Try the musical CABARET, both Broadway and Movie recordings.
That has that tinny, 3rd-rate band feel one finds in a lot of Brecht-Weill scores.
And also try "Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny," or "Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny," an opera they wrote, with perhaps the most cynical song ever written: "Den Wie Mann Sich Bettet So Liegt Mann." Or, "Then As You Make Your Bed, So Will You Lie."
I used to sing that for auditions, with a deadpan facial expression.
I thought the correct answer was CABARET and nothing else.
You'll not get an argument from me--that's another nice discovery. Thanks, Sean.
Just found my high school yearbook personal ad:
"Bespectacled nebbish and acne survivor seeks Weimar-obsessed girl for unrealistic romance. Must be of slender build, small breasted, wear Louise Brooks hairdo, and be otherwise built for the Jazz Age."
The piano sounds more like an Italian Western/bordello piano, which put me off at first, but the performance by Costello and pianist Steve Nieve persevered and "won me over", so to speak.
I think that what yo are picking up from the piano has more to do with the bright, brittle, tinny tone of the piano - a sound that I personally do not like, but one that Elton John made millions off of.
That same piano part played on a warmer-sounding grand piano would have a much different effect.
Your reply expressed my own thoughts perfectly.
Still searching for anything Brechtian-Weillian in the music of the recent German TV extravaganza, Babylon Berlin. Have you seen it?
I don't know if folks will agree with this, but I think Milhaud's Bull on the Roof has the Weillian vibe.
I've spent the wee small hours of the morning listening to this; I am really enjoying it, even if it's not hammer-on-the-head Brecht-Weill. In my imagination I am getting more of a lush countryside feeling rather than a city caked with decay.
Still listening and still accumulating first impressions, no matter how wrongheaded they may be--you merely stating that it sounds like Brecht-Weill helps "make it so", and my listening is primarily focused on inhabiting another time and place, so it doesn't really matter. Anyway, thanks for bringing me a little bit of culture.
The album cover...did Fernand Léger design the set for this work?
This is not really a replica of the THREEPENNY sound, but I have a hunch you might like listening to "Music for a Farce" by famed-author-but-also-composer Paul Bowles. It's a suite of material originally commissioned for a young, pre-KANE Orson Welles's film of the play,"Too Much Johnson."
(The film has recently been recovered and restored, but to the best of my knowledge no one has tried to score it with the Bowles music.)
This is not really a replica of the THREEPENNY sound, but I have a hunch you might like listening to "Music for a Farce" by famed-author-but-also-composer Paul Bowles. It's a suite of material originally commissioned for a young, pre-KANE Orson Welles's film of the play,"Too Much Johnson."
(The film has recently been recovered and restored, but to the best of my knowledge no one has tried to score it with the Bowles music.)
I knew that Paul "Sheltering Sky" Bowles was a composer of some repute, but a composer in the Weillian style? I have a spoken word CD of Bowles' produced by Bill Laswell, Baptism of Solitude, but of course there's nary an oom-pa-pa to be found in that album's soundscape.
Good to know, PNJ, and it's nice to hear from you.
Slightly OT: I realize most FSMers deeply fear rock and roll music, but other than nodding appreciatively at the royalty checks, does anyone know what Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill's widow--and sublime interpreter of Brecht-Weill music--thought of Jim and the boys' rendition of "Alabama Song"?
Danny Elfman's THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS -- and the unreleased musicals JIMMY CALLICUT and LITTLE DEMONS!
That's not the same style as Weill.
A lot of NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is Weill-inspired. Heck, even Elfman himself has said as much. If not directly, then definitely in many elements. "Sally's Song", for example. Then there's other material that is more in Cab Calloway territory, like "Oogie Boogie Song".
I've expanded the interest to Weimar Republic-era homage and essentially anything related to German culture, circa 1918-1933.
Siouxsie and the Banshees- "Peek-a-Boo":
"Live, the Peepshow travelling show was grand surreal cabaret. Rolling shamelessly in Weimar Republic kitsch. Siouxsie cavorted around the loony Dr. Caligari stage set in a top hat and frilly ensemble that she gradually shed down to silk scanties. She uses sex in a histrionic power play a la Marlene Dietrich, but with the tease more mystical and aloof. As in the paean to the prostitute of "Peek-A-Boo", Siouxsie explores and exploits sexuality without becoming a tool of come-hither antics. Like Prince on his most ironic behaviour, Siouxsie toys with the idea of sexual temptation as much as she indulges herself. Were he alive, German director Rainer Fassbinder would be the logical person to bring the act to the big screen."
According to the all-knowing and infallible Wikipedia, Siouxsie and company gave Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer co-songwriting credit on "Peek-a-Boo."
A really great album, if you have not heard it, is Hal Wilner's Weill tribute Lost in the Stars. Weill songs done by Bley, Waits, Faithful, Sting, Ridgeway, and so many more. In the 80s this was THE album that turned me on to Kurt Weill.
Anyway, thanks for bringing me a little bit of culture.
