Mr. Lloyd Webber is often referred to as the Shakespeare of his time with musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera.
Here’s the story (about the story), with citations and exposition:
http://www.slate.com/id/2154888/?nav=tap3
Best wishes,
Jerry
That is so very odd. Really odd.
That’s like saying, “Dale Wisely is often referred to as as the Ghandi of his time with websites like Chiff & Fipple and Right Hand Pointing.”
“Jerry Freeman is considered the Albert Einstein of his time with tweaked whistles such as the Shaw and the Feadog.”
“Because Congratulations is a second-year anthropology major at a southern university, he is considered by many to be the Eli Whitney of his time.”
Yay! I’m Eli Whitney!
I bet stuff like this goes by all the time, it’s just not noticed and written about. Hype is hype. That’s obviously an unedited press release portion from some flack… At my paper, we have a snoozer of an re-write editor who sends this crap my way. I usually change it, even though I only work on the graphic production end of things…
Mr. Lloyd Webber is often referred to as the Shakespeare of his time with musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera.
Well, for limited definitions of “Shakespeare”, such as “British
man who writes stage settings of Public Domain stories”, then yeah.
But then, that applies to W.S. Gilbert and Tim Rice, too…
I’m more concerned that there is a person or there are people who the NYT was referring to who call him that. Who are these people?
Rock criticism is full of inappropriate comparisons and questionable definitions. I’d quote some, but I stopped reading Rolling Stone about, oh, 25 years ago… Frank Zappa convinced me to.
Bloomfield is often referred to as the Bloomfield of his time.
… with syllables like “Bloom” and “field” in his name.
I enjoyed the Slate piece. But the following sentence caught my eye, as well as the subsequent correction.
" I’ve always believed it was impossible that the editors at the New York Times would ever let something this transparently stupid into their newspaper, except possibly during the last week of August or the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when most smart people go on vacation. We live and we learn.
Correction, Dec. 4, 2006: An earlier version of this column made erroneous reference to the Toronto Post. There is no Toronto Post. (Return to the corrected sentence.)"
Nyuk.
The above statement doesn’t really bother me(not the bloomfield statement, the first one, because well, Bloomfield is Bloomfield . . . or to be more exact, a field in bloom). What would you compare Andrew Lloyd Webber to that has any historical significance? He’s no Mozart. He’s no Falco, for that matter. Maybe the writer said “Shakespere . . . playwrite. Andrew Lloyd Webber . . . well, musicals are plays, aren’t they? They’re both on a stage and hey, didn’t Shakespere say the world was a stage?”
I know I’ve said stupid things in my life. I just didn’t write them down.
This post reminded me of Lewis Black and the most stupid thing he ever heard.
“…when, from behind me, a young woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. That was until Dan Quayle was elected the vice president and things took a turn. She said ‘If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.’ I’ll repeat that. I’ll repeat that because that’s the kind of sentence that when your brain hears it, it comes to a screeching halt. And the left-hand side of the brain looks at the right-hand side of the brain and says, ‘It’s dark in here, and we may die!’ She said, if it weren’t for my horse – [as in] giddyup giddyup, let’s go – I wouldn’t have spent that year in college, a degree-granting institution. Don’t, DON’T think about that for more than three minutes or blood will shoot out of your nose.”
Hey. How did you know that? 
Wooooow. I’ve been underestimating you all these years…
It’s the web feet…kinda throws ya off!
Classic. Lewis Black is a very funny man.
Yes, true. But you know…Shakespeare largely reached the almost mythological status he now enjoys(well heck, I hope he enjoys it…) as a western literary icon in the centuries following his death. At the time he was what–a reasonably popular writer for the theater, producing popular diversion for the citizenry. I realize that not everyone enjoys Lloyd Weber productions as much as I, but I think one could fairly apply that same contemporary description to him. We won’t know whether movies starring Gwyneth Paltrow with no clothes on will be made about ALW for a couple hundred years or so.
Still, that being said, the NYT statement was a silly one.
And for that matter, would anyone want to see a movie starring a two hundred something Gwyneth Paltrow with no clothes on?
Best wishes,
Jerry
Most people say the web feet put them off.
I was at my mom’s this weekend. She had a catalogue of Christmas gifts from Ireland. First class kitsch all the way. Anyway, there was a Feadog whistle with the comment that it is regarded as the Rolls Royce of tin whistles. No joke.
Tony
I saw a woman on TV the other night who’d be ugly if she weren’t so pretty.