I make no secret of my love for Joss Whedon. He is able to adapt to any medium with his distinct style and complex, rewarding and believable characterization.

Foraying into TV, movies and comics, he really has mastered quite a few mediums of art and delivery. But his calling card and hallmark achievements will always be his TV series (Buffy, Angel, Firefly). His penchant for interesting concepts lead him to produce a number of intriguing and compelling TV episodes, such as the silence-dominated Buffy episode “Hush” and the Buffy musical.

Whedon’s latest project, the web-based music tragicomedy Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, stars Neil Patrick Harris and follows his trials and tribulations as an aspiring supervillain and love-struck, socially awkward dork; it was written and directed with his brother during much of the writer’s strike and is packed with a host of familiar faces in the Whedon universes. The mini-movie is laden with hilarious musical numbers, filled with Whedon’s hallmark of charming characters and snappy dialog, and features a distinctly Whedonesque twist near the end.

I really can’t recommend this more highly.

So in another time, I was a marching band geek. I loved every second of it. Needless to say, when we heard about the musical Blast! (Wiki) making its way to the Kennedy Center in the early oughties, we snatched tickets post-haste.

It was a great spectacle, translating everything good about marching band (more specifically drum corps) into a tight, high-energy stage show. The deal is that drum corps participants in the Star of Indiana decided it was silly to accrue all these specific talents only to “age out” at 21, when you aren’t allowed to march anymore. So they arranged Blast.

No hash-marks? No problem. They just drew a giant grid on the stage. It was truly a great show. But as fast as it exploded and won a Tony and an Emmy, it had faded. Blast returned with a whimpering puff of smoke in the form of the horribly under-publicized Blast II: Shockwave show.

Blast is again coming through, hoping third time is charmed like the first. They play 3 shows at the Lyric Apr 25 & 26. I am very curious to see if they have recaptured some of the first show’s magic. Taste the glory in these 3 tracks from the official London album release. “Loss” is an epic heart-breaker, “Malagueña” sizzles with intensity and the arrangement of “Appalachian Spring” is absolutely electric. But hearing these tracks is only half the experience…check some spectacular video after the jump.

Blast! – Malagueña

Blast! – Appalachian Spring (Copland)

Blast! – Loss
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