CD Japan delivered the disc in only four days from Tokyo to Dublin, pre-Christmas postal craziness 'n all. Including postage it cost me c.€17.
A more leisurely listen reveals a lively, spirited performance. As Phil says in a sleevenote , he recorded them because 'something about the songs connected, in my mind, with the brash assertiveness of the Punk milieu of my own musical world'. In fact , occasionally I found myself hearing in his brash, Dublin accented vocal flashes of the few snippets I have had to endure of present day ' boy bands'/tv show contestants. In a way this makes sense in that contempoary singers inevitably draw on what they know. In Phil's case that included the Brecht/Weill output, as opposed to the Classic Rock staples young singers refer to. They have common ground in raw petulance. Now a days this gets ironed out by synthesised recording tricks , oppressive vocal training etc. Thankfully , as most most recently evidenced by his searing vocals on the Radiators album , Phil never bowed to that.
The last few paragraphs of Phil's 'note puts this recording in context-
' By the time Bernelle had begun performing Brecht and Weill songs in 1960, she was already well into her thirties and a seasoned War refugee. By contrast, what prompted this ingenu greenhorn to record his own versions at the age of only 22? Well, something about the songs connected, in my mind, with the brash assertiveness of the Punk milieu of my own musical world. I recorded Songs From Bill's Dancehall because I could. With consummate grace, Agnes herself managed to avoid voicing on opinion on it for the rest of her life, preferring instead to offer singerly advice about delivering from the diaphragm and such like. In fact soon after the release, I rejected my Happy End recordings as decisively as the show’s creators had the play in 1929, considering them an understandable if misjudged youthful folly. But from this distance, exactly 25 years after their initial publication, this hubris is also what I now find worthwhile about them. Whether I like it or not, they happened, they are part of me and you only get to be a mardy 22-year old once. They resonate, not so much with the survival of the life lived, per Lenya and Bernelle, as the life about to be lived, with all its unknowable joys and horrors.
Philip Chevron, October 2006'
'Mardy' - a new one to me - but suitable!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A769250
Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:12 pm
