Moon Of Alabama

I recently finished reading Bertolt Brecht’s play “The Rise And Fall of the City of Mahagonny”, a stunning musical play about a man-made paradise of debauchery. Although the play takes place in the Gulf Coast it more likely brings to mind the sleaze of Las Vegas, highly predictive of Sin City since this great play was written in the late Twenties.

In this play four working stiffs from Alaska travel to a bed of sin called Mahagonny (note the word "Agony"). The boys blow all their dough, much debauchery ensues, culminating in the death of JJ Smith by overeating, Alaskawolf Joe by a fatal KO in the ring, and Jimmy Gallagher's sentence to death by electrocution for being broke, his hard-earned pay bankrupted by drink, gambling and women in Mah-agonny. Gallagher's death sentence for the sin of being flat broke seems more relevant today than ever.

First performed in 1930, Mahagonny was the drama world quivalent to Igor Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring", prompting boos, fist fights, riots et al at its initial performance. Dark and raunchy for its time, it brought a new experience to musical theatre that was probably the most radical thing theatergoers had ever seen.

The popular line of opinion is that Mahagonny is Brecht’s anti-capitalist concepts at work in that it shows a society so completely intoxicated by greed that it ultimately comes undone and destroys itself in a blizzard of excess. I think that the excess of alcoholism, gambling and womanizing are common traits that ruin anyone regardless of class affiliation.

As shown in the videos depicted here you can see that the German production is far more explicit in its views of decadence, shown in a highly theatrical cabaret style, as opposed to the American version, which is more traditional in its pretensions towards standard theatre. The production differences between the German vs. American version almost looks like two entirely different plays!

Pictured above is the Audra McDonald version of “Moon of Alabama”, also known as “The Alabama Song” or “Whiskey Bar”. Two other versions of the Kurt Weill melody are included here, one a duet from Nina Hagen and Meret Becker and the other from an Italian production featuring Valentina Valente. While the song isn’t particularly phenomenal, the differences in style all four singers take still represents the story well. The song is performed towards the beginning of the opera when Jenny and the prostitutes arrive in Mahagonny to work all the marks in town.

The influence of “The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny” is far reaching, and can be found in works as diverse as Tom Waits, Randy Newman, The Doors, David Bowie (who covered "Albama Song"), Slapp Happy and even Lars Von Trier's film "Dogville". While the “Threepenny Opera” is Brecht and Weill's most infamous opera, “The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny” is the piece that changed modern opera forever.

The Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback

I didn’t really understand The Monks the first time I heard them and was never a big fan of their music until I saw the documentary “The Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback” (excellently directed by Lucia Palacios and Dietmar Post) on the Sundance Channel recently. Now I’m totally obsessed with those noisy psychos. “The Transatlantic Feedback” is a great documentary and reads like a Tony Curtis military comedy from Hell. It’s the story of five enlisted men in the Army in Cold War-era West Germany whose infantry duties consisted of washing the General’s car or for bassist Eddie Shaw measuring bazooka artillery projectiles. To pass the time they hit the decadent Berlin club scene (which spawned The Beatles) playing covers as The Torquays. After they’re discharged from the Armed Forces they decided to stay in Germany and continue playing the clubs, catching the eye of two advertising men, Walther and Karl.

Walther and Karl molded the boys visually into wearing all black, hangman’s knots for ties, and shaving the middle parts of their heads like ascetic monks, a pretty bizarre reaction to the now popular Beatle haircut. Musically they were molded as well: as Eddie Shaw explains it: “Where there were four chords, you narrow it down to only one. If there were six lines of lyrics, can you shorten it down to only two?” Musical and lyrical minimalism was part of their new order. “Some of their ideas were brilliant”, guitarist-singer Gary Burger recalls, “but some of them were too crazy for us. We had to say at some point, ‘We’re not going to do that!’”. One of the humorous aspects of Walther and Karl’s management was a written manifesto, read laughingly aloud by Shaw: “You must always look, act, move, walk, talk like a Monk, but above all else you will not be a Torquay”.

The Monks’ sound was incredibly assaultive with some of the most incendiary feedback-drenched fuzz guitar playing from Gary Burger, hypnotically semaphore organ playing from future IBM exec Larry Clark, and the most bizarre banjo playing in history from Dave Day. Eschewing folksy, melodic playing for violent chord-bashing, Day plays his banjo like a percussive instrument, doubling the beats the drums are pounding. At one point during “Monk Time” he even replicates machine gun sounds on his banjo. Brilliant stuff!

And how about “Monk Time”, with the most schizophrenic set of lyrics screamed by Burger, bouncing bipolarisms at the drop of a hat. Anti-war: “Why do you kill all those kids in Vietnam?” Pro-war: “Mad Vietcong! My brother died in Vietnam!” Anti-music: “Stop it! I don’t like it! It’s too loud for my ears!” Pro-music: “What do you mean, Larry? You think like I think, you’re a Monk, I’m a Monk, we’re all Monks!” Talk all you want about hip irony, this was strong shit for 1965 when everybody was groovy.

The stern Germanic influence continues on a song with mournful church organ and chanting Monks singing, “Got a reason to laugh, got a reason to cry, be a liar everywhere, Shut Up! Don’t Cry!” and then slipping a little Satanism in Higgle-Die Piggle-Die, “Way down…to Heaven!” The negativity hits a feverish peak with the amazing “I Hate You”, Burger’s voice recalling classic David Lee Roth (tell me I’m wrong!) wailing, “I hate you with a passion baby, My hate’s everlasting baby!” The music never once loses its edge, guitars burning through your eardrums, sleazy organ and that nutty banjo bashing itself into your skull.

Once Walther and Karl parted ways as band managers the band slowly unraveled. Onstage fisticuffs, dropping the Monk look, record industry indifference, and drummer Roger Johnston leaving the band led to the guys’ return to the States, with the exception of banjo-guitarist Dave Day running a pub. “If I had stayed in Germany, I probably would have died there”, admits Shaw, emphasizing the vice-crazed “anything goes” lifestyle of decadent Berlin, still crazy after the legendary “Cabaret” era.

Looking back in retrospect, the band attempts to whitewash their lyrics by claiming that because of attention focused on “only one song” their music “wasn’t really political” (“Monk Time”) but you can’t get more political than “Complication” with its lines of “people kill for you, people die for you” and the lyrics for “Shut Up” have political connotations (“Be a liar everywhere, Shut up! Don’t cry!”).

Burger, Day and Shaw seem to be the most forthcoming in their analysis of the band while Johnston seems very saddened by the experience and Clark is a man of few words, but that’s okay. Walther and Karl, both long believed dead, declined to be interviewed for the film, stating that a manager’s job is to stay in the background. Shit, that’s refreshing!

The film ends much like “New York Doll”, the band’s dream of playing New York finally realized by doing a reunion show to scenester celebrities like a pre-op Genesis P. Orridge, Peter Zaremba (Fleshtones), and a super-twitchy Jon Spencer. The band looks thrilled as fuck to be playing again, and fortunately didn’t show signs of losing their edge at all, still playing with an ageless intensity. Burger’s lead guitar lines still boil and Day’s mental case banjo strumming still pounding like a musical jackhammer. Still wearing their legendary black shirts, Dave Day quips “we don’t have to get the hair styles anymore, we already have the bald spots”.

Although “The Transatlantic Feedback” is a documentary on one of the most obscure bands in rock directors Palacios and Post did an amazing job with old TV broadcasts, band interviews and Cold War newsreel footage.

Shortly after the film wrapped drummer Roger Johnston passed away, but the band continued to play the occasional reunion show in Austria and Germany (clips available on YouTube). Unfortunately, Dave Day passed in January so it seems pretty doubtful the band can really play again, but their mark in rock history is assured. While any band can release one album and disappear, it takes stunning performances and brilliant songwriting to make that one album stay fresh and immortal in people’s minds, and The Monks are one of the small handful of bands that have accomplished just that. It’s always Hop Time, it’s Beat Time, it’s Monk Time.

Einsturzende Neubauten

The hottest punk band from Germany in the early Eighties was called MDK (Mechanik Destruktiv Kommando) and they had a great song called “Werewolf” and they had a blazin’ skronk sax player. I saw them play at a cool gay bar in Echo Park, when such things were done, called the Other Side. I thought they were wicked.

MDK disappeared and the next big thing from Germany was an industrial band that combined no-wave anti melodies with power tools blasting in the background for percussive and extra sonic dissonance. The band looked like lager-gutted construction workers named Horst and were fronted by an emaciated jumbo haired glam-fop junkie creep named Blixa Bargeld. They were called Einsturzende Neubauten. Translated in English it’s “Collapsing New Buildings”. Scheiss!

I heard they were the opening act for a bogus glam act from England called the Specimen at a forthcoming show in Pasadena at an old-time theatre called Perkins Palace. I wanted to see the boys from Berlin but didn’t have any interest of sitting through a clownish drag-pop joke like Specimen. What would you do?

Half a day later I got a call from Ella, my platonic girlfriend. We met at the Dick Grove School of Music in North Hollywood, a jazz music school where we shared classes in Music Theory and Harmony (Harmony is the science of building chords, Theory is basically the study of everything else). We tried to make a go of being lover boy and girl but it didn’t work out. When we kissed she had the coldest lips of any girl I’ve ever kissed, and she even smelled like an aquarium. When she told me her sign was Pisces the Fish I wasn’t surprised.

When she was in Europe she met Neubauten and got to be chummy with them, so on the day of the show she got a frantic phone call from them, asking her in their 1st grade Englisch if she had a chainsaw they could borrow. Ella said her Daddy had a well-stocked tool shed, but needed a hot thug to carry the Makita for her. “Do you want to go to the show with me? We’ll get in for free”, she said.

“Yeah, let’s go!” I said, my inner hot thug emerging from my wiry wood-worker’s frame.

3 hours later: We got out of Ella’s car with her carrying little V8 tomato juice style canisters of petrol while I carried the heavy chainsaw that didn’t have a case nor a blanket around it. As we made our way past the goth crowd standing in line waiting to get in I glanced over and saw the most terrified vampire kids I’ve ever seen. Haven’t they ever seen a 6 foot tall hot thug carrying an enormous chainsaw in the middle of Old Town Pasadena in the dead of night before? Poseurs!

We walked up to the backstage door and saw an even more nervous bouncer in front.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going with that thing?” the bouncer barked.
“The band requested a chainsaw for their show”, Ella responded.
“No way. Is this a joke?”
“No, we’re on the list. This thing’s pretty heavy. Could you get somebody in the band to pick this up right now?”
The bouncer called for another guy. “Hey, Smitty!”
Smitty walked over and did a horrified double-take at the ominous tool in my hands. “What the fuck is that?”
“They say the band requested the chainsaw for their show?”
“Uh…are we insured for this?”
“Fuck, I don’t know…get those Germans”, he yelled. A minute went by and there was nervous silence. “Do these guys play music?”
“Yeah”, I quipped, “but they might build a table by the end of the show”.
The bouncer gave a sarcastic, nervous laugh. Three minutes later and 2 perky guys from the band showed up.
“Ella, Ja, you brought der tools!” they laughed. “Gut! You are die freundlich gut!” they grabbed the chainsaw from my aching arms.

Showtime: The band took the stage and while guitars and basses were howling other guys from Neubauten were manning noisy power drills and circular saws with sparks flying all over the stage. For their (what ended up being their) last number, the chainsaw finally got pulled out and growled all through the next noise-fest. The fans were on their feet and tearing their poorly dyed hair out and screaming. Finally a fire broke out on stage and the band’s amps and mikes got turned off and the curtain closed on them. Everybody went crazy. Specimen were fucked; they couldn’t follow this – nobody could! And I was a part of musical history…AGAIN.