BOOM X CONTINUES THE LESSON
Second show in trilogy spans another 25 years of music and life
When Rick Miller premiered his mesmerizing solo multimedia show Boom at the High Performance Rodeo in 2015 it set off a creative explosion eventually seen and heard across Canada.
A kaleidoscope of politics, pop culture and music covering a period from 1944 to 1968, Boom recently chalked up its 325th performance, just in time for Miller to begin work on Boom X, which opens at Theatre Calgary on Tuesday.
“I always saw Boom as a trilogy. The first part was viewed through the eyes of my parents, in particular, my mother. Boom X is my story and Boom Z will be the world my kids grew up in,” says Miller.
“Boom ended with the moon landing and that’s when I was conceived. I was born in Montreal so my childhood was informed by Canada’s struggle for identity beginning with the FLQ crisis and ending with Quebec’s second referendum for sovereignty in 1995.
Each part of the trilogy represents 25 years and Miller hopes they will demonstrate how complicated and difficult it is to live at any time. He points to Baby Boomers living through Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, while Generation Xers lived in fear of a nuclear war.
“The edgy TV which the Boomers had, such as All in the Family, M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, were replaced by Happy Days and Lavern & Shirley because politics seemed so ugly that people needed to escape when they turned on their TVs.
“My Boom shows are not about pure nostalgia. They’re mini-documentaries meant to entertain as well as inform. They’re entertainment, not history lessons.”
As in Boom, this second instalment will feature 30 songs.
“Musically, one of the great ironies of the 1970s is that punk and disco exploded at the same time and you can’t get more diverse than that. I want to illustrate how the 80s were about more than just bad hair.”
In Boom X’s two-hour running time, Miller will inhabit 100 characters.
Miller performed Boom for schools and he found that particularly rewarding as the kids were unfamiliar with most of the topics covered. He said teachers told him it got the students interested in learning about their recent history.
"They started doing research on their own and, best of all, they began to think of their grandparents as real people and it fostered dialogue between the generations. I hope Boom X will help students see their parents as real people.
“Students today may have a pretty good idea of what the Cold War was all about, but I hope Boom X will show them how it affected ordinary people and particularly their own parents.”
Miller believes the Generation Xers who come to Boom X will recognize themselves.
“Every generation tends to judge its youth. They see them as selfish, entitled, wearing crazy clothes and acting like idiots. Boom X will hold up the mirror so Baby Boomers can now see how their parents viewed them.”
There is already interest in having Boom X tour, as its predecessor did, but that can’t happen immediately. Miller will be holding the European premiere of Boom in France in April and there are negotiations for an off-Broadway run in New York a year from now.
“Maybe after Boom X closes in Calgary, I will permit myself to think about working on Boom Z.”