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.