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?
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