Guys…hear me out on the cab guy

2:01 Levi Stubbs is what brought me here.

I can relate a little to Seymour's words.

Sing it child

I love the part where Seymore starts to slowly back out of the alley, as the homeless ppl are climbing the gates kinda like zombies coming after him, sort of a symbolism of the whole area of skid row swallowing up seymore and never getting out.

I remember as a kid how hilarious I thought the “food is slop” guy was.

This is how you establish a setting

Finally!  A good post of this great sequence.  In proper aspect ratio and speed.

Let’s look past Let It Go’s 2014 popularity and overhype and look at the substance. Let It Go is the ONLY number Elsa has. Yup. The only one. And it comes in within half and hour of the film. We don’t see Elsa develop much in character. We see snippets of it with most emphasis on her secret. The number comes in after she’s chased out of the Kingdom. When it came on, I expected for the film to develop more character from her. Expected her to come to terms with her abilities and USE them for good, or you know, TRY To explain to Anna. Nope. After all that grand scale epicness, what happens? She remains isolated for the remainder of the film. ALL this buildup for a letdown.

Yeah, once you look pass the rose tinted glasses, you see a serious glaring problem with the whole musical. Elsa is ACTUALLY the Main Character. Her personality and backstory is far more intriguing than anyone else, yet they waste the opportunity to focus on it.

Let It Go, by itself is a showtunes ballad. And I’ll admit, a very catchy and memorable one. The existence of network media is an opportunity that Disney knew they could use to market Frozen and of course, they grabbed it.

Let It Go is the main song because it manages to execute itself better than all of the other songs in the film. It’s superior to most average musical numbers and it the only one that manages to deliver and onslaught of exposition. This is someone all of the other numbers fall short in doing.

We can also look at its pacing, in Let It Go, it starts off in a piano melody and then once the chorus kicks in we transition to an obvious showtunes melody after it ends and morphs into the second verse. Once the chorus begins to swell up again, it attempts a hook: a jammed note. And than when the Chorus returns, the orchestra mounts and follows along, once the bridge comes in, the orchestra takes over and follows Elsa’s bridge with her body language, and then once the final Chorus comes in, the hook returns. The last pace of the number ends with Elsa’s octave going to 2 and then slamming the window shut.

Downtown Skid Row starts off straightforward. After the BC characters “The Siren Sisters” berate Mr. Mushnik, a Broadway “Wake Up” piano starts off with a random gospel matriarch opening the song with an interlude about waking up in Skid Row, after she polishes it off with a ” Till it’s 5 PM” in a middle note. We then see another extra, the hobo pull us into the chorus. Which then returns to the Gospel woman signing the Chorus with The Siren Sisters backing her up with a hook “A fluctuating pitch and note” restricted to the Chorus, when the woman reaches her apartment she nods off with “Home To Skid Row” where the Sirens echo. The hobo pulls us into an extended chorus montage with different extras,each with a unique short verse related to their situation. A Greaser: Where The Cabs Don’t Stop. Russian Immigrant with spouse: Where the food is slop. The Sirens then ad lib a lyric “Downtown, where the hopheads flop in the snow” and yield for 2 seconds to a pudgy extra, and THEN transition into the bridge designed with a unique hook: 3 unknown extras, the do wop singers step down the steps rhythmically, where the Sirens belt out in harmony while pointing out each scenario, in the middle of the bridge, 3 new extras ad lib opera to it why the Sirens preparing to finish the bridge, then at the end yield to the entire ensemble to end the verse.

We then return to the Chorus with tiny bits of Audrey ad libbing brief exposition, and after she belts out her ad lib, she yields to a new extra with 4 total sharing the ending chorus verse: A White collar worker, A drifter, an fiery elderly woman, and resident(Levi Stubbs a.k.a Audrey II the Plant) then with the ensemble all in unison while stomping their feet rhythmically.

The Sirens are finished controlling the Chorus so it finally yields to Seymour with the final verse which is full exposition on his background. Seymour then ad libs with the Broom, he then brings in a surprise new hook: He starts singing the remaining verse with soul and concludes it with the orchestra following along.

The Chorus comes back for an epic grand finale, with a Carrot: Another surprise hook. And a Stick: a NEW verse reserved only for him while extras keep the Chorus alive in the background and as he walks toward a gate. Audrey then makes a surprise return while pacing through the streets and he follows. The surprise hook is a brilliant way to end the number by having Seymour and Audrey’s voices bounce off each other while the ensemble all gather in an Broadway flavored conclusion and join in harmony to end the number by holding the last verse in note while the 80s orchestra builds,builds and then releases.

As you can see, Downtown Skid Row had an insane amount of work and sequences put into it. Howard Ashman was somebody that knew how to build grand,epic songs like that for musicals and make them build up to something. To me, that is TRULY an epic number. Let it Go in comparison to that, falls short. In comparison to “We Come Together” from Grease, Let It Go is alot superior in every way.

Finally a good quality one. Thanks!

the only problem is its gimme not give me on subs….. but thats the only thing out of everything that could go wrong

Thank you for a high quality version of this song! 😀