Show Tunes: Hedwig and the Angry Inch version

Spoon: Tear Me Down

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Bonnie Pink: The Origin of Love

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a glam-rock musical written by (and for) former Army brat John Cameron Mitchell. It premiered off-Broadway in 1998. The plot sounds farfetched and convoluted in description (gay man meets Army officer in East Berlin and undergoes a botched sex change to escape Communist rule, ending as a failed rock singer whose young almost-boyfriend steals her songs and becomes a star). But it's easy for the audience to fall in love with the flawed Hedwig as she tells us her story, and the music (by Stephen Trask) is great.

Tear Me Down is the self-actualizing song that introduces a defiant Hedwig to the audience. Spoon drops the energy level to suit their style, but it's still a terrific anthem. It's from a Hedwig tribute album, Wig In A Box, released in 2003.

The Origin of Love is a ballad based on Aristophanes' monologue in Plato's Symposium. It postulates three sexes of humans (man-man, man-woman, woman-woman) who were split by angry gods and forced to search out their other halves to find completion. The vocalist, Bonnie Pink, is a J-pop star, and the song's from an album of cover songs she released in 2005.

Show Tunes: It Ain't Necessarily So

Bronski Beat: It Ain't Necessarily So

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Aretha Franklin: It Ain't Necessarily So

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Porgy and Bess, the 1935 faux-folk opera by the Gershwin Brothers, was a creation of its racist times. On one hand, it perpetrates a seriously distorted view of black America of that or any other time, with its focus on drugs, gambling, casual sex, and violence. On the other, it gave focus and prominence to many black singers and actors when roles for them were few and far between. Plus the blues-jazz music is flat-out wonderful. Best known is Summertime, the most covered song in history. This song, though, is not a bad second choice. Sportin' Life, the drug dealer, humorously expresses his disbelief about the truth of some famous Biblical stories.

I've chosen covers by two very different but no less compelling singers. The first is by Bronski Beat, an 80s synth pop group fronted by Glaswegian Jimmy Somerville, later of the Communards. I think I've mentioned my affection for falsetto singing; Jimmy's pretty well known for standing out in any high-pitched crowd. The second is by Detroit's own Aretha Franklin, from her self-titled 1961 album. Aretha needs no further introduction.

Show Tunes: Frank Mills

The Lemonheads: Frank Mills

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There have been many covers of the various groovy pop hits from Hair, the sixties celebrational musical which first hit Broadway in 1968 - from the Cowsills' 1969 chart hit title track to Three Dog Night's Easy To Be Hard, from Quincy Jones' version of Walking In Space to Canadian folkpop singer-songwriter Serena Ryder's wonderfully bombastic 2006 take on Good Morning Starshine, which I posted way back in May of last year when I took on the topic of showtunes coverage at Cover Lay Down.

But my favorite has to be this 1992 cover from The Lemonheads - likely just Evan Dando, performing under the name of the band he led and founded, plus either a drum machine or some random bandmember patting gently away on a guitar case. Frank Mills appeared as a coda of sorts on their alt-pop album It's A Shame About Ray, and surprisingly, though it had already been recorded by the likes of Liza Minelli and Barbra Streisand before them, their performance manages to come off without a hint of irony. Instead, it's delicate acoustic grunge, tender and raw, much like Dando himself, who was quite literally a crackhead throughout much of the early nineties, but has since cleaned up a bit.

Show Tunes: I've Gotta Be Me

Sammy Davis Jr: I’ve Gotta Be Me


“I’ve Gotta Be Me” was a surprise #11 hit for Sammy Davis Jr in early 1969, while it still featured in a not excessively triumphant Broadway musical titled Golden Rainbow, starring Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. The musical ran on Broadway from late December 1967 to February 1969. In between, Lawrence released a single of “I’ve Got To Be Me”, followed shortly after by Sammy Davis Jr, who tweaked the title for his more successful record.

Davis performed “I’ve Gotta Be Me” in 1972 at the black consciousness concert PUSH Expo, co-organised by the Rev Jessie Jackson. The line-up of the concert, which was made into a documentary film titled Save The Children, was hip and impressive. It included Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones, Curtis Mayfield, Roberta Flack, Bill Withers, The Main Ingredient, Gladys Knight, Jerry Butler, The Temptations, Ramsey Lewis, Zulema, The Jackson 5, The O’Jays, Cannonball Adderley and more. In that line-up, Sammy Davis Jr was a contradiction and an anachronism.

His scene was Vegas, the Rat Pack and “The Candy Man”, not socially hip soul music and the funk; he had recently endorsed Richard Nixon, not the on-going fight for civil rights and against urban decay (even Sammy’s recent cover of Elvis’ “In The Ghetto” had been a drug-fuelled joke). He did not follow Jesus, but had converted from the Puerto Rican Catholicism of his grandmother to Judaism. And he didn’t even like black Sisters, going for Scandinavian types instead. He was regarded by many as a sell-out, an Uncle Tom (poor, tragic Uncle Tom, the fictional character who has received a bad rap for being a collaborator with the oppressor, which in Harriett Beecher-Stowe’s anti-slavery novel he most decidedly wasn’t).

Now Sammy, a man who never was confident about who he was, stood in front of a potentially hostile crowd with whom he had no apparent cultural, political, religious or even social connection. He did not launch straight into song. He addressed the crowd, slowly and purposefully – a little like Martin Luther King Jr when he used to begin a speech. “I am not here [long pause] but as only one way. I am here, because I have come home as a black man.” Polite applause. Sammy’s voice rises: “Disagree, if you will, with my politics, but” – and now with slow, precise deliberation – “I will not allow anyone take away the fact that I am black.” Huge cheer. The piano starts, and Sammy’s diffident stage act kicks in: “I would like to sing – if you would like for me to sing [cue Sammy lapping up the approving bonus cheer]… ‘Whether I’m right, or whether I’m wrong…’.”

What better song could there have been for Sammy to sing at that moment than the anthem for self-acceptance?

Show Tunes: Pirate Jenny

Nina Simone: Pirate Jenny

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Most of the songs this week have come from Broadway, and, in a sense, Pirate Jenny is no exception. The song comes from The Three Penny Opera, which debuted in the original German in Berlin in 1928. However, the lyrics heard here are the English translation that was done for the first Broadway production of the show. In the show, Polly Peachum is a maid in an inn by the harbor in London, and she takes abuse regularly from the patrons. Pirate Jenny is Polly’s fantasy of revenge for this abuse. Some productions of The Three Penny Opera have given the song to a different character, the prostitute Jenny, but this is not what Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, who wrote the original book and music, intended. Nina Simone’s performance clearly belongs to Polly. Simone gives the song a spare arrangement, and she speaks rather than sings many of the lyrics. This gives her performance a raw power which suits the song perfectly.

Incidentally, there is a recording of this song by Steeleye Span, with the title The Black Freighter. Ironically, there is no black freighter in the German. The corresponding lyric in the original describes a ship “with eight sails”. However, since that doesn’t scan properly in English, it was replaced by “the black freighter.”.

Show Tunes: There Are Worse Things I Could Do

TheAudience: There Are Worse Things I Could Do

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I've always sort of believed that seeing the movie "Grease" was sort of a rite of passage for girls of a certain age growing up...they had to see it, and usually then watch it over and over at every sleep-over. It was like an unwritten rule, though that may have only been my generation. A shame, really.

As it is, Grease is a classic movie, but began as a theatrical production in 1971 in Chicago, and then the movie was made of it in 1978. This song, "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" is certainly not one of the most famous from the movie, but it's still memorable, as it takes on a popular character, the tough girl Rizzo, and shows her softer side.

This version is sung by the little known and long defunct British band TheAudience. Lead singer, the beautiful Sophie Ellis-Bextor, went on to bigger fame as a solo artist doing mostly dance and pop music, but these are her beginnings, humble or not. I enjoy what I've heard (merely this EP) from TheAudience more than her solo work as the band seems to have more character.

Show Tunes: I Get a Kick Out of You

Dolly Parton: I Get a Kick Out of You

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Anything Goes is a classic musical from 1934. The songs are by Cole Porter, and they include some of his best known numbers. The first song in the show is I Get a Kick Out of You. The show is a romantic farce, and a lot of fun. That sense of fun is what comes through most in Dolly Parton’s version of Kick. For the first minute, the song is an instrumental, with Chris Thile on mandolin sounding quite a bit like David Grisman. Finally, Parton enters. She doesn’t take the song too seriously, but she gives it all the fizz and sass it needs.

Show Tunes: My Favorite Things

John Coltrane: My Favorite Things

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Musicals are not really my thing to say the least, but when the great jazz cats ran away with show tunes I've always been all ears. Take My Favorite Things, which was originally written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for The Sound of Music. I'm sure Trane's revolutionary modal remodelling, featuring his at times almost Indian-sounding soprano sax, will make your jaws drop. But do pay attention to McCoy Tyner's waltzing wizardry on the piano, too.

Show Tunes: Millworker

Pearl Jam: Millworker

[live, 2004]

Emmylou Harris: Millworker

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Lavinia Ross: Millworker

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I posted the author's "original" of this song way back in 2008 for our Work theme; aptly enough, the song was written for the score of the James Taylor-penned musical "Working", based on the Studs Terkel novel of the same name. Though neither the musical nor the 1979 album this song ultimately appeared on were terribly well received, I've always liked this simple song, and ol' JT clearly does, too, or he wouldn't keep recording it, trying to find just the right balance between the resignation and the desperation of the narrator, a widowed blue-collar millworker and mother from my home state of Massachusetts.

But today is for coverage, and thankfully, a number of musicians have taken this one on, from Pearl Jam to Emmylou Harris. Here's both: the former live and ragged; the latter, recorded relatively early in Emmylou's career, a solid countrypop tune exactly as plaintive and haunting and dreamlike as you'd expect it to be - plus a warm, gentle cover I just received in the mail last week from organic farmer and occasional singer-songwriter Lavinia Ross.

Speaking in Tongues => Show Tunes: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen

Girls From Mars: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen

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Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen is probably best known as the song that made stars of the Andrews Sisters in 1938. But not nearly as many people know that the song was originally written, entirely in Yiddish, for a Yiddish operetta called I Would If I Could in 1932. The original songwriters were Shalom Secunda and Abraham Bloom. The English lyrics heard here are by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin. Cahn and Chaplin bought the rights to the song for $30, and reaped all of the royalties until 1961. Cahn and Chaplin used a Germanic spelling for the song title, which I have also used for the title of post, because that is how Girls From Mars have it on their album. But the picture I have chosen shows a transliteration of the Yiddish. I was not able to find a version in the original Yiddish; if you have one, please let me know in the comments. The full story of the song is told here.

Update: My thanks go out to fellow Star Maker Bert, who sent me a version of Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen recorded with the original Yiddish lyrics. Here it is:

Budapest Klezmer Band: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen

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Speaking in Tongues: Asimbonanga (Mandela)

Johnny Clegg: Asimbonanga (Mandela)

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I've posted Johnny Clegg once before. I was poking at Any Major Dude to post this week cuz, well, he's living in South Africa and all, but I think the giant Blogger hiccup this week might have thrown him off. But I couldn't let it pass because I got the chance to see him in concert on Tuesday, and he sang this great anti-apartheid song. Most of the lyrics are Zulu.

I'm sharing a live version to give you the same feel that I got while hearing it.

Asimbonanga (We have not seen him)
Asimbonang' uMandela thina (We have not seen Mandela)
Laph'ekhona (In the place where he is)
Laph'ehleli khona (In the place where he is kept)

Oh the sea is cold and the sky is grey
Look across the island into the bay
We are all islands till comes the day
We cross the burning water.

Speaking in Tongues: Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio)

Jim Hall: Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio)

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Like many good tales, this one starts with a garden.

The gardens at the Palacio Real de Aranjuez, to be precise. The Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo wrote this concerto for guitar and orchestra in 1939 to celebrate and evoke the feel of these gardens. The original piece was a success, but not much known outside Spain.

Twenty years later, Gil Evans, another composer and arranger who'd formed a successful partnership with trumpet virtuoso Miles Davis, brought him the concerto's second movement (the Adagio). Miles loved it as much as Evans did and made it the centerpiece of his 1960 album Sketches of Spain.

This version I'm sharing was released in 1975 by the brilliant jazz guitarist Jim Hall. Since it showcases the guitar, it might be closer to the original than the 1960 version. It features a terrific supporting cast: Chet Baker, trumpet; Paul Desmond, sax; Roland Hanna, piano; Ron Carter, bass; and Steve Gadd, drums. And it may be a little sacrilegious to say, but I think I like this version a little bit better than Miles'.

Warning: long song is long. Just short of 20 minutes long. Worth every minute, though.

Speaking in Tongues: Fado Marujo

Amália Rodrigues: Fado Marujo

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To me, Portuguese has always been the language of fado. The old, seemingly timeless music from Portugal, always filled with that special kind of sadness they call saudade. Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999) was the undisputed queen of fado, or, in Portuguese, rainha do fado. She just might be one of the greatest singers you've never heard.

Speaking in Tongues: Rock el Casbah

Rachid Taha: Rock el Casbah

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I’m cheating a bit with this post. Looking at the title of the song, you might think the cheat is the fact that the title is not entirely in another language. In fact, I’m OK there. Rock in Arabic, when it refers to music, is rock, and Casbah is a place name that comes out the same in many languages. The cheat has to do with the informal rule we have at Star Maker, that songs must date from before 2000. There has always been some give there, and this one is from 2004. If you have never heard Rock el Casbah, you must. You probably know the song, but not like this. Rachid Taha is from Algeria, and he is a star in the Arab world. The music he makes is called Rai, and it is a mixture of rock energy with more traditional sounds of Arab music. Rock el Casbah was an inspired choice, not only for Rai fans, but also for introducing this music to the rest of the world.

Speaking in Tongues: Akuro no Oka

Dir en grey: Akuro no Oka

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If I hadn't already been a fan, Dir en grey would have my affection for being the only top J-rock band to ever bother playing in my town, Denver, and not just once but multiple times. I admit, we're not exactly known as a breeding ground of J-rock fans here. I mean, there's me, and…. J-rockers, when they do make it to our shores, tend to gravitate to the coasts (they're especially thick on the ground at anime festivals), with an occasional foray into Texas or Chicago.

I posted that picture of them to snag your attention, of course. Dir en grey started out in 1997 as a Visual Kei (VK) band, and their wild appearance predates Lady Gaga by at least a decade. It's fun to Goggle images of them and watch them change over the years. These days, they're fairly sedate, although you'd probably still want to hide your daughters (and maybe even your sons). Lead singer Kyo (the diminutive blond) looks more like a wee biker dude now. If he tops 5 feet I'd be surprised (he stands on a platform to sing), but don't let that fool you — his voice can bring down buildings.

Like their costumes, their sound has progressed over time. They are variously described as some flavor of metal, be it experimental, thrash, progressive, alt, screamo, or core. On the other hand, they come out with some pretty sweet ballad stuff, albeit with more raw emotion that we're used to. I can't say I like all their stuff (Agitated Screams of Maggots, for example, leaves me cold), but the things of theirs I do like, I love a lot.

In fact, I'm going to slip in one more song (and it's got a Japanese title, too, so it fits the theme) just to showcase this group a bit more. Like many other J-rock or J-pop groups, Dir en grey often releases their singles in various incarnations, usually "unplugged." Here's a pair from a more recent release, Marrow of the Bone, and I adore the unplugged version (complete with anguished emo scream). Check out the complicated yet subtle rhythm changes, from 4/4 to 5/4 to 6/8:

Dir en grey: Namamekashiki Ansoku, Tomerai ni Hohoemi

Dir en grey: Namamekashiki Ansoku, Tomerai ni Hohoemi (unplugged)

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Speaking in Tongues: Ta Tudo Certo - Mas Que Nada

Tania Maria: Ta Tudo Certo - Mas Que Nada

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Tania Maria (not to be confused with R&B singer Teena Marie) is a renowned Brazilian jazz vocalist/pianist and a longtime favorite musician of mine. She started playing music with her dad's small band as a teen, took a side trip into law school, and quickly returned to her first love in the late 1960's. She's been a fixture in Brazilian jazz ever since (currently touring Europe, if you're lucky enough to catch her live).

I thrashed around for two days deciding which of her many wonderful songs to present and finally settled on this. I do like her earlier albums quite a bit, but this one showcases her at her best, sounding relaxed, confident, and energetic. Ta Tudo Certo (Everything Is Fine) is a self-penned tune with a swinging samba rhythm that segues nicely into Jorge Ben Jor's hit, Mas Que Nada (No Way!).

Speaking in Tongues: Bene Mote

Muluqèn Mèlèssè & Dahlak Band: Bèné Mote

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In the years between the end days of emperor Haile Selassie's reign in the sixties and the emergence of a brutal new regime in the mid seventies, the music scene in the poor African country of Ethiopia was flourishing. Tons of groovy records were made in Addis Ababa, in an astonishing diversity of musical styles.

More or less ethnic sounds featuring traditional instruments were en vogue, but you also got funky instrumentals with Stax-like horns, soul singers as inspired as James Brown or Wilson Pickett, and plenty of jazzy stuff to boot. Alèmayèhu Eshèté, Mahmoud Ahmed, Mulatu Astatqé and Tlahoun Gèssèssè were household names, but lesser known singers like Muluqèn Mèlèssè, whose fine Bèné Mote is featured here, could conjure up the magic just as well.

With vocals in the main Ethiopian language of Amharic you probably won't understand a word of it, but that all adds to the mystique. The double disc compilation pictured above would make an excellent starting point for further exploration. You won't be sorry.

Speaking in Tongues: Wunderbar

Tenpole Tudor: Wunderbar

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Tenpole Tudor was – and still is – a British band that emerged from the 1970s punk rock scene. By the time this German-titled single was released, in 1981, they had crossed over to what was loosely called New Wave, before that term referred to bands with resourceful haircuts, cheekbone-highlighting make-up and an obsession with synthethisers.

Singer Edward Tudor-Pole (his real name) had appeared, as Eddie Tenpole, in the Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, in which he performed a few songs, including the title track. In fact, he was penciled in to replace Johnny Rotten as the Pistols’ lead singer before manager Malcolm McLaren decided to break up the band which he had essentially created.

Wunderbar (the single sleeve spells it incorrectly and probably deliberately with an Umlaut, the two dots on certain teutonic vowels) reached #16 in the UK charts. The song is a cursory existential reflection that is relieved by reference to a German woman who says nothing but repeatedly exclamations of “wunderbar”, a word that means “wonderful”.

Speaking in Tongues: Hyeonshileui Hyeonshil

Nell: Hyeonshileui Hyeonshil (Reality of Realities)

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Darius might as well have sent up a flare this week saying, "Geoviki, go wild!" And I shall, whether he wanted me to or not, heh.

This is more of a drive-by, though, and even though your first guess might have been "J-Rock", it's not (just wait a day or two….). It's K-Rock. Korean rock. The genre is kind of a lone wolf in some ways. Korean music currently hosts a flourishing pop scene, and I'm just starting to dabble in some of the K-pop groups, so I'll spare you for the moment. Korean fans look to Japan (and the west, of course) for a lot of their straight-up rock.

Nell is one of the better known Korean indie rock groups. Their influences are British bands like Radiohead, Muse, and Coldplay. This song's more of a ballad, so the rock angle is diminished, but me, I love those guys who can sing falsetto, so this is the song I'm sharing. Hope you like it too.

Deep Album Tracks => Speaking in Tongues: Loco De Amor

David Byrne: Loco De Amor

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I have found Salsa music tremendously exciting since I first heard it. But there was also a certain sameness for me, because I couldn’t understand the words. So I always wished that someone would record an album of this music with words in English. In 1989, as Talking Heads were breaking up, David Byrne granted my wish with his album Rei Momo. Keep in mind that this was long before Latin artists started to cross over, and record English-language songs or albums themselves. Being based in New York City, David Byrne was able to work with some of the legendary musicians of salsa. Willie Colon was Byrne’s bandleader for this album. Loco de Amor is a co-write between Byrne and Johnny Pacheco, and the song features vocals by Celia Cruz. Since Rei Momo had no hits, I feel justified in using it for our Deep Album Tracks theme. But I should note that the song originally appeared on the soundtrack of Something Wild, and it was added to Rei Momo for the CD release.