On Prayer, with Mary Laymon

Just got back (literally, like seconds ago) from a gathering downstairs at the Speckled Bird. It was a Formed gathering. (By the way, I love living in a hyperlinked world. Cuts down on the amount of space I take up explaining things. Go find out what Formed is and then come back.)
Mary Laymon spoke on the month's focus, prayer. She loves talking about prayer, and I love listening to people talking about what they love. Some thoughts, random but may give a taste of the experience of being there:
--Prayer can, and has, saved lives. "Save"--we talked about how "save" can mean "To heal and make whole."
--The voice of God is within all of us.
--It takes time and practice to learn to hear God's voice. He's quiet. But He is also willing to wait until you are willing to listen.
--If you're an extrovert, and you have a chatty sort of personality, God may chat with you right back, but there are other "languages" in which God may speak to you--it may not just be the classic sort of Inner Voice model. God can speak through songs, through images, through relationships, through dreams, through nature.
--How do we distinguish God's voice from our own voice, or the voices of darkness and destruction? a) God's voice will be congruent with Scripture, so it will direct us toward love of neighbor, love of the poor; following it will also produce the fruits of the Spirit: kindness, gentleness, peace. b) There will be an "echo"--God will be persistent, so we may hear the same message, see the same image, experience the same circumstances, over and over again until we stop and pay attention. c) A key way to check--ALWAYS take what you think you're hearing from God and check it out with a trusted "soul friend" who has some practice discerning God's voice. d) Sometimes you'll only know it's God's voice through hindsight--"oh! That's what God was saying! I should have listened!" or "Gosh, I'm glad I listened!"
--We practiced different prayer methods. We prayed using a picture, asking God to use the image to reveal something to us. Then we had a choice of activities: praying by molding clay without having a preconceived notion of what the clay should look like, praying while walking, praying while studying nature, lectio divina (praying using Scripture), etc. etc.
--To pray, you have to be brave. It's scary to be intimate with God--He wants to transform us. We'll see things in ourselves that aren't so lovely.
--God wants to heal us not just for our own sake but so that we can be a blessing to others.
--If you go are willing to trust God enough to go into a scary place, God can take you back out of it.

First Sunday of Advent

Thanks to Angie F., who invited various writerly folk to do reflections for the Vineyard Central Advent gatherings this year. This is what I contributed for today.

My family’s Advent wreath has a wire base, four metal candleholders, plastic holly leaves and berries. The greenery is splotched with purple and pink wax from, oh, probably forty years’ worth of candles. The candleholders likewise are well and truly blackened. We could get two years out of Advent candles, since we only lit them at suppertime; in the second year, on Christmas Eve, Mom liked to keep the candles burning until they melted to nothing. So the flames charred the sides of the candleholders which are four-petalled, like flowers.
The Advent wreath had to be fetched today, the first Sunday of Advent, from the basement, from wherever it had been stashed—someplace we’d put it with the thought that of course we’d remember where we put it, and of course we never did.
The Christmas decorations also live in the basement. The tree, the lights, the ornaments, the crèche would all be brought forth three Sundays from now and would not return to their homes until Epiphany or, if we were feeling particularly liturgically correct, the Sunday after that—the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. From January until the fourth week of Advent, I could visit them down in the basement.
Go there with me now. We’re in the basement of the house I grew up in. I’m a little kid, seven, eight, nine, ten. I’m wearing roller skates, and I’ve been skating for hours—goodness knows how the rumbling of the metal wheels on the concrete floor has been reverberating through the house. But I’ve taken a break from racing a circuit around the main room. I’ve gone back toward the washer and dryer, turned left at the wooden drying rack with its spokes like a turnstile, past Dad’s workbench with its ancient tools that none of us, Dad included, have the handyman wherewithal to use well. Back here is the water heater, the furnace, and a shelf of Christmas decorations—also a tiny squeeze space granting secret-passage access to the main room.
I’ve turned on the bare bulb above the workbench and I’ve dug out the crèche. I don’t unwrap any decorations or fiddle with the box of lights. I don’t get out Mary or Joseph or a shepherd or sheep, Wise Men or their camel or the angel Gabriel. I leave the stable empty of everyone, but I turn a key on its side, feeling the resistance of the gears, and when I let go, a tiny metal spool unwinds, and even tinier metal teeth on a metal comb catch on the bits of spool that are raised like Braille letters. The music box in the crèche plays “Silent Night.”
I listen a while, and then I return to skating, stopping or slowing at times to listen for the chime of the song. I go back upstairs and wonder through the day if I am really hearing it still or just imagining it. A music box, as it slows, sounds out its chimes at longer and longer intervals. When you think it has run out of faith, as if an Advent candle could melt to nothing before its vigil is complete, another note will ring, sweet as any that came before.

God is good--all the time! And all the time God is good!

Hello!
It has been a rather long time since I have written about my employment adventures.
Not long ago, I was working as a pre-kindergarten teacher. More recently still, I ceased being a pre-kindergarten teacher. They say you do not understand what something is really and truly like, from the inside out, until you do it. So it was with teaching--once I got through student teaching, finding a job, and then running a classroom, it was clear it was not for me, not at this stage of my life. It was not fun having to tell the people I worked for, people I had great respect for, that they would have to find a new pre-kindergarten teacher two months into the school year. It was even less fun saying goodbye to the kiddos.
It's all worked out, though. I got a job at my parish, St. Joseph's. I am there part-time helping with administrative matters, "office-y stuff" as I called it when one of my friends asked recently what exactly I am doing. I started this past week. We sent out a mailing to families of people who had died and who had their funerals at St. Joe's--we wanted to let the families know we will be remembering their loved ones at Mass this weekend. We also sent out our annual appeal letter. So far, this is similar to the sort of activities I was involved in at Our Daily Bread--letting people know what is going on with the parish, providing a means for staying involved.
St. Joe's has been my parish for almost five years now; I started attending there shortly after moving to Cincinnati. It's a lively place where the most amazing gospel music is wedded to the Roman Rite, the Catholic liturgical form I am most familiar with. So it reminds me a teensy bit of Mass at St. Thomas, my old home parish, after it became the center for the Vietnamese Catholic community in St. Louis. It is a place where the soul of the music we sing helps to shape the experience of Eucharist. "The Spirit is alive and well here at St. Joseph," one of our regular announcers is fond of saying.
Before I started the program where I got my Master's in Teaching, I was taking classes towards a Master's in Lay Pastoral Ministry at the Athenaeum of Ohio. So, interestingly, parish work was something I've been long interested in. I just didn't know how to go about getting involved. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Free Veggies

M. parked the box truck on the sidewalk next to St. E's at one o'clock in the afternoon. S. drove up in her car moments later. I could see it all from my window--the produce boxes stacked five high or more in the back of the truck, S. chatting with curious local folk.
S. works for an outreach at a church in the Cincinnati suburbs. They'd gotten a huge donation of veggies, way more than they could distribute, so she'd offered to take it here to Norwood where she knew the need was also great. Plus, she knew she could recruit people to do drive-by veggie drop-offs to friends and strangers.
All told, she'd brought half a pallet of potatoes, cucumbers and yellow squash--enough to justify the use of a moving van.
I came down from my apartment in time to see most of the potatoes go. There had only been a few sacks of those--nothing like the boxes upon boxes of squash and cucumbers. Local Vineyard folk showed up on bike, in cars, on foot, to take what they could carry and share it round. S. called or texted others she knew who hadn't shown up just so they wouldn't miss out.
When cars would pass, she'd shout like a carnival barker: "FREE SQUASH AND CUCUMBERS!" Many cars slowed and parked in response, and many a box disappeared from the truck via this method. Other cars' windows were rolled up, the drivers protected by a/c from the scorcher of a Saturday. I amused myself wondering what they made of the scene--a woman yelling something unheard, surrounded on all sides by produce. S. got me to put a notice on the chalkboard outside of church: "FREE VEGGIES." That ought to have cleared up some confusion.
I brought out some grocery bags I had stockpiled so people wouldn't have to take a whole box if they couldn't use veggies in bulk. After a few folk had made use of this option, S. said to me, "We're running out of bags." I played Elijah and assured her, "The bags aren't going to run out." Sure enough, M., another Vineyard bud from down the street, soon offered to bring bags from her house's stockpile.
S. works with a Hispanic ministry; she was occasionally switching off yelling "FREE SQUASH AND CUCUMBERS!" to its Spanish equivalent. Doing this caught the attention of a fella who was headed to a church in Northern Kentucky, a Hispanic outreach one hundred members strong. We sent him on his way with eight boxes or so. "God provides!" S. told him cheerfully in Spanish.
We were never overwhelmed with a horde of people all at once, but folks came in a steady stream. We heard the word was spreading through the neighborhood--squash-and-cucumber recipients passing the news on to people on their front stoops. My friend D. and I went knocking on doors to see if a delivery might be welcome.
By three o'clock the box truck was empty, and S. was beaming.
At Mass the next day, when the priest came to Jesus' words, "Take this, all of you, and eat it," I heard S.'s voice ringing loud and clear, "FREE...!"

The End of the Year

One of the second-grade objectives is to discuss inventors and inventions. Another is to formulate "how?" questions--the beginnings of scientific inquiry. So this week I gave the students a challenge. I gave each table of children (six tables in all) some supplies--a double-A battery, a flashlight lightbulb, and aluminum foil. I told them to try to invent something.
A girl at one of the tables made the important discovery that if she wrapped the battery in the foil, the battery became warm. (In fact, the battery can get quite hot. Impressionable youth that may be reading this: this is an experiment that should only be attempted with adult supervision!) Some minutes later, a whoop of triumph came from a girl at another table: she had succeeded in getting the flashlight lightbulb to "spark," as she put it. Soon all the tables were giving her method a shot. Some could replicate her results, some couldn't; it's tricky to get the metal rim of the lightbulb to stay in contact with the foil, and to keep the foil in contact with both ends of the battery. But it's pretty darn cool when it works.
I asked them to try to explain what happened. One boy (who said he helps his dad with electric stuff all the time) said that the foil reflected the light from the lights on the ceiling, and that's what gave the lightbulb the necessary electricity; that, plus of course the nitrogen gas inside the battery.
We have five days left. Everything that needs to be graded has already been assigned, already turned in. The trick now is to continue our routine as closely as possible so as not to encourage more craziness than will naturally happen in the final week of school. That means we will still do language arts and science and social studies in the morning and we will still do math in the afternoon. I will still give out worksheets. The class has not yet risen up in mutiny.
We had a school concert yesterday afternoon. One of the songs was a Motown-inspired declaration of love for pizza (imagine first-through-fifth graders harmonizing "Pizza! Pizza!" to the tune of "My Girl", and you'll get the general gist). I was able to handle it up until the point a young'un went to the mike and started intoning a spoken part mid-song. Then I gave out a helpless cry of laughter that prompted a bunch of students to turn around--"Oh," I saw their thought balloons saying. "It was a teacher!"
Also enjoyable: a song about proper handwashing techniques set to the melody of Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

Of Rainstorms and Rossini

The recent spate of bad weather in Cincinnati reminds me I have neglected to share a story from a week or two back in the second grade classroom, a day when I was flying solo (my mentor having to be in another room). It was a day when we didn't have "specials"--art or music or gym. We had done our math work as always just after lunch; I believe after that we were doing something related to social studies, but in the middle of it a massive storm hit. There was thunder, there was lightning, there was wind and great pelting raindrops. I was unprepared for everyone's reaction--one student asked to sit elsewhere in the room instead of next to the windows because she was afraid of thunderstorms. Other boys and girls were getting up to go stand at the windows to get a better view. It was chaos. So I said, "Everyone back to your seats, and I will tell you a story."
Magic words. I said, "Let me tell you what Miss Pancella's mother did when Miss Pancella was a little girl and there was a storm. Miss Pancella's mother--Mrs. Pancella--is a very wise woman. She knows a lot about calming the fears of children. I believe she became so wise because she had, not one--" I raised an index finger--"Not two"--I continued counting off and showed the count on my hands--"not three, or four, or five, but SIX children." Gasps of astonishment all around. "And Miss Pancella is not her first, not her second...but the sixth! So she had plenty of practice before I came around.
"When Miss Pancella was a little girl and a thunderstorm rolled through, Mrs. Pancella put a record on the record player. Who here knows what a record is?"
A little boy raised his hand. When I called on him, he said, "It's like a CD, only bigger."
"Close enough. This record was of the William Tell Overture. Now, you've probably heard part of the William Tell Overture--" I hummed part of the ending, the "Lone Ranger" portion. The class all agreed--yes, they knew it. "That part sounds like galloping horses; the beginning part sounds like the approach of a storm. There are low drums for far-away thunder, and notes that are like drops of rain--plink, plink, plink! And cymbal crashes for lightning. Mrs. Pancella would play that whole record so we could listen to the storm come and go. Somehow a storm was less scary when it was in music."
"Hey!" somebody called. "The rain stopped!"
Everyone looked out the windows and confirmed it. There was a brief outbreak of chaos again as everyone celebrated, and then one of these magical thinkers said, "Miss Pancella made the rain stop with her story!"
But of course, Miss Pancella did no such thing. Mrs. Pancella did.

Poisson d'Avril!

With a $2.95 binder from Staples, paper from the Archbishop Alter Library's printers, and two hundred ninety-six hours of hard labor, I have laid my research paper to rest. (I'm exaggerating a bit. Two hundred ninety-six is the number of hours I worried about the research paper, not the hours I actually toiled.) Thus my academic activities are drawing to a close--not done with 'em yet! There's still a capstone presentation to go!--and so it seemed a good time to pick up my cap and gown for graduation.
I'm looking at them now, all bundled in their happy cellophane wrapper with a label proclaiming the contents in clipped cadence. The package includes, for example, "1 TASSEL: REGULAR. BANDED. BLACK." Graduation accoutrements don't mess around.
I just got back from Spring Break, aka Research Paper Last Chance Gulch (if I didn't do it then, there'd be no way to concentrate on it before its due date, Thursday of this week). Our school--and here I'm talking about where I'm student teaching--had its last pre-Spring Break day April 1st. In other classrooms and out on the playground there were parties and Easter egg hunts; in Miss Pancella's class there was a math test. "How the Teacher Stole Easter" is what they'll title my life story. I did, however, seek to expand the second graders' cultural horizons with trivia I'd learned in high school French class. "Do you know what they do on April Fools Day in France?" I asked them. "People go around sticking paper cut-outs of fish on other people's backs, and then they run away shouting 'Poisson d'Avril!' 'April Fish!'" Oh, my kids were mighty intrigued by this. They worked hard on the pronunciation of "poisson"; they asked me to write the words on the board so they could spell them correctly; they wrote them on Post-Its and slapped them on my back. In retaliation, I stuck construction-paper April Fish in every one of their backpacks for them to discover discover on their arrival home.
In other news--yes, the reason I have not been writing about school for a while (besides the fact that I've been writing for school; see the topic "research paper" above) is that I have spent forty days listening to, and writing about, forty versions of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. And yes, in case you were wondering--the most common reaction, when I tell people this, is "I can't believe you spent forty days listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. Yeah--I can't either, but the blog posts are testimony, and I'm the only one with access to the jeremiahsaunt.blogspot.com account, so I must have done it.
Back to teaching. And graduation. And this year of apprenticeship approaching its end. I figure it doesn't hurt to ask--do you know of schools that are hiring? There are about twenty-five of us entering the labor pool at once, and I'll vouch for one and all.

The Easter Vigil

Listening to my last two Jesus Christ Superstars today (two because I had a duplicate, and I wanted to make sure I did indeed listen to 40 different versions, as advertised). The first: Karaoke JCS--all the backing tracks. I love this because I love singing along! The second is the 20th anniversary London revival from 1992 starring Paul Nicholas. I haven't any comment on that one yet because I've just put it on now.
Tonight is the Easter Vigil. I doubt I'll be online after that, and besides, even if I was, by the time I get home it will be Easter Sunday. So I had best write now.
The great JCS Lent is drawing to a close. Tonight at Mass we will light a fire and light the Easter Candle from it to show the light of the risen Christ breaking into the world after crucifixion and entombment. This is the part of the story not told in Jesus Christ Superstar--which isn't a strike against it. We don't tell that part of the story when we proclaim the Passion of Christ on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. We leave Jesus in the tomb.
Today I had the unprecedented experience of being offered condolences on Jesus' death. I was in conversation with a boy who didn't quite know what was being commemorated these few days; when I told him someone had died, he said, "I am sorry for your loss."
These last forty days have been about that loss. I've listened to it sung, and screamed, in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish and Russian. I've heard three decades' worth of re-envisioning the source material, which was itself a re-envisioning of source material nearly 2000 years old. But I was caught off guard by his expression of sympathy.
I'll leave you with that. My sympathies are with you on the death of Jesus. What a devastating loss.
And then tomorrow--a new song.

Good Friday

Jesus Christ Superstar awards, Part II...
Best Pilate--Oh, Barry Dennen, hands down. Just the way he hisses "You hypocrites! You hate us more than him!" when the crowd is declaring its allegiance to Caesar would let him win it. Or when he whispers the last words of his lines after he has Jesus flogged: "You've got to be...careful. You could be dead...soon." His Pilate has pathos and tragic hero potential--which is all the more impressive given that he's a middle manager/bureaucrat. I love how Dennen takes us through Pilate's sneering dismissal of Christ to grudging respect to fear for his safety and final anger mixed with sadness.
Best Mary Magdalene--Again, there's no contest. Yvonne Elliman owns this role. Like Dennen, she packs everything into her performances. The "brown album" version of "Everything's Alright," for instance, has self-assurance to the point of swagger, but also a kind of gentleness and vulnerability.
Best Jesus--This is tough, but I think I have to give this to the Jesus of the original Japanese cast recording, whoever he may be. He always makes the right choices for how to deliver his lines. He doesn't belt out the high notes on "Gethsemane," for instance, which would seem to be an instant disqualification, but everything he says is invested with believable emotion. He also brings a dignity, a gravitas to the part which is too often lacking.
Best Judas--I'll be honest--it's tempting to just say Carl Anderson here. But I cannot get over Roger Daltrey in the BBC2 rendition. Wow. Carl Anderson may own the role, but Roger Daltrey is schooling everyone on how you put on a rock opera. (Just listen to the music on the video I've linked.)

Maundy Thursday

Tonight, the Part I of the Jesus Christ Superstar awards. I think I can speak with some authority now on whose interpretation of various characters was the best. So let's get to it, shall we?
Best Herod--Oh, let's give this one to Alice Cooper from the '96 London "cast recording" (in quotes since Alice Cooper wasn't actually in the cast of the show--he was just recruited for the recording). He plays it more circus sideshow than campy lounge lizard and so stands out from the crowd.
Best Simon Zealotes--Kelly Hogan, from Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection. Again, part of the appeal is the casting against expectation--hey, look, a chick is singing this song!--but you can't win a prestigious award like this on shock value alone. Her take on an often over-the-top number is restrained, soulful, bombast-free.
Best Caiaphas--I don't remember a particular Caiaphas sticking out, so let's just give this one to a representative from the former Communist bloc on general principle.
Part II coming soon...

Tenebrae

Today's Jesus Christ Superstar was arranged by Nick Ingman (a conductor/arranger who has worked with many in the pop music world as well as in film scoring; Shakespeare in Love is one of his more famous projects) and released in 1971. The LP includes a letter of reference from none other than Tim Rice, who sounds in it as if he was listening over my shoulder this Lent:
"Since the original record release of our rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar in October 1970, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I have been very lucky in that many musicians and singers have recorded their own treatments of selections from the opera. Some of these versions of Superstar have differed wildly from our original recording but as long as the new interpretation stands up in its own right as an interesting piece of musical production we don't mind whether it's performed by a symphony orchestra, a rock group, a middle-of-the-road choir or by a brass band (all of which has happened). If it's serious, and if it's musical, we are delighted and feel it can only help the work as a whole."
He goes on to particularly praise Nick's orchestrations, which are certainly pretty interesting, a mix of symphony and chorus not quite as easy-listening as Percy Faith but not quite rock and roll, either.
The other interesting bit in Tim Rice's blurb is toward the end, where he says, "I knew that we had no need to worry about Nick's work not being serious or musical, and I knew that we would have no need to avoid speaking to Nick for the next few years. (There are a few gentlemen who have tackled Superstar in such a way that I do not feel a strong friendship would be forged were Andrew and I to meet them.)"
Ouch!
And speaking of arrangements not quite passing muster with the creators, Greg sent me this li'l tidbit. Guess I won't be listening to that version next year!

The Disciples

I know nothing about this recording of Jesus Christ Superstar other than it is from the 70s, so I am not going to comment on it. Instead, let's continue our wrapping-up theme. Today I want to talk about my New Favorite Line.
I call it that even though I don't think I had an Old Favorite Line. I have favorite songs--early on in my life, I could just listen to "Everything's All Right" over and over, and later my allegiance switched to the "Trial Before Pilate." But individual lyrics? None of them stood out in particular.
Then I engaged in this Lenten experiment. When I heard the original Broadway cast recording, a moment came in the "Trial Before Pilate" I had not heard in the recordings I knew before this Lent--the brown album, the movie soundtrack, or Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection (a version we will get to soon). It came right after Pilate seethes:
"Look at your Jesus Christ.
I'll agree--he's mad. Ought to be locked up.
But--that is not a reason to destroy him.
He's a sad little man,
Not a king or god--
Not a thief--I need a crime!"
The crowd answers him in staccato rhythm. I couldn't make out what they were saying in this version. I heard the same shouts in the BBC Radio 2 version but still couldn't make them resolve into intelligible speech. Finally I had to consult Greg. He said the mystery lines were:
"Kill him! He says
He's God--He's a blasphemer.
He'll conquer you, and us,
And every Caesar!"
(In some versions they say "And even Caesar"--I prefer "every.")
Why is this so fantastic? Because it cuts right to the heart of the Jesus Problem. Far from being "harmless," as Pilate later claims Jesus is, He is the most dangerous character there can be. And killing Him is not going to solve the problem He poses. Brendan Kennelly sums up the paradox well in his Book of Judas poem "No Image Fits":
"I had not understood that annihilation
Makes him live with an intensity I cannot understand."

Holy Week!

We are on the last week of Jesus Christ Superstar!
So, first up--the original Australian cast from 1972. Good Pilate in this one, and the Judas is willing to go off the beaten path of notes more often than some. Very effective use of a children's chorus singing "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ/Who are you, what have you sacrificed?"--especially because gradually a women's chorus picks up the chant. Jesus tends to indicate Drama by singing...at...half...speed.
I'm going to do some summing-up on my Lenten experience this week. First, let's take a look at how the decades are represented. Now, this isn't the full list--Greg still has a couple recordings to send me, but of the thirty-eight I have (yes, he did find a replacement for the duplicate), by far the most come from the 1970s--eighteen in all. And of those, none are from later than, I think, 1975; they cluster mostly around 1972. The next most-represented decade is the 2000s: thirteen recordings there. I also have seven recordings from the '90s, and none--NONE--from the '80s (unless, as I said, the recordings I have not gotten yet are from that benighted decade).
I would say that the largest stylistic variation are in the 70s recordings--what with Moog Superstar and The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar and the two--count'em two--easy-listening offerings. The 2000s had Surferstar and what was billed by the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra as a "21st century tribute," but even these were pretty faithful to the original, whereas Soul and Moog just spun off into the ether.

Took a break from listening to Jesus Christ Superstar...

...in order to watch Jesus Christ Superstar.
Yes, it wasn't on the schedule yet, but tonight I sat down with a few friends (several of whom had never seen it) to watch the 1973 movie version.
We had palms on hand as decorations, which made one of our number speculate that the evening would be like a Rocky Horror event in which we'd become part of the action; this didn't happen (well, okay, there was a little bit of dancing along to the "Simon Zealotes" scene) but we did provide some commentary as we watched, a la MST3K. I'd never before noticed the similarity of the "Damned for All Time" riff to the Batman theme!
I promised some additional commentary on the emotional effectiveness of kitsch--why, in spite of my instinct to sneer at it, I still found The Living Strings and Living Voices' JCS heartwrenching. The best quote I can offer on the subject comes from Bill Flanagan's book U2 at the End of the World. He's reporting on a conversation Bono was having with friends about meeting the artist Jeff Koons. Koons told Bono that the most generous kind of art lets its audience decide how to react to it. Flanagan says, "Koons's philosophy suggests that with so much of contemporary culture devoted to trying to con some emotional response from people, the most honest art is a glass sculpture of a puppy, or one of those paintings of little waifs with big eyes--because that obvious, corny, simplemended art that wears its intentions on its sleeve is the only art attempting no subliminal manipulation."

Can you believe it took this long for it to happen?

I got a repeat Jesus Christ Superstar today. Given the crazy logistics of tracking down 40 different versions of the rock opera, you'd have thought this would have happened sooner, but Greg is a resourceful man. Nevertheless, today's version was the London recording featuring Alice Cooper as Herod. So--no new review today, and I am not going to listen to the next recording until I confirm that Mr. Matzker found a spare. Not to say that 39 versions of JCS doesn't also have a ring to it...

Sing Along With Judas

Today's Jesus Christ Superstar was from 1971. "Music from the Rock Opera Played by The Living Strings and Living Voices."
Quoth the Greg Matzker: "All I am going to say is, don't hate me for this one."
If earlier this week we had elevator music JCS, today we had glee club JCS. The Living Strings, Google informs me, were the creation of RCA Records when mood music had its heyday. All right--do you remember the pilot of WKRP in Cincinnati, where DJ Johnny Fever (who wasn't Johnny Fever yet, but that's another story) played The Hallelujah Tabernacle Choir's rendition of "You're Having My Baby?" Think of that, and you get a sense of what this was like. WIth very precise, clean harmonies surrounded by swelling strings from some unbilled European orchestra, male voices and female voices trade off on lines like "Nazareth, your famous son/should have stayed a great unknown/Like his father carving wood, he'd have made good."
The name should have been a tipoff. Hey, at least it wasn't Living Marimbas--another actual part of the Living Strings cohort. But "Living Voices"? As opposed to "Dead Voices," I suppose, which are nototoriously hard to record?
Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but as I listened I started finding it emotionally affecting in spite of, or perhaps because of, the off-the-charts kitsch. More to come when I am more awake...

Argentinian JCS, 2007

The ending countdown has begun...we are in the last ten days of Lent (we don't count Sundays, remember) so these are our final ten Jesus Christ Superstars!
Can't say much tonight as I am very tired. But I should mention that I watched a bit of the movie Romero this evening after listening to my daily Passion opera, and all of the talk by well-intentioned people advising Romero not to take the sacrificial path...yeah, it sounded kinda familiar. "We are occupied...have you forgotten how put down we are?"

1974 Dutch JCS

This Jesus Christ Superstar surprised me. I didn't expect such drastically shortened versions of songs, for one thing. It was (mostly) sung in Dutch, so I'm not sure which verses hit the cutting room floor, but with a number like "Damned for All Time," where Judas usually explains quite a bit about his motives for turning Jesus in, he got maybe a couple of lines sung before we were moving on. Any time there was customarily a few verses, there'd be at least one missing--with the exception I think of "King Herod's Song." Why the heavy Reader's Digesting of the music? Was it to get the whole musical on one LP instead of two?
Another surprise was the much more prominent role of choruses. On "King Herod's Song," for instance, every refrain ("So you are the Christ, yes, the great Jesus Christ" or words to that effect) was sung by a whole troupe of voices. It made it seem like the crucifixion was a far more communal act instead of the decision of a few powerful men.
The occasional smattering of English into the mix was something else that got my attention--in "Hosanna" the crowd sang, "Hey JC, JC, won't you smile at me?" instead of the Dutch equivalent, and in "Superstar" they sang "Who are you, what have you sacrificed?" and "Do you think you're what they say you are?"
I'll never know if they would have done the 39 lashes in English or Dutch, since the "Trial Before Pilate" was cut to bare bones. The only thing left was a staccato shout of the crowd and Pilate's final lines, and the only reason I know it was Pilate's final lines was that the last word sounded like "marionette"--and the English original has him ending with "Die, if you want to, you innocent puppet!"

Heaven's Hold Music

The aptly-named Percy Faith released his take on Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971, the year after "the brown album" came out, some months before the first Broadway performances, and two years before the movie. In the early 70s, JCS must have been inescapable...how inescapable, you ask? Percy Faith had a minor Adult Contemporary hit with "Everything's All Right"--a finger-snappin' string-heavy easy-listening instrumental. Imagine--you could have heard it playing in the elevator!
He doesn't do "Damned For All Time" or "Judas' Death" as mood music, which is just as well.
He also released an album of orchestral arrangements of Beatles songs in 1970. These two recordings are sold together these days. Should I comment on what it would be like to go from listening to "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (with its "The way things are going/they're gonna crucify me" chorus) to "The Trial Before Pilate"? No, I don't think I should.

Drew Sarich as Jesus (Really)

Okay, so I was wrong. Yesterday's production of Jesus Christ Superstar featured St. Louis boy-who-done-good Drew Sarich as Judas. Today's was the one where he played Jesus. Greg wanted me to hear both versions so I could decide which I liked better.
And I have to say, Jesus wins hands down. If only for "Gethsemane"--the best version I've heard yet. Sarich is able to pull off the trick of going through the emotional wringer of Jesus' agony in the garden while still nailing all the high notes. More often I've heard the actor playing Jesus being technically proficient or emotional--or simply screaming. This was heart-wrenching but it was also some seriously great singing.
This production featured a female Herod--first time I've heard that. She would have impressed me more if she hadn't kept stumbling over her lines. I do think making Herod a trouser role for a chick is an interesting idea; I hope some other production I hear this Lent tries the same thing.
Pilate, in the trial scene, right after the 39 lashes, suddenly started speaking lines in German (this production was done in Germany). I wonder what he was saying--it didn't seem to fit the rhythm of what his next lines would have been ("Where are you from, Jesus? What do you want, Jesus? Tell me"), though those lines were omitted. It's interesting to me how jarring it is to hear someone talk after two hours or so of straight singing. It's also interesting to me that I don't find it at all strange that all the lines of dialogue are sung in JCS.
I was making invites for a JCS-watching party as I was listening to this. (It'll be Saturday, March 27th at 7 pm. Email me for further info.) For the front of the invite, I drew the angels from the cover of the brown album. I remember how as a kid I puzzled over that image, not actually getting what it was supposed to represent. I also remember when I first realized that the music from the first half of the show was more often than not "recycled" in the second half, and what a wealth of ironic commentary on the action was available because of this.

Drew Sarich as Jesus

Listened to a version of JCS today starring the St. Louisan Drew Sarich as Jesus. Intriguingly, I discovered that not only does my St. Louis friend Greg know him, but one of my Cincinnati friends does as well. (Does that make him their personal Jesus?) (So sorry. Couldn't resist.)
A good production, and Drew sang well. Once again I had it on for my drive to/from school. We've been talking about nonstandard units of measurement in the second grade class I'm student teaching. I can now say that the length of my trip to school is eight Jesus Christ Superstar long; that is, it takes from the overture to "Pilate's Dream" to get there.

1972 Original London Cast, or, if God is an American, then Pilate is...

Here's a good place to talk about accents. Have you ever noticed that when someone is supposed to be a Roman soldier/governor/emperor/what have you on stage or screen, they speak with a British accent? Go back and check out your standard sword-and-sandal epics, and you will see I'm right. It is as though the way we moderns think of Empire is through the Rule of Britannia, and we just transfer that back 2000 years or so.
British is the way Pilate "officially" sounds in JCS--a crisp, upper crust accent full of disdain--and I don't think it's just because the role's originator had spent fifteen years in London. I think that we just expect Romans to sound like this now (when really, shouldn't they be sounding a bit more like Tony Soprano?).
All of this to say Pilate had it tough in this version because everyone had a British accent.

Remscheid Cast

Lent is officially half over (this past Sunday was Laetare Sunday); it took me half of Lent to find a solution to my not-enough-hours-in-the-day-to-listen-to-Jesus Christ Superstar dilemma. The last couple of nights, as you may have noticed, I skimped by falling asleep to JCS--which makes it kinda hard to blog about JCS. Today I thought, hey, wait a minute. It takes me about a half-hour to drive to work.
I took my computer with me.
It was great, especially today with the Remscheid cast from 2003. I'm guessing this is a German production, but they sung in English (with just a slight tendency to overenunciate giving away the accent), so it was quite singalongable. Wonderful springlike weather, great driving music, and I got up to "Gethsemane" by the time I got home. Gonna try this again tomorrow!
This was a good production, fairly standard. I'm beginning to notice how long a shadow was cast by the early JCSs--the brown album and the movie in particular. Most people seem content to, for instance, simply imitate Carl Anderson's adlibs at key points in "Heaven on their Minds," which is contrary to the whole idea of soul singing. This Judas was like that, whereas the Jesus in this version did actually dare to change the timing of a word or two. Props to him.

Jesus Christ Surferstar

No, I'm not kidding. There is indeed a 2-CD set, "Inspired by the original soundtrack album," of tributes recorded by surf rock bands (Urban Surf Kings, Susan & the Surftones, The Atlantics). They don't skimp--this isn't a highlights reel, it's the whole show. Ever found yourself thinking, "You know, I love JCS, but what it really needs is to be vaguely reminiscent of the theme song to The Munsters"? Then this compilation is for you. Bonus: The cover image--Jesus riding a wave on a cross-shaped board. (Still not kidding.)
What's odd here (besides, you know, the whole concept) is that some bands elect to perform the songs as instrumentals while some include at least some of the lyrics. So the first words heard are "It seems to me a strange thing mystifying," and there's an Elvis-ish spoken section in "Judas' Death": "Aw, Mama, does he love me too?"

The Moog and the Dutch and some folks speaking Spanish on one of two continents

Playing a bit of catchup with the Jesus Christ Superstar versions I neglected to comment on last week.
1974's Moog Superstar reminded me of the lounge music revival of the early 90s, which means I was picturing JCS playing breezily in the background as hipsters drank martinis. What can I say about it...? Not a lot of vocals, a whole lotta Moog. Moog trying to be harpsichord, Moog trying to be out on some astral plane or another. Oh, and "I Don't Know How to Love Him" featured a female vocalist reciting the words as poetry. Before this, I thought that William Shatner's pop music/beat poetry delivery was something unique; maybe she was performing a homage to the Rocket Man?
Dutch 2005 came next. This seemed like a fairly standard version...until, again, "I Don't Know How To Love Him." Do you know the number one surefire way of impressing me? Going a cappella. And that's what the Dutch did! I suspect actually that the "backup band" here was a pre-existing a cappella ensemble, both because of the precision and innovation of the harmonies and because the Netherlands have a thriving a cappella scene.
I can't imagine why I haven't heard this attempted before--going instrumentless added to the intimacy of Mary Magdalene's confession here.
The other great innovation in this production was another Magdalene-moment--in the midst of the "39 Lashes," we start to hear Mary screaming, and then everything fades out but her solo rendition of "Could We Start Again Please?" It was a fantastic stopped-time setup. When it ended with her going back into hysterics as the countdown resumed, it was a devastating moment.
I'm listening now to either a 2004 Spanish cast recording or a 2001 Mexican one. (It came with two labels.) This one features a heavy reliance on dance-music beats--haven't heard any full-on remixes yet, thankfully, but the night is young.
Gonna obey the letter of the law if not the spirit tonight, and gonna keep this on as I head to bed...I will report on what effect this might have on my dreams.

"It is...from the devil."

I think I heard from the opposition today.
One of my friends (who shall remain nameless--unless he wants to identify himself--because I didn't ask whether I could quote him) told me about asking a Russian exchange student for the newly translated-and-released Jesus Christ Superstar from Moscow. The student said he would not get it for him for the reason quoted in the title of this post. I listened to Moscow '92 a few days ago (is it the first Russian recording? Couldn't tell you for sure) and didn't think there was anything objectionable in it. As I've said before, though, I know there are people who find the very idea of JCS blasphemous, and perhaps the Russian exchange student was one of those.
Or maybe he was thinking of the version I listened to today.
This was the first JCS I found disturbing. A whole bunch of separate elements combined to give me this impression. In the overture, sections of the score were unexpectedly repeated or omitted--and when you're as familiar with the score as I am, any deviation is attention-grabbing. But I didn't think that was so bad at first because variety is the spice of Lent.
Then it seemed like the songs had gotten out of order somehow--was Jesus singing "Poor Jerusalem" immediately afterward? It was the melody for it, but what the words were of course I can't say. It was strange to hear it here because this song comes in most versions right after "Simon Zealotes" (or "Simon de Fanaticus," as his name is wonderfully rendered in the Dutch JCS I listened to yesterday).
Things just got weirder as they went. The melodic setting for the last moments of Jesus' trial before Pilate (where he sings, "Where are you from, Jesus?") showed up right after "Everything's All Right," but again, what were they actually singing? As this continued to happen, I formed a theory--maybe the Russian translators decided the audience wouldn't have the background knowledge of the story necessary to make sense of the show, and so they added musical numbers to provide more backstory. They just recycled melodies used elsewhere so as to preserve the show's integrity.
But what was this? "Hosanna" was like a dance remix of everything, incorporating elements of "Simon Zealotes," "Superstar," "Strange Thing Mystifying," "Death of Judas," "Last Supper," and probably a couple of other things I didn't recognize in regurgitated format.
It didn't make sense. And it certainly did not preserve the integrity of the show. It was like putting the show in a Cuisinart.
What else bothered me...
...the heavy reverb placed on most of the voices most of the time, making them sound less than human. It gave the impression the singers were stranded inside a cavernous, desolate space.
...the way choral parts were buried deep in the mix. I strained to hear them. Again, the impression was of great distance between everyone.
...the "wobble" used in some of the songs to make the instruments sound out of tune. This effect was used a lot in "The Temple"--together with another restating of the "Poor Jerusalem" theme.
...making "I Don't Know How To Love Him" a duet. ???? And then adding some of the melody to "King Herod's Song" into it--yeah, that musical theme does not have the connotations you want in this part of the show.
I could go on, but I'll spare you. I'll just say the overarching sense was of ugliness--ripping something apart and then putting it back together haphazardly.

So I'm not gonna write much about Jesus Christ Superstar tonight...

...even though over the past three days I have listened to, but not yet talked about, Russia 1992, 1974's Moog Superstar (by Terry Wallace and His Interstellar Moog Sounds, natch) and Dutch 2005.
I'm just gonna let you contemplate that lineup until I write again.

The man behind it all: Greg Matzker (Part II)

This is the second part of an email interview with the one responsible for finding forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar for me to contemplate this Lent. (Part I was yesterday.)


What are the qualities you personally look for in your "ideal" Judas, Jesus, Herod, Pilate, Mary Magdalene?


My ideal Judas--anger. When the show starts he is already not in a good place. I think of this character as Sweeney Todd. The madness is already there but let's not go too over the top too soon; we have to wait for the right moment in the show or soon you just don't care.
Jesus is interesting. Its not his story--not really, anyway. Its Judas's story. Most of the times I have seen the show they try to bring this character to the front and he shouldn't be. In almost every scene he is the secondary character. He needs to have this sense of loss, that he really doesn't know what his next move should be. But when he gets (lets say excited) the notes he sings should be done with conviction but almost never NEVER yelled.
Herod--camp all the way, only because it is the comic relief in the show that very much needs to happen at that point. The audience needs that break. I have seen it played gay, as a lounge singer (why not a gay lounge singer?) and I have even seen it done straight forward [which] honestly made me lose interest in the rest of the show; it made it seem like the show was going on WAY TOO LONG.
Pilate--what a mixed bag this is. In too many productions I have seen this almost as a throw away part becasue he is not on stage all that much. You need an actor here. This person needs to run the gamut when it comes to emotions, a lot of times all within the same song. This man is way too scared to do the wrong thing.
Mary Magdalene--someday I will find a recording of Janis Joplin singing ANYTHING from this part. This part really is the mother hen. Let's face it: it is the only real female part in the show. Whoever does this part needs to be able to hold her own, make her presence known each and every moment she is on stage even when she is not singing or part of the scene. Think of mothers. They are controlling but forgiving, loving but knowing when it is time to let you be you.


Are you ever going to cast me as Pontius Pilate?


After listening to the recordings I have this to say: you will have to fight me for it. BRING IT ON. I would love to do the part and give you front row seats. I think I am ready, old enough and think I would do you so very proud.

The man behind it all: Greg Matzker (Part I)

...Artistic Director of Marble Stage Theatre and the fella who has kept me supplied with recordings of Jesus Christ Superstar this Lent. Here are the fruits of an email interview I did with him about this project.


How did you first come up with the idea of sending me forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar?


The sad truth on this is ...you asked for it. I remember last Easter, sitting there watching the movie, and I brought up how many cast recordings of Godspell I had. (Before you ask, I already checked--there aren't anywhere near 40 recordings out there.) And you said, "You know what would be fun?" At first I thought, "Yeah, that would be fun." Then the challenge began.
(Angela's note: let the record show I have no memory of this conversation...I had assumed that this was originally Greg's idea.)


How long did it take you to find all the different versions? Were you looking for any in particular, and if so, were any challenging to find?


First I had to even find out if there were 40 recordings out there. I went to the internet and got scared right away. I could find ONLY 40 official recordings out there, many out of print. I thought, "This is going to be a bust." Some of these recordings where so rare that there were blogs of people trying to find them. But I figured, hey, I have a year. If it doesnt happen I am sure Angela would forgive me. So I started sending out requests to friends ....then friends of friends.....then plain ol' strangers. To be honest I didn't have all 40 when I sent you the first recordings....Luckily, though, over the last year I found out there are much much more our there than just the original 40 that I found. I knew my mission could be completed. As far as finding any particular one: Yes and no. I knew a couple out there would be nice to have. But to be honest and fair I was just trying to find 40 recordings.


What was your opinion of the rock opera before this experiment began? What do you think of it now?


...I say that I have come to look forward to when we watch it together and having our talks about the show, movie, and yes, even the religious parts. However, now as I listen to each one I can't help but think to myself, "Man I would like to direct this show and use elements of some of these productions." It really is a show you can have fun with. It gives directors a chance to think outside of the box. I hate when people have no vision and just put on a show the same way it has been done 10,000 times. With these recordings, it is clear that theatres have stretched their artist minds and creativity [in good and bad ways].

The Jesus Christ Superstar That Shall Not Be Named

For the first time this Lent, I listened to a JCS I thoroughly disliked. There were some good performances in it, I will grant you--some fine work by Mary Magdalene and Judas--but I felt the guy who played Jesus spent more time conveying "Listen to me hit high notes" than he did conveying any emotional depth. "Is he even paying attention to what he's singing?" I thought more than once. I ended up putting on the Japanese JCS again as a palate-cleanser.
I'm not gonna even say what version of JCS this was. We're just gonna delete it from the record.
Tomorrow we visit Russia. Now that's something I eagerly anticipate...

Kingsway Youth Opera Company, 1971

Today--for the first time during this experiment--I caught myself thinking, "Gosh, I've listened to Jesus Christ Superstar a lot."
I guess it's taken three weeks for the novelty to wear off. Now it's taking on more of the flavor of a Lenten discipline.
"This one I think you are going to find very interesting," Greg said of today's installment, and if you know Greg, you will understand why I got nervous. "Interesting" can be taken any number of ways. But it was true--maybe he just knows my tastes. I like this one because it has a lot of rock'n'roll to it; in fact, something about the orchestration (horn-heavy) reminded me of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Or perhaps the Moody Blues, a band that's been on my mind because the weather has gotten lovely. The loveliness of the weather, by the by, is another reason I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of spending time sitting and listening to a recording instead of going to bask in the sunshine. Could I have done both at once? Basked and Superstarred? No, I don't own one of those newfangled electronic devices by which one can bring one's music along.
But back to the Moody Blues. (Does anyone else have bands they associate with particular times of the year?) The grandiose orchestral arrangements with rock swagger, coupled with the British accents of the cast--yeah, even the fact this was a vinyl recording with the wobbliness that comes to vinyl with age--all conjured the Moodies in my mind. And then I found out that this LP was released by Deram Records--the same label that released Days of Future Passed and the next five Moody Blues albums. The interconnectivity of all things.
I never was conscious of it before, but now that I think about it the albums playing in my house while I was growing up often had orchestration married to rock sensibilities--JCS, the Moodies' early work, ELO--not to mention the classical pieces I heard tended to have more raucous energy--pieces by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov.
It all makes sense now! (Or should I say, "My mind is clearer now"?)

Jesucristo Superestrella, 2001

So the Jesus Christ Superstar du jour is another Mexican cast recording, this one from 2001. This one came with a libretto, so I could, employing my scanty Spanish knowledge and handy-dandy Google Translate, see some of the translation choices--in Judas' first song, for instance, it is Eden, not heaven, that is on their minds. And "What's the buzz/tell me what's happening?" is rendered "¿Dime que significa esta rumor?" or (roughly) "Tell me, what is this rumor?"
(Ooh! I should use Google Translate on the other phrases I was curious about. Let's see..."Allting är okej nu" is indeed Swedish for "Everything is okay now," and the same song title in Czech turns into "Everything is as it should be" when it's re-Englished. While "Proc ten shon?," the Czech title for "What's the Buzz?" becomes "Why the rush?" Huh.)
Today's experiment in JCS-suitable activities was studying for an exam. It worked out well, I think. In fact I was at first planning to just kinda sit around doing nothin' while listening, and something made me decide to get online and look up practice tests, so it was quite the positive motivator. Time to draft the research paper: "JCS and Behavior Modification."
(And how was this version? Good. No complaints, but no surprises either. Greg promises the really far-out versions are coming in the second half of Lent. Speaking of, happy day before Laetare Sunday, everyone.)
[Update: Oops, I counted wrong. We don't reach the halfway point of Lent until next week!]

The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar, 1972

Okay, I gotta share the Amazon link for this one. This is just what it sounds like it would be: JCS as soul music, all funkified. It was a big change today--even though I've been listening to renditions in Swedish, French, Spanish and Japanese, essentially the songs have remained the same. Sure, there are minor variations. Sometimes Caiaphas and Annas are buffoons and sometimes they are genuinely frightening characters. Sometimes Pilate comes across as vicious throughout and sometimes he has more depth. But essentially everyone has been working from the same template.
The template gets chopped into itty bitty bits on The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar. We start out with an overture which has little to do with the original overture, is mostly gospel piano, and which includes the Soultown Singers testifying "Jesus Christ is a superstar!"--in case we wonder where these performers are going to be coming from theologically.
We follow this up with "Superstar," because running order is one of those elements that is nonessential to JCS's soul. Also not important: the full complement of lyrics for a given song. Take "The Last Supper"--the only part that's included is the part the steadily-getting-drunker apostles sing. Oh, and "Gethsemane"? Jesus' big number? Sammy Turner, Soul's Jesus, sings up to:
Let them hit me hurt me nail me to their tree
...before retreating back to the lines
Then I was inspired, now I'm sad and tired
After all, I've tried for three years, seems like thirty
Could you ask as much from any other man?
...which is where the song ends.
Why? Are they trying to tell a different story than the one JCS tells? Is it because they want to keep things in a particular groove, and there are too many musical shifts in the middle of songs in the original version?
I have to give them credit for taking the source material and bringing it into new territory. I almost feel though that I'm getting the day off from Lent; have I really listened to JCS today?

Is Allting Allright (Ja!) or Okej?

Tonight's pressing question: does Jesus Christ Superstar make good house-cleaning music? More precisely, does Jesus Christ Superstar, the 2009 Swedish cast, make good house-cleaning music? It's worth noting that I have found a Romanian CD, Epoca de Aur, does the best job at keeping me on task when it comes to the performance of domestic duties. It has just the right mix of upbeat material and incomprehensible lyrics. I thought the Swedes could do right by me at least in terms of incomprehensibility, but of course I'm way too familiar with these songs to not know what's going on at any given time, and if I know what's going on, I start thinking about what's going on instead of paying attention to my labors. Also, I find myself slowing down during the slower numbers. On the other hand, one is less likely to whine about how hard it is to clean house when one is listening to Jesus confronting the prospect of being hated, hit, hurt and nailed to a tree.
And how does this version compare to last night's? Good news--sometime between 1972 and 2009, the Swedes fired the saxophonist. Also, I had the sense last night that the cast was putting in a lot of effort, and that's a bad thing--a rock opera should never sound like work. Maybe the singers have a bit more training in this version or something--I don't get that sense of constant struggle, of wrestling with the (admittedly) demanding score, and that makes for a much more pleasant listening experience. I have to mention in particular the great falsetto employed by the 2009 Jesus, something he seems to be able to just launch up there at will.
This cast employs a different translation, I think, because instead of "Everything's Alright" being rendered "Allting är allright" as it was yesterday, it's "Allting är okej nu." Help me out, linguists: does that mean "All things are okay now"? If so, what are the theological implications of things being "okay," not "alright"? It's not quite "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," is it?

How Jesus Christ Superstar is affecting my life.

As we are now two weeks from Ash Wednesday, this is a good time for some reflection on what Lent has been like so far. In fact I just has someone ask, "Are you tired of Jesus Christ Superstar yet?" No, not quite; in fact, when I couldn't get to sleep last night, I got out the Prague recording and listened to it while I was falling asleep. So yes, in one evening I ended up hearing "Vse Je Tak, Jak Ma Byt" four times.
Is it putting a crimp in my social life? A little; I did beg off hanging out late with friends tonight in order to finish listening to the 1972 Swedish cast recording. (What I enjoyed most about the Swedish contribution: the oh-so-close-to-English song titles: "Allting är allright," "Dömd för alltid." What I enjoyed least: the curious over-reliance on the saxophone. I mean, seriously, it just shows up in the middle of a scene with a part that is only vaguely related to what all the other instruments are doing. The net result is that you're envisioning the Last Supper, and there's Jesus and Judas arguing, but then whoops, in walks a wandering saxophonist. He's oblivious.)
How's Greg doing, since he's listening to all of these recordings too? In a recent email he confessed, "These songs officially will not get out of my head at this point. I think I actually had a dream I met a Galilean."

Czech JCS--Original Prague Cast

Oh, my gosh. This one's so wonderful. I've listened to "Vse Je Tak, Jak Ma Byt" ("Everything's All Right") three times now, that's how wonderful this is. And I nearly started crying during "Gethsemane"--which is all the more impressive when this is the tenth--or maybe eleventh, or twelfth--time I've heard this song in the last two weeks.
Maybe one of the reasons I like this recording so much is because my family on my mom's side is (mostly) Bohemian, so I feel a cultural affinity here. I'm certainly glad that my Czech repertoire of phrases might be expanded by this experience. Before this recording, I only knew "Bez práce nejsou koláce", which means "No work, no tasty fruit- or cream-cheese-filled pastries." I'm almost tempted now to travel to Prague and ask of random passersby, "Proc ten shon?" I say "almost" because I'm worried that I really would be saying the Czech equivalent of "What's the buzz?"--that is, the most dated bit of 70s slang imaginable.
Maybe it's because it seems to take three times as many syllables to deliver these lines in Czech, or maybe it's, again, the subtext of hard rock being sung in a communist milieu. Whatever it is, I get the strangest sense, listening to these songs that I think I know so well, that far more is being said than I've ever heard before.

Kiwi JCS

...Yes, the 1994 New Zealand cast recording. I don't recognize any names in the cast. Overall impression? They sound so young. Strong voices and some unique elements to the arrangements--I particularly liked the extended a cappella outro in "The Last Supper," when the apostles are well and truly in their cups.
But no, this version doesn't measure up to the Japanese.
Ooh! But Judas goes intriguingly off script! In his big showstopping "Superstar" number (here only followed by the instrumental "John 19:41" because this is a highlights recording and I guess "The Crucifixion" isn't a highlight), when the angelic soul-girl choir is singing
"Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,
Who are you, what have you sacrificed?"
and
"Jesus Christ Superstar,
Do you think you're what they say you are?"
At the very, very end, when Judas usually just ad-libs on the theme of "I only want to know," there's a musical break, and Judas' last words are:
"I am a sinner who's lost his way
Down on my knees, I am here and praying.
Jesus...I think I know..."

Jézus Krisztus Szupersztár, Hungary I and II

Wikipedia's a wonderful thing. It is there that I learned that
"Jesus Christ Superstar was performed in 1971 in Hungary. The performance was based on the original studio version, and the band and orchestra parts were transcribed to a five piece rockband. The group, Korong, whose author Tibor Miklós wrote the Hungarian lyrics, had a few enormously successful performances in Budapest's university clubs; however, it was banned afterwards from performing it."
Wikipedia did not specify who banned the performance--the Communist government? Religious authorities? Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber? It did mention that the KGB went after performers of the first JCS done in Europe, a 1971 Lithuanian production.
The first of the two Hungarian performances in my Lentathon was from 1986. In 1989 Hungary put the "first tear in the Iron Curtain" (again, as Wikipedia puts it) by taking down the barbed wire between it and Austria. So did JCS bring down Communism? You be the judge.
To my ears the Communist-era JCS rocks harder than the post-Communist one (from the year 2000). Maybe the memory of the banned 1971 performances was still fresh; maybe there was still an element of danger in recording these songs. Remember that deep Eastern European voices and those consonant-heavy languages are ideally suited for hard rock. Everything comes together to give this performance a vitality that the 2000 recording lacks--sadly, once again the later version slips into bombast. (This performance has a lot of the same poor choices that the London revival did, though the Hungarians have a much better ending for "Everything's All Right"--it just stops cold, a refreshing shock.)

"One thing I'll say for him--Jesus is cool."

"Did your friend Greg really find forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar?" I was asked.
"I'll answer that by telling a story," I said. "Today I'm listening to a Hungarian version. And it's the first of two."
That's right--today I heard a cast recording from 1986. And tomorrow I'm to listen to Jézus Krisztus Szupersztár from 2000. "I thought it would be fun to compare," Greg said.
...But I'm not going to talk about that yet, because in addition to listening to my first-of-two Hungarian versions, I listened to the Japanese recording again, this time with a young'un who is not quite so familiar with all things JCS. (Let the record show she'd specifically requested hearing the Japanese version, once she learned such a thing exists. I think it's because she's a Miyazaki fan.) I'd previously played "the brown album" for her, so she had some familiarity with the music and some interesting lyric interpretations. "What's a 'cheated mandarin'?" (And, during "Gethsemane," "Did he just say, 'I want to know Micah?'")
This evening I kept singing the English version over the Japanese to help her keep track of the plot, and I'm sure this was what prompted her to ask, "Just how many times have you listened to Jesus Christ Superstar, anyway?"
When I wasn't providing a play-by-play, we discussed the concept of non-violent resistance and why it is powerful; Peter's threefold denial of Christ and then the post-resurrection threefold question from Jesus: "Simon, do you love Me?"; and what's wrong with the lyric
If you'd come today, you would have reached a whole nation.
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
"I mean, really!" I said. "Are they implying Jesus' ministry would have been more effective if He'd been on American Idol?"

JCS London Revival, 1996

Sorry, Sir Andrew...this under-your-personal-supervision revival just isn't as good as the Japanese version. (That may be my rating system from now on--"Is it above or below the Japanese standard?")
Steve Balsamo does well; you can take a look/listen yourself--here he is singing with his band The Storys. (H/T to Derek.) Now, don't you think he'd make a good Jesus? He hits some fantastic high notes in "Gethsamene," which was something the Japanese Jesus barely attempted and the BBC Jesus completely skipped. And I dug the refreshing take on "King Herod's Song," which cut out some of the mince while retaining all the vaudeville. "This Herod's really good," I thought.
Then I found out it was Alice Cooper.
Cool!
Now to the problems: bombast, bombast, bombast and bombast. Why oh why end "Everything's All Right" with a big ol' choral give-'em-all-you-got? They did this on the Beeb, too, and it bugged the heck out of me because I was liking that number until then. Not everything has to be pyrotechnic, kids.
Caiaphas and Co. come across here as moustache-twirling melodrama villains, and I think that's also a mistake. I think they'd be more menacing if they were played a bit more straight. Caiaphas has a genuine concern for his country's welfare. He just also has a really low voice.
Some lyrics have been changed for this production--not "a jaded mandarin," sad to say--that still made the cut! Most interesting to me: instead of
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Pilate here sings
But what is truth? Not easy to define.
We both have truths. Are yours the same as mine?
...which doesn't have the same zing. I don't get why ol' Tim would want to change it.
I should also note that I listened to this one out of order. I was supposed to listen to this one first, not the BBC version. My partner in JCSdom worked quite hard on a Lenten running order, so my apologies to him for getting off sequence.

Yes, they really do sing "Sayonara, Judas"...

...in the Japanese version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
If you know me at all, you're probably not surprised to learn I like this quite a lot. Okay, sure, I did wonder at the beginning why they decided to jack up the speed (maybe it's just the recording?). And unfortunately this Judas seems to equate "showing strong emotion" with "screaming." But I think the trouble is that he has a weak falsetto. I get the sense all these singers are well-trained, perhaps even representatives of Opera World. If that's the case, it would explain why Judas makes a poor showing--the dynamics of his role are way too rock'n'roll for a classically trained singer.
Jesus, on the other hand...oh my gosh. Love him. Exceptional delivery--I don't care that I don't know the language, he lets me know what he's feeling.
Pilate in this is a bass, or perhaps bass-baritone. Whatever he is, he's got this rich timbre to his voice that gives his part a lot of weight, a lot of authority.
Caiaphas & Co. are clearly playing their part for laughs--it comes through in the orchestration and also in their cartoonlike over-delivery of their lines.
I feel bad for whoever had to translate this--it sounds like "Crucify him!" takes about fifteen syllables to say in Japanese. Also apparently "Hey, JC, JC" needed to be "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ" in Japan.
"Judas" is pronounced "Yu-da" (so really I should have said "Sayanora Yu-da" in the title of this post, but that would have been too obscure), but everyone says the "J" in Jesus. Confusing.
Also--the thirty-nine lashes are counted in English. It's an abrupt, chilling shift--like Pilate has turned to look me in the eye.

JCS on BBC Radio 2, from 1996

Four words: Roger Daltrey as Judas.
No, really.
And could be one of the best Judases ever. (What's plural for "Judas"? Judai?)
For the first time I was looking forward to hearing how they were going to do Judas' death. (That sounds wrong, but less wrong than my original formulation--"I was looking forward to hearing Judas die." There's a lot of heavy subtext in JCS, you know. Makes it hard for an audience to know how to acknowledge a good performance. "This Jesus must, Jesus must, Jesus must DIE," the Sanhedrin proclaim, and the audience goes )
Judas here is way better, more passionate, more believable, than Jesus (Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet!). I mean, if your dream casting of Jesus is someone whose voice drops into a sexy whisper like George Michael's on occasion, you'll get what you're looking for, but I just didn't quite buy it. No, this was Judas Superstar for me.
Speaking of dream casting, did anyone else ever try to put together the ideal fantasy cast? Mine of course features David Bowie as Pontius Pilate; after that, the field's wide open. Sinead O'Connor is a contender for Mary Magdalene, though as I've said earlier, her actual take on "I Don't Know How To Love Him" fell a little short of the mark. I want Bono to be either Judas or Jesus, but can't decide which.

On The Fifth Day of Lent: JCS 1975, Mexican Cast

This version of Jesus Christ Superstar has a bit of a lo-fi feel. The orchestration seems to be missing an instrument or two; the singers don't necessarily hit all the notes. What they miss in accuracy, though, they more than make up for in heart. In fact this may well be the most sincere of the versions of JCS I've heard so far--or at least, I'm hearing it this way. The fact that I don't think any of these songs are being performed with a wink (with the exception of "King Herod's Song," er, "La cancion del Rey Herodes," which would be hard to perform any other way) is perhaps just a product of my preconceived notions of Mexican culture. I have this sense that this is 10% rock opera, 90% passion play.
If it's a passion play, then what comes to mind are the barebones dramas of Palm Sunday and Good Friday in the liturgy. Every year the congregation at the Palm Sunday Mass and the Good Friday service (there's no Mass on Good Friday) gets to play roles when the Gospel is read. Mostly they play the crowds, and if you're playing the crowd when the Passion is proclaimed, you're shouting "Crucify him!" a lot. Elsewhere I've written about the horror of listening to a three-year-old yelling these words along with the rest of us. There's something of that mad enthusiasm in the off-key singing here.
Unfortunately my Spanish isn't so great, but I have this weird feeling this production added the "Woman, behold your son/Behold your mother" bit to "La Crucifixion." (Other productions have "Who is my mother? Where is my mother?" instead. Would this have really gone over in the home of La Virgen de Guadelupe?)

Jesus Christ Superstar: A 21st Century Tribute to the Brown Album, Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra

"This I think you will enjoy," Greg said to me. "Or you'll never wanna listen to it again. I figure a 50/50 shot here."
It's not bad. Not at all what I expected; nothing particularly 21st century about it--Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra stays quite faithful to the original for the most part. A chick sings Simon Zealotes' part, but heck, I've got a version where one of the Indigo Girls plays Jesus, so there. But altogether it's cool. Very fun version of "King's Herod's Song" with some girl group doo-wop thrown into the background. Different read on Mary Magdalene--during "Everything's All Right" she doesn't get swallowed up by the rising shouts of "EVERYTHING'S ALL RIGHT, YES!" that belie that line--instead she commands the chorus, so for the first time she "wins" in that song. She doesn't seem all that tortured for "I Don't Know How To Love Him," either. It's making me think of how my friend Ali reacted when she heard Sinead O'Connor sing her version of that torch classic--"I don't believe her. I think she does know."
And, in case you were wondering, yes, now that we are on day 4 of full immersion JCS Lentarama, the songs are on constant repeat in my head all day now. They are crazy catchy.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Version originale Française

Today I can follow my Lenten observance and practice my French; such a deal! Greg sent the first French production--from 1972. Can't help but wonder how JCS sounded to citizens of a country notoriously conflicted about its Christian past. What part of the story resonated most? It's bringing to mind stories my friend Anca told about growing up in Romania at the height of its Communist culture. We've been chatting about the books that could come in to the country in those days, like Polish author Zenon Kosidowski's Povestiri biblice (Biblical Stories), where anything supernatural is taken out of the accounts. How is one's view of Jesus affected if you only hear about the human side of his personality?
My understanding is that the Jesus of Jesus Christ Superstar was intended to be fully human, not at all divine. I don't know if the writers succeeded in portraying Him this way, because I listen to these songs coming from a different place theologically. I know some folks found JCS sacrilegious when it came out, and some still do. I don't share this viewpoint (or I wouldn't be spending my Lent listening to it). Preachers preached against Handel's Messiah when it came out, so, you know, "sacrilegious" is in the eye of the beholder.
Besides. If the very name of Jesus has power, as is claimed in the songs I sing most Sundays, couldn't other intentions get subverted once that name is invoked? Was it a smart move on the part of the Romanians to let in Biblical stories, de-miracled or no?

Day 2 of Lenterific Jesus Christ Superstar: Broadway!

Today was Broadway Day, as in the original cast recording--Ben Vereen as Judas (um, not my favorite), Jeff Fenholt as Jesus (oh my gosh Jesus is the toughest role ever, so mad props to anyone who takes it on). Yvonne Elliman and Barry Dennen back for an encore.
You know, Greg's not gonna be happy to read this, but I am not a Broadway person. But I'll wager that a cast recording is not the optimal way to appreciate a Broadway performance, and I'll admit that I have never seen a performance on Broadway, so any criticism I could offer has precious little weight. Knowing that, I won't waste any time telling you what I didn't go for here.
Instead, let me tell you what blindsided me. Minding my own business, not thinking I would have much to write about...and then "Trial Before Pilate." It was fierce. It's a fierce number to begin with, right? Pilate, the face of the Empire, confronting a prisoner whose motives he cannot understand. Here, there's no subtlety--Pilate is screaming at Jesus, but instead of it being over-the-top, it's genuinely frightening. You can hear an awful malice as the crowd reacts to the thirty-nine lashes.
Extraordinary.

Forty Versions of Jesus Christ Superstar

We played the LPs of Jesus Christ Superstar in my house every year around Holy Week--or at least that's the way I remember it. Whether or not it was such a consistent phenomenon back then, these days if it's getting close to Easter and I haven't listened to JCS, I develop a twitch.
That's the first thing you need to know to understand what's gonna happen here.
Next you gotta know that my friend Greg and I have a tradition of watching the '73 movie version, that he and I have a fondness for discussions of Lenten practices, and that he is an authority on matters pertaining to musicals and obscurity (that is, the tougher it is to find, the more likely Greg is to find it).
I bet you can see where I'm going with this.
...That's right. For Lent this year, Greg is sending me forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar. I will listen to a different version every day.
"As penance?" some of my other friends want to know.
Ha ha.
...Getting into the "why" of anything done for Lent can be complex, actually. Maybe I'm into the challenge and the danger--will a rock opera I love slowly become something I despise? (Hope not!) Maybe it's also...no, let's just leave it at that for now. The experience itself might reveal other meanings as we go.
So now I'm listening to the original recording, the one we listened to in my house year after year. I see Wikipedia calls it "the brown album." JCS didn't start as a staged musical--this here is a "concept recording," where the songs can bleed into each other a bit without anyone having to worry about where the scene/costume changes are going to go.
If you're only going to listen to one JCS (though "why stop at one?" is my motto), this is the one you need to hear. Coming back to it after years of listening to the movie soundtrack is a shock to my system; I'd forgotten how good it was. We've got Ian Gillan from Deep Purple as Jesus, Murray Head (older brother of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head!) as Judas. These are tough parts to sing a) because there are a ton of high notes, b) they've got to express a wide range of highly complex emotions in every song, and c) c'mon. One character's the Son of God, the other is His betrayer. What part of that's gonna be easy? But man, they nail it.
Those who play Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) and Pontius Pilate (Barry Dennen) will go on to do the same on Broadway and in the '73 movie. I like Dennen better in the movie, particularly in the "Trial Before Pilate"; here he's sticking a little too close to just hitting all his notes in his delivery. But I like Elliman better here--more sauce in "Everything's All Right" and more tough-chick bravura in "I Don't Know How to Love Him" (which means it's a less vulnerable-sounding song, but I'm okay with that).
I never wanted to listen to "The Crucifixion" growing up, and I understand a bit more now why. It is excruciating, it's weird, it's a horrific soundscape. But now I'm glad it's in here. And the suddenness of the cutoff at the end is not something you can get in any staged version.
So--welcome to Lent. Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

How my name became unpronounceable.

This week I asked Hive Mind to assist me in my teaching. It will not be the last time. Honestly, I don't know what teachers did before the Internet. Stuck for ideas, how did they face the challenge of designing a spelling activity for second graders in the days when one couldn't just do a Google search on "spelling activities for second graders"?
I feel like the woman in that old commercial who pats flour on herself to fool dinner guests into thinking she slaved over the making of baked goods. My painstaking spelling-activities quest, all three minutes of it, took me to a site that creates word searches. First step: come up with a title for your puzzle. This part of the process was the hardest for me, I think; I finally opted for "Spelling!" I then typed in all twenty of this week's spelling words and noted with amusement (and gratitude) that the puzzle generator promised to use a randomly-created-offensive-word filter as it merrily sprinkled letters around. And here was a nice touch: I could put in a hidden message that would be revealed as the spelling words were found. I chose the propaganda route and hid the phrase "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pancella."
I gave the students the word search today. When I passed out the papers, I explained about the hidden message, showing them how there were dashes at the bottom of the page--"_ ___ __ _____ ________ ____ ____ ________"--for the phrase they were looking for.
The next fifteen minutes were a bit of a free-for-all. Some second graders seem to have something of a word search instinct; others need more prodding. There was much collaborating at tables and some wandering around the room. I didn't mind how they worked on the puzzle so long as they were looking closely at what letters made up the words. The point wasn't to complete a puzzle; the point was to get more familiar with the topography of English.
I did take note of who first found all of the words. I went over to walk him through the finding of the hidden message, since "Use, in order, the letters that are not circled" is an abstract concept. He got pretty far before I was called away to help another student. When I got back, I discovered he was doing fine before he skipped a row; he had written "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pfhrzlbc."