My Brother, My Brother And Me: MBMBaM 376: Face 2 Face: Shrimp, Heaven, Live!

October 16, 2017 9:35 AM

Here's our star-studded live show from the gorgeous King's Theater in Brooklyn, NY! We still cannot believe they allowed us to do a show there. It was irresponsible, is what it was.
posted by Tevin (11 comments total)

How did the brothers even meet Lin Manuel-Miranda, like how is their crazy friendship even a thing? That song was great too.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2017

That fucking Shrimp Heaven Now song gets stuck in my head at the slightest provocation, ever since I saw like half a goddamn minute of it via twitter. what kind of songwriting mad genius is it that l-mm can manage that with the lyrics shrimp heaven when? shrimp heaven now!????

Homo neanderthalensis, did you know that the McElroy/L-MM friendship is such that L-MM slipped a couple MBMBAM references into Hamilton? Also he does the great job horn, like, every single time he's on TV.
posted by yasaman at 11:10 PM on October 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's my understanding that Lin was a fan of the show and asked to meet them several years ago. That led to him writing "Fugue for Brotherhorns."
posted by drezdn at 5:21 AM on October 17, 2017

Yeah they talked about him being a fan way before Hamilton, which is the only reason I was aware of the show and LMM before it became big. I remember when a co-worker (theater nerd) was talking about Hamilton's sell outs when it first came out and I thought "aw, our good good song brother is getting sell out crowds, that's great." And then, you know.
posted by Tevin at 7:46 AM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

There's amazed shoutouts to Lin in some of the earlier episode where they can't believe a Tony-winning composer was listening to them. Then there's his actual Guestpert appearance when he's deep in the middle of finishing up on Hamilton and it's amazing.
posted by kmz at 9:09 AM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was there that night (and got to high-five LMM and Travis as they ran down the massive line outside!) and... it was kind of a mess. I'm not at all surprised this was the episode that it took them forever to post. Great time, but I'm about to listen and I have my doubts about how well any of it translated.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:45 AM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

I thought it was one of their best live episodes. I even enjoyed hearing Griffin's play-by-play as Travis and Justin got into a fight with each other off microphone.
posted by maxsparber at 1:00 PM on October 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

I bet what I imagine the fight looking like is way better than what it actually looked like.
posted by meese at 4:24 PM on October 17, 2017

I saw a YouTube clip of the song shortly after it happened and I was cringing because it seemed like when Lin told the crowd to sing along he then changed up the lyrics and kept doing it until the crowd was much less enthusiastic about singing along. This was so awkward it bothered me for days and I can't bring myself to listen to this one now.
posted by bleep at 5:30 PM on October 17, 2017

The audience was a little confused when the sing along started on if it was a 'shrimp heaven when' or 'shrimp heaven now' line, but I didn't it was that big of a deal?
posted by kmz at 7:53 AM on October 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I actually really liked this episode. I'm not a huge fan of listening to the live episodes because I often find the audience questions sorta cringe-y (although that's not stopping me from seeing the boys when they come to the Twin Cities!) but I thought this one went okay.
posted by dismas at 9:16 AM on October 19, 2017