Ramblin' with Roger

Jesus Christ Superstar: An appreciation

My friend Ellen has one of those turntable thingies that transfers vinyl into digital recordings. She recently made a couple recordings for me, both of Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice collaborations that I’ve long had on LP, Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar. Dreamcoat, which was written first but recorded after Superstar, was OK, but Superstar had a profound affect on my way of thinking; perhaps it still does.

I originally got this album for Christmas in 1970 and played it so often, I can STILL tell you where all the skips are on my recording. I found it to be a great jumping off point for great theological discussions, rather than the anathema that some religious folks thought it was, especially with my friend Pat Wilson, a good Catholic woman who was the wife of my dentist. (For context, think of the controversies that Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film “Last temptation of Christ” or Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie “The Passion of the Christ” engendered in certain circles.)

Overture – Ensemble
It starts with that insistent theme that appears in the next song, hits the high point with the “Superstar melody, and ends with the mournful last piece.
“Heaven on Their Minds” – Judas
I happen to think even today that there are those who worry too much about heaven and not enough about treating God’s people on earth.
“What’s the Buzz/Strange Thing, Mystifying” – Jesus, Mary, Judas, Disciples
While Jesus is a tad snarky here, it is consistent with his frustration with his disciples that after three years, they still didn’t get it.
“Everything’s Alright” – Mary, Judas, Jesus, Disciples
The religious elite were often complaining about the lowlifes Jesus hung around with. But I DO think we have the resources to “save the poor from their lot”, if not the political will.
“This Jesus Must Die” – Caiaphas, Annas, Priests, Disciples
Always loved the deep voice of Caiaphas voice.
“Hosanna” – Caiaphas, Jesus, Disciples
It has always astounded me about the mood of the crowd from the cheers of Palm Sunday to the rejection on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
“Simon Zealotes/Poor Jerusalem” – Simon, Jesus, Disciples, Roman Guards
Simon and others thought that Jesus was going to be the second coming of the warlike Maccabees, which was not the plan. “To conquer death, you only have to die” was not, in the Biblical context, a reference to physical death but rather death to a sinful life.
“Pilate’s Dream” – Pilate
This is the same tune as Poor Jerusalem. Initially, i thought this was a mistake, but it’s performed so differently that this has become one of my favorite songs.

“The Temple” – Jesus, Profiteers
There was a second century philosopher whose name escapes me who thought that Jesus was pure love. But this is an angry Jesus. This is the first time, save for the Overture, that the Gethsemane theme appears.
“Everything’s Alright” (reprise) – Mary, Jesus
“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” – Mary
Not the first and certainly not the last to suggest a sexual/romantic relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus – see, e.g., Dan Brown. I didn’t believe it, but this suggestion did not bother me.
“Damned for All Time/Blood Money” – Judas, Caiaphas, Annas, Priests, The Mob
Judas’ conflict, though not exactly as written, does speak to the greater truth about fulfillment of Scripture.
“The Last Supper” – Jesus, Judas and Apostles
That the disciples STILL didn’t entirely know who and what they were dealing with is evident.
“Gethsemane” – Jesus
Possibly the most controversial song. That Jesus was, in part, human made his resistance to dying much more real.

“The Arrest” – Jesus, Judas, Peter, Apostles, Caiaphas, Annas, The Mob, Roman Guards
If I were to play one of the roles, I’d like it to be Peter; NOW we’ll fight for you.
“Peter’s Denial” – Peter, Mary, Apostles, The Mob
I was once in a Bible study and one member said she’d NEVER have denied Jesus, that she’d gave gotten the message right away; I never believed that.
“Pilate and Christ” – Pilate, Jesus, Annas, Mary, Apostles, Roman Guards, The Mob
The singular funniest thing on the album is a fellow with a distinct British accent saying, “someone Christ, king of the Jews.” Featuring an ironic restatement of Hosanna.
“King Herod’s Song” – Herod and his Court
High camp.
[“Could We Start Again Please?” – Mary, Peter, Simon, Disciples, Roman Guards
NOT on my album; it was only from later versions.]
“Judas’ Death” – Judas, Caiaphas, Annas, The Mob
Reiteration of Damed for All Time. was Judas’ betrayal preordained? Yeasty stuff.
“Trial By Pilate” – Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, Jesus, The Mob
Really gets to the core issue about predestination -“Everything is fixed and you can’t change it.” But if it’s all predetermined, what of free will, which allowed for the Fall from grace?
“Superstar” – Judas, Soul Girls, Angels, Paparazzi
Israel in 4 B.C. DIDN’T have mass communication. Why did Jesus come THEN? And if he came NOW, would he be on radio or TV? Would we believe in Him if he were? Bringing it to today, would he be our Facebook friend? Would we follow him on Twitter? What would He feature on His MySpace page or His YouTube videos?

“Crucifixion” – Jesus, Disciples
The seven last words.
“John 19:41” – Jesus, Disciples
The final controversy, on an instrumental track, no less. The citation is to the burial plot for Jesus. What, no Resurrection? Sacrilege! But I never thought it was Lloyd Webber and Rice’s job to complete the story the way orthodox Christianity does. It’s THEIR telling. And it means a great deal to me, just as it is.

The videos, BTW, were primarily from the not-well-received 2000 Broadway performance which my wife and I actually saw in previews. Not having seen a Broadway musical since Raisin nearly 30 years earlier, I enjoyed it at a certain level, though some of the videos now seem a tad overwrought.
***
Another appreciation of Superstar.

ROG

Remember the Date QUESTION

There are dates throughout the year that, without prompting from calendars or news stories, remind me of something that happened in the past, external to myself or my family. April 4, for instance, I always remember as the day in 1968 that Martin Luther King, Jr. got shot. Other days that seem to stick in my mind:

January 28, 1986 – the Challenger disaster. Oddly, the Columbia disaster of February 1, 2003 doesn’t though I do remember that it was around Groundhog’s Day as I was heading for a MidWinter’s party at the time.
May 4, 1970 – the Kent State disaster. It’s codified by that song. No, not Ohio by CSNY, but that annoying Mike Love rewrite of Leiber & Stoller’s Riot on Cell Block #9 called Student Demonstration Time, which appears on the otherwise excellent Beach Boys album Surf’s Up.
America was stunned on May 4, 1970
When rally turned to riot up at Kent State University
They said the students scared the Guard
Though the troops were battle dressed
Four martyrs earned a new degree
The Bachelor of Bullets
It also features the classic line: “The pen is mightier than the sword, but no match for a gun.”
May 8, 1972 – the mining of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam, which many people feared represented an escalation of the war. Much student activism around the country followed, including at my campus.
June 5, 1968 -RFK’s assassination, which I’ve wrote about before.
July 7, 1940 – R8ingo Starr’s birthday. George’s birthday moved from February 25 to February 24, and Paul’s birthday I confuse with Brian Wilson’s in mid-June, but Ringo’s I remember. Maybe it’s because it seems lucky – 7/7- and I recall aan LP called The Beatles’ Story which indicated that Ringo was the final ingredient necessary to create the magic of Beatlemania. He’s also the question to this answer: JEOPARDY! Show #5647 – Tuesday, March 10, 2009 HE SAID, SHE SAID for $1200: “Sorry Beatles fans, he said he has “too much to do, so no more fan mail…& no objects to be signed”
I also am reminded of the 2005 London bombings on that date.
August 28, 1963 – march on Washington, “I Have a Dream” speech
September 11, 2001 – Moby’s 35th birthday; I remember this because I often play the music of a particular musician on his or her birthday, especially those birthdays divisible by five. I’ve since wondered how it would be to have a birthday so associated with tragedy such as 9/11. (The Bloody Sunday march from Selma to Montgomery took place on my 12th birthday, and I remember it quite well, but it didn’t have anywhere near the same scope.)
October 4, 1987 – a freak Albany snowstorm that knocked out power to some people for a couple weeks. I was out only four days.
October 9, 1940 – I do remember John Lennon’s birthday, and that of his son Sean 35 years later. But I was reminded by my one-time office mate that it’s also Jackson Browne’s birthday, but I couldn’t tell you what year without looking it up. (It’s 1948.)
November 22, 1963 – the JFK assassination. I had a girlfriend who, for every Thanksgiving blessing, would invoke the memory of JFK.
December 8, 1980 – John Lennon’s death.
December 24, 1990 – the death of Sandy Cohen, the tenor soloist of my church choir at the time. He had had two or three heart attacks before that, one of them during a church service, which he wouldn’t leave until he finished “the gig”, so it shouldn’t have surprised us, yet it did.

Given my personal history, it’s quite possible that I will add April 3, 2009 to the list.

How about you? What events always stick in your mind when the date rolls around? I’m looking for the births, deaths, anniversaries, but not of family members – which I’m SURE you all remember. I’m also ignoring holidays and quasi-holidays (January 1, February 2 & 14, March 17, April 1, June 14, July 4, November 11, December 25) as well, unless something else is triggered by it.
ROG

MOVIE REVIEW: The Class

A couple weekends ago, the wife and her husband went on a date to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see Entre les murs (The Class) , a film nominated as best foreign film at the recent Oscars ceremony. It is in French, with subtitles.

Here’s the description from Rotten Tomatoes: “Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet’s THE CLASS is an absorbing journey into a multicultural high school in Paris over the course of a school year. François Begaudeau–an actual teacher and the author upon whose work the film was based–is utterly convincing as François, an openminded teacher in charge of a classroom of youngsters from a wide variety of backgrounds.”

The movie IS utterly convincing, so much so that the style of the film makes one think it’s a documentary. Evidently, the Parisian inner-city school system experiences the same difficulties as a multicultural school in the United States. There’s the well-intended, optimistic and creative teacher; there’s a fairly large classroom of kids with sometime competing needs; there are the teaching colleagues who try to be supportive if they’re not burned out themselves; and there’s the administration, looking for a balance between being firm and fair.

It doesn’t have a big plot or much histrionics, rather like life itself. That it is a well-done film really is not the issue; 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8 of 10 starts on IMDB. The question: is it enjoyable? The movie is SO realistic that it felt a bit claustrophobic. Particularly for my wife, who is a teacher in an urban setting, it felt much too much like the truth. But we’re still thinking about the film.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone else who has seen this film, especially if you’re a teacher or have taught in the past: Kelly, Greg, SamauraiFrog, this means you.

ROG

#1- the Beatles. #2 – the Beatles…

On the Billboard charts of April 4, 1964, 45 years ago this week, a phenomenal thing took place. Not only was the #1 single by the Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love, which would stay on the top of the charts for five weeks – but the whole top five was dominated by the Fab Four. The week before, the Beatles had 10 singles on the Top 100 charts, 12 the following week and 14 the week after, crushing Elvis Presley’s record of nine on December 19, 1956. and it was facilitated by this one fact: the Beatles were a bust when they were first released in the United States.

For instance, She Loves You was a reissue of a failed September 1963 release on Swan Records. From Me To You managed to get all the way up to #116 in 1963 on VeeJay. My Bonnie, a 1962 Decca release, originally failed to chart at all.

But when the Beatles, now on Capitol Records, hit #1 with I Want To Hold Your Hand the week of February 1, 1964, followed by their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, those records on those other labels began to chart as well. No label would have put out more than a couple songs by an artist at once – Can’t Buy Me Love ascended to the top as I Want To Hold Your Hand descended for Capitol, but the other companies wanted to take full advantage of Beatlemania.

I was always a little bothered by the Beatles’ #1 as a collection, for it fails to register the quality and quantity of Beatles hits in that first period. Please Please Me (likely) and Twist and Shout (almost definitely) were blocked from getting to #1 only by another Beatles song.
***
MIT DEN BEATLES Whole Category on JEOPARDY!, Show #5644 – Thursday, March 5, 2009

$200 The Beatles honed their chops playing clubs in the Reeperbahn, a red-light district in this German port city
$400 One of 2 official Beatles German-language releases, “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” was the lads’ take on this 1964 smash
$600 Astrid Kirchherr & Klaus Voormann are characters in this movie dramatization of the Beatles’ time in Germany
$800 To please their rabid German fans, the boys re-recorded this hit as “Sie Liebt Dich” in 1964
$1000 While making “Let It Be”, the Beatles recorded “Geh Raus”, a German-language spoof of this No. 1 hit
***
The Beatles Complete on Ukulele.

Math Professor Figures Formula for Beatles Success
***
JEOPARDY! Questions
Hamburg
I Want To Hold Your Hand [on Past Masters #1]
BackBeat [which no one on the show got; I saw the movie and own the soundtrack]
She Loves You [on Past Masters #1]
Get Back [which I’ve never heard! Anyone out there own this? Anyone even HEARD this?]

ROG

Comedy Today

As I’ve long admitted, I can’t tell a joke to save my life, though I can be funny when the situation generates it. April Fools’ Day just does not play to my strength. I do enjoy bad jokes, though. And none are worse than the daily meditations I get from David Pogue, the techie guy from the New York Times. I think I follow him on Twitter just so I can groan. Recent examples from his Twitter feed (Pogue):
The algebra teacher confiscated a kid’s rubber band, believing it to be a weapon of math disruption.
and this one
I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
and this:
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad, I take something for it.

From other sources, more terrible humor:

Dan was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. When he found out he was going to inherit a fortune when his sickly father died, he decided he needed a wife with which to share his fortune.

One evening at an investment meeting he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.

I may look like just an ordinary man, he said to her, but in just a few years, my father will die, and I’ll inherit $65 million.

Impressed, the woman obtained his business card and three days later, she became his stepmother.
***
Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church’s morals, kept sticking her nose in to other people’s business. Several members did not approve of her extra curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.

She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town’s only bar one afternoon. She emphatically told George (and several others) that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing.

George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn’t explain, defend, or deny.. He said nothing.

Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred’s house, walked home…and left it there all night.
***
A woman had just returned to her home from an evening of church services, when she was startled by an intruder. She caught the man in the act of robbing her home of its valuables and yelled: ‘Stop! Acts 2:38!’ (Repent and be Baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven.)

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done.

As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar: ‘Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture to you.’
‘Scripture?’ replied the burglar. ‘She said she had an Ax and Two 38s!’

Ncevy Sbbyf Qnl
***
***
And speaking of fool, I go into the NCAA men’s basketball pool generally having seen no more than two games prior to March Madness – this year it was 4 of the 6 overtime periods Syracuse played vs. Connecticut; that’s it.
Yet I always have a chance going into the final weekend. As it turns out, NO ONE in my pool picked the ultimate champion. They all went for Louisville or Pitt or Syracuse or, like I did, Memphis.
My other Final Four picks (Syracuse, Louisville, Memphis) dried up, but Villanova, who essentially played at home the first two rounds, then beat Duke and Pitt to be my one pick in the Final Four; Final Two, actually.
So the Saturday games will tell the tale. I have a one-point lead. If ‘Nova wins, then I win. If UNC beats ‘Nova, then I end up in the middle of the pack, but if UNC and Connecticut both win, I’ll be hanging out in the lower regions of the pool. Go Wildcats!
ROG