WMV Music Web Log

Mack the Knife is up on the mp3 section of the website. This was from a performance of cabaret songs at a downtown DC restaurant, Busboys and Poets. I've got to say I like this music, but most of the audience did not. Someone said it sounded like we hadn't rehearsed, because we were not together - I have a hunch it was Charley's complex rhythms in Mack, which we pretty much nailed. People had a lot of gripes! But Lisa Null sent us this love note:

Hi:

I was there with my friend Martha. I was the woman at a table in the middle of the room with a crutch and a lot of loud cheers. It sounds as if you are soliciting feedback.

Let me start off by saying how much I loved the evening-- the ambience, the informality, the chance to interact with musicians at the end. Whatever technical problems occurred, they did not interfere with that wonderful experience. Also, the second act, after intermission, was markedly better from the first. The singing-- I am oriented to singers as a performing singer myself, as is Martha-- really took off. I think, in large measure this was because your sound problems were solved, the lid was lowered on the piano, and the balance between voice and brass was more finely calibrated. I could hear the words at last! But I also think something else was happening-- the musicians could hear each other so they no longer played in an atomized way. Once the sound problems were resolved, synergy occurred.

I have a feel for this sort of music as it comes from the world of my stepmother, a holocaust survivor, and we grew up with it in our household. In the original Threepenny Opera recordings, Hanns Eisler recordings from this period, the Blue Angel film, and the Comedian Harmonists' recordings their seems to be a blended,cool precision with extraordinary matching of tone, even though the the notes in and of themselves suggest a more raucous approach. I might have liked to see more of the cool blend, as it foregrounds the vocals. I come to this music with classical training but a career in traditional folk music (clubs, pubsl cabarets, festivals, and now house concerts). This may bias me towards sculpting the words for a natural setting.

A music critic would describe the overall tone as smoky and indeed my friend Martha joked about how strange it was to see the performance without the smoke from dozens of cigarettes. She went so far as to suggest dry ice as a suitable alternative!

I am not used to seeing an operatic singer performing this material and feel she did her very best best when simply pouring forth emotion in that lovely voice of hers ("The Sailor's Tango," the Carmen excerpt) rather than molding it around the verbal subtleties of the world-weary, predatorily seductive female stereotype persistent in these songs. She "got" just the right approach for those marvelous compositions of Charley Gerard.

I'm not sure how these reactions of mine jibe with your experiences of the sound or the performance. It's my habit, for good or ill, to dissect what I hear as if I were the performer myself. I used to teach American Musical Life for years at Georgetown which compounds my analytical excesses. None of that, however, interferes with my loving the music or the joy of the experience itself. It matters less that the evening was successful in every aspect than that a highly intelligent group of competent artists pushed the edge and gave this rich complex trove of music their best shot. That's what I always thought chamber music was, in part. Experiment.

This night was a real winner for me and I look forward to others. I cannot come often as I am deeply involved with the Folk Music Society of Greater Washington. We put on many, many concerts and events too. But my interests extend well beyond folk music and your presenting a variety of challenging chamber music in convivial settings make it hard to resist!

With deepest gratitude,

Lisa
Elisabeth Higgins Null

Karren Alenier reviewed the show for Scene4.com:

Is cabaret music ugly? Should it be unpleasant? These were questions raised by Washington Musica Viva's Sex Appeal program that took place on June 18, 2008, at DC's Busboys and Poets. The Dresser stands scratching her head because, generally speaking, she enjoys the clever but raunchy turns of this kind of music.

The program included songs by cabaret greats: Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Friedrich Hollaender. It also included new cabaret music by sax man composer Charley Gerard based on the lyrics of Judith Weinstock. The musical ensemble included: Clea Nemetz, mezzo; Charley Gerard, composer arranger, alto saxophone; John Jensen, trombone; John O'Brien, banjo; and Carl Banner, piano. Featured were three songs by Hollaender: "Sex Appeal," "Take it off Petronella," and "Falling in Love Again," the song from The Blue Angel made famous by Marlene Dietrich. While the Dresser grooved on the moves and throaty voice of Clea Nemetz, the musical accompaniment seemed thin (not ugly) and spiritless. The Dresser was told that Busboys, for whatever reason, didn't allow the musicians time for a sound check and so musical balance didn't happen.

Perhaps this is unfair, but in the Dresser's experience the touchstone for cabaret is The Three Penny Opera by Kurt Weill with libretto by Bertolt Brecht. And yes, the WMV program included "Mack the Knife," the most well known song from The Three Penny Opera and no, Clea Nemetz sounded nothing like Lotte Lenya or Ute Lemper. Nemetz was squeaky clean sexy in her English and interesting to watch, but she didn't have that German cabaret edge with the guttural rolls of the Rs and that insane vibrato that causes audience to scoot up on their seat and wonder what this singer would be like in bed. Oops, the Dresser can't help it if the raunch slips out. And yes, the Dresser likes a squonky sax and 'bone with the strumming of the banjo and the beating of the ivories but she really missed a bass to ground the overall sound.

The second half of the program featured mostly original songs by Gerard and Weinstock. The Dresser's favorite was "I Hate My Ex" but in truth this piece sounded like contemporary opera and not cabaret. So the Dresser thinks Charley Gerard and Carl Banner should put their heads back together and do up another program like The Weary Blues, which was a smash hit at Busboys.

Ed Lyle writes to let us know about some real music that we might not yet have encountered: "Alt Country". I watched a bunch of YouTube videos from the artists he mentions, and they are pretty incredible.

Hi Carl,

I enjoyed talking with you last night about lots of things at Rix's party. I have gone to YouTube and now have the first movement of Brahms' Second Clarinet Sonata going in the background.

Gee, you really can play the piano!

Truly remarkable for a guy who did all those years in administration at NIH.

You were mentioning last night that you were interested in Bob Dylan songs because of their poetic nature. On the way home, that made me think that you might be interested in spending a little time in the world of Alternative Country music.

Alt Country isn't the pablum that now passes for country music on the radio. It's the stuff that can't get on the radio. It's some of what country music was like before SonyMusic and other record labels hijacked the genre in Nashville about 15 years ago. They brought in pretty boys, dressed em up as cowboys, and had them sing country pablum in an effort to get 20-somethings to "go country" rather than something else.

Most of AltCountry comes out of hardscrabble Texas. It's honest and doesn't kow-tow to anyone. A lot of it is "message" music. For a starter list of notables you might want to go to www.lyricsfreak.com, enter "Townes van Zandt," and, after perhaps going through some of his lyrics (try "Pancho and Lefty," which you may have heard), scroll down to the bottom of the page for the list.
Dylan is on the list. Another is Kris Kristofferson, who you may have heard of.

This list does not include a number of others, however, who I think are equally good as singer/songwriters: Tom Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, Willie Nelson for starters. One of Tom Russell's themes, for instance, is what the white man continues to do to others in this world. It ain't the most refined poetry, but it comes through like a freight train. An example is his "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall," part of which goes as follows: "We've got fundamentalist muslims, we've got fundamentalist jews, we've got fundamentalist Christians, they'll blow the whole thing up for you. But as I travel around this big old world, the one thing I most fear, is a white man in a golf shirt, with a cell phone in his ear."

Another "messenger" is Billy Joe Shaver. He's been through three heart attacks, had his wife, mother and son die almost simultaneously, lost a finger off one hand but adapted in playing the guitar, as tough as they come, salt of the earth, and a wonderful, wonderful poet and performer. An example is the way he mocks his own naivete as a young man on "Fast Train to Georgia" or the naivete of soldiers on "Feedom's Child." Shaver played a date in Falls Church, Virginia about four years ago, and I just loved him.

A lot of Alt Country is wonderfully funny and satirical. An example is a song written about seven years ago by Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill and sung by The Notorious Cherry Bombs. Its title is, "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long." This, too, wasn't played by country radio stations.

You can get to these other folks either through YouTube or Google.

And then there are the queens, among the foremost of whom are Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris. Each is a queen in both Austin and Nashville, though, again, neither is played much on the radio these days. If you've never heard Patsy Cline, go to YouTube and listen. What clarity in her voice! Try "Sweet Dreams" or "I Fall to Pieces" or "Crazy." You'll need only five seconds or so to get the idea.

Back in the early 70s, Harris was the girlfriend of Gram Parsons, who is widely viewed as the first to bring country and rock music together before he died of cocaine. One of her most famous songs is "Boulder to Birmingham," which she wrote about him after his death.

Both Patsy and Emmylou were from northern Virginia (Cline from Winchester, Harris was valedictorian of her class at Gar-Field High School about 40 miles from here in Woodbridge). Cline died in a plane crash in 1963. Emmylou continues on, three times divorced, pushing 60 and gray haired, but still a gorgeous "folkie" in country garb with a wonderfully sweet voice.

Finally, there's something called "South by Southwest" or "SXSW," which is a week-long annual festival of Alt Country music and films in Austin, Texas, the heart of Alt Country. Music-wise, it's a little like reading Nietzsche: sorting through the mud to find the diamonds. But the diamonds are there, and SXSW has a lot of music discussion groups and other things that I think you might find interesting. One of the greatest, cheapest experiences in America is go to down to the bars on 6th and 8th Avenues in Austin and listen to the music for the price of a few beers. It's that same gut-bucket honesty, delivered for pennies.

OK, that's enough for background on Alt Country. The clock is now ticking. And the question now is: How long will it take Carl to appear with his ensemble doing "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?" as a sonata? Remember, somebody's gotta do the vocals!

When Carl puts that together, I want a free invitation!

Regards,

Ed