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.