque Les Mis soundboard, it's to get recordings back in circulation.

I will, at some arbitrary point, decide I'm sick of having a billion Megaupload tabs open and close the offer, but you've got a few days at least to pick out whatever you want.

To kick things off:
Les Misérables - 1980 Palais des Sports soundboard
Maurice Barrier, Jean Vallée, Rose Laurens, Gilles Bulhmann, Fabienne Guyon, Marianne Mille, Yvan Dautin, Marie-France Roussel, Christian Rattelin, René-Louis Baron

Because I know it was going to be the first thing everyone asked for anyway. And because I am 100% srs bsns about uploading rarities.

Edit: mmejavert has given me a list of all her active Megaupload links with instructions to share them, which means a giant collection of free audios can be found here.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/lwdm6g

Les Misérables
25th anniversary tour
Paris, 27 May 2010
John Owen Jones (Valjean), Earl Carpenter (Javert), Madalena Alberto (Fantine), Rosalind James (Eponine), Gareth Gates (Marius), Katie Hall (Cosette), Jon Robyns (Enjolras), Ashley Artus (Thénardier), Lynne Wilmot (Mme Thénardier)

Starting to think about packing all the crap I've accumulated in a year abroad. How the hell did I end up with four pairs of boots (three pairs more than I brought in September), twenty-six books (and that's after I sent most of the already-read ones home), and three new Les Mis posters (only one of which I actually sought out; the other two were randomly given to me)?

Almost done tracking the tour audio! It's going to take a while uploading, though, so in the meantime have a sample:

JOJ pwning Bring Him Home

elyse24601 and I spent Halloween dressed like refugees from the Battle of Hernani being total bohemians. We attempted to get last-minute cheap seats to a Molière piece at the Comédie Française, with the vague intention of hissing the classicists, but there were none left. Then we went to the Victor Hugo museum, looked at the new exhibit, got snapped at by an employee for tagging along with a (probably paid) tour, and got a DVD of the 1982 movie version of Les Mis. Then--in the slightly more modern tradition of broke-ass Parisian students--we had kebab for dinner, and headed off to the opera to try to get last-minute cheap tickets for La Bohème. Again, none left, not that we were expecting anything since it was (1) a Saturday night, (2) the day after the premiere, and (3) OMG Natalie Dessay as Musetta.

So we wandered off to the Café Procope for absinthe, got glared at by the bartender because we were the only ones there dressed weirdly, and went back to my apartment to watch the 1982 Les Mis over rum and cokes.

We didn't really get to do anything we planned to, but that's okay because we had a fabulous time anyway.

Also, I recently reorganized my bootleg list and realized I'd lost cast info for a bunch of rare shit. And where do you go to find cast info for rare shit, if not the tradelists of people who specialize in rare shit? This is how I found out that a soundboard of the original 1980 Palais des Sports production of Les Mis exists.

I gave up hope almost immediately, since people who specialize in rare shit are probably not going to be interested in my collection, and the particular person who has it is rather picky and elusive about trades. Then, in some massive stroke of celestial fortune, the same exact person contacted me out of the blue* asking to trade. Apparently a recording of Lausanne Les Mis was sufficienty rare and interesting.

So, long story short, I HAVE SHINY** and there will probably be a tl;dr LJ post coming up about the OFC production and the development of the show.


* I mean, not entirely out of the blue, I'd just reorganized my list and reopened it to trades, and requested some recordings on an LJ comm. But of ALL the people who could've followed up on that post via email, the ONLY person to do so was the one who had the 1980 soundboard. I feel like I need to buy Lady Luck a drink or something.

** Please do not comment asking for shiny, as this is a public post. My email's in my profile.

Les Misérables
London
7 October 2009

David Shannon (Valjean), Earl Carpenter (Javert), Rebecca Seale (Fantine), Nancy Sullivan (Eponine), Alistair Brammer (Marius), Katie Hall (Cosette), David Thaxton (Enjolras), Martin Ball (Thénardier), Lorraine Bruce (Mme Thénardier)

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT'S HOT. http://www.sendspace.com/file/kvtwu2

Notes:
- One of the best casts I've seen in a good while
- Quality is generally not bad; the singers are occasionally overpowered by the orchestra, especially the brass section
- Feel free to pass it around, trade it, put it on YouTube, hand out copies at the stage door, whatever floats your boat.

Québec review is coming. In the meantime, here's the audio, untracked and in WMA due to my computer's ongoing fail:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nh7ptw

Les Misérables - Québec City - 19 October 2008 (Closing night)
Gino Quilico (Jean Valjean), Alexandre de Grandpré (Javert), Geneviève Charest (Fantine), Sophie Tremblay (Eponine), Carl Poliquin (Marius), Myriam Brousseau (Cosette), Kevin Houle (Enjolras), Jean-Raymond Châles (Thénardier), Kathleen Fortin (Mme Thénardier)

I can give ensemble information on request, but there was nothing in the playbill about the Gavroche/little Cosette schedules.

Act I is significantly louder (and rather more overloaded) than Act II, because the show was massively over-amplified and I unplugged the microphone at intermission.

Cookies to whoever's willing to track it; cookies and Frenchboy slash to whoever's willing to mail me a CD of the tracked version.

I was rustling up all the crap I'm going to need to take to Canada with me tomorrow, including my recorder, which still had my Wolf Trap audio on it. I gave it a listen on the WS-100 (computer's sound system is slightly broken) and the quality sounds really nice, if a little echoey. I can't really track it at the moment due to broken sound system, so here it is as a single WMA file. If you want to track it and repost it, I'd give you hugs and e-cookies.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/89imqa

Les Misérables, Wolf Trap, 6 September 2008
Rob Evan (Valjean), Rob Hunt (Javert), Nikki Renée Daniels (Fantine), Jenny Fellner (Eponine), Anderson Davis (Marius), Deborah Lew (Cosette), Edward Watts (Enjolras), Laurent Giroux (Thénardier), Cindy Benson (Mme Thénardier)

Remember the Les Mis blooper reel I compiled back in January? Well, I want to listen to it again for shits and giggles but my computer has issues and it can't play mp3s. Would anyone mind putting the clip up on YouTube?

Here's a fresh link for the mp3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9w7yc8