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."

In case the origin of the word "nylon" comes up when you're on Jeopardy

"How is it," one of my classmates has been asking this week, "that we're taking four classes, but we have five exams?"
That's what you get with an accelerated Master's program--New Math. But sweet, sweet freedom shall soon be ours. As of this writing, I have one take-home exam and one in-class exam to go, and then I'll be on Christmas break from my elementary education classes. I'll still be in the second grade classroom, however, watching the excitement level of seven-year-olds increase exponentially as the calendar marches toward the 25th. (Just the other day I heard one little girl--not in my class; this was in a different setting--ecstatically singing, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way/Santa Claus is coming to a HAP-PY NEW YEAR...")
But--sugarplum visions be darned--the learning must go on. I've been put in charge of teaching spelling. Every week we work on new words in a list of 20 provided by our spelling textbook. Last week we had words with the long "i" sound--"try" and "cry" and "hide" and "bike" and "housefly"--like that. Now, my charges didn't do too well on the spelling test previous to this. If you know me at all you will have correctly guessed I took this personally. "SPELLING! Come ON! No kid is leaving Miss Pancella's class not knowing how to SPELL!" etc. etc. So I was quick to drum into those little brains the pattern: when they heard the long "i" sound at the end of a word, it was always spelled with a "y": "cry," "try," "pry." When they heard the long "i" sound in the middle of the word, it was spelled with an "i," then a consonant, and then a silent "e" at the end: "hide," "bike."
But--the last spelling word on the list? "Nylon."
On Tuesday of that week I cut squares of fabric out of a pair of pantyhose and brought them into class. I passed one out to each table and asked, "Does anyone have a guess about what this is?"
"A thong?" one little voice piped up.
Okay! I thought. No more guesses! "It's a fabric called 'nylon," I said. "This word is not going to follow our spelling pattern, but there's a good reason for that. See, 'nylon' is a made-up material. You can't find it in nature. It was created in a laboratory out of chemicals."
One little girl dropped her fabric square abruptly at this point.
"It was created to be very stretchy," I continued. "So stretchy that the inventors said it could stretch from...New York...to London." I wrote "NY" and "LON" on the board.
A chorus of voices: "Ohhhh!" And once again, as I am so often, I was grateful I'd become a fan of The Nylons--the only reason I'd learned that particular bit of trivia.
And by the way--the class all did very well on the spelling test at the end of the week, and almost everyone spelled "nylon" right.