As luck would have it, I was going through a bunch of my cds the other day and I rediscovered an album I hadn’t listened to in years, “September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill.” Weill was German and began writing music in the 1920s until his untimely death in 1950. His influence is immense; his compositions and recordings are central to any understanding of 20th century music. He is probably best known for the “Threepenny Opera” with the famous “Mack the Knife” song—a song that has probably been sung by everyone and their brother at some point. Of interest here is that co-writer, Bertolt Brecht, sang the song too. Here’s a sample:
Sounds pretty old, no? But both men were cool beyond words, even if Brecht was a commie. Over the years Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster. Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool. Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too. In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band. The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said. Here’s a sample of a sweet song from the Velvet Underground’s first album about Lou buying something a tiny bit illegal:
Ok, now what happens when Lou decides to cover a Kurt Weill song? Well, I think it’s sheer bliss. Reed’s version of “September Song” is so amazing that I hope you stop whatever you’re doing right now, turn up the radio real loud, and just listen to what happens when a song that was cutting edge in the 1930s is updated to be cutting edge today. The singing, the guitars, the drums, couldn’t be simpler but they really hit the spot. The song is about lust and regret, about thinking young thoughts as one gets older, about the way to hold onto a moment in time. In other words, it’s about life. So as summer comes to Michiana take a listen to what will become of us during these few precious days.