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Avoided this for years (decades) for various reasons, many of which had to do with the perceived (by me, in ignorance, etc.) neither-fish-nor-fowl thing, especially the notion of hearing Malcolm's voice as Opera Hero. But, you live long enough, and you can find a tempting price and next thing you know, hey why not? So...I still don't dig a lot of the libretto, not for content per se, but just because I can't get my head around hearing that like that, if you know what I mean. But somebody could, and did. So fuck me on that one. However, life as a Young Jazz Musician musician has taught me to ignore the words to songs, and when doing that, I think we have something here. And in fact, getting into Act III, when the concept/focus becomes more "universal" and less "biographical", then, yeah, for some reason the words started becoming hearable again. And then we really have something. Not for everybody's taste, to be sure, but I was surprised how much of this reached out and grabbed me the first time around. Going back and reading contemporaneous reviews, what strikes me is how much focus there was on the same concerns that I had harbored (which really comes down to, I Was Expecting THIS And Got THAT, Uhhhh....), and almost no celebration of how much goes right (which is not everything, but is still quite a bit). Anybody else visited/revisited this lately? And maybe I need to go back and check out Anthony Davis some more. It's been awhile, he's faded from fashion, and doesn't he keep it that way a fair bit himself these days?