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Highs
and Lows
By
B.A. Nilsson
Original Broadway Cast Recording
Curtains
(Manhattan)
Seeing David Hyde Pierce peering out from the cover of the
Curtains CD is a reassuring reminder that local boys
sometimes make good with a vengeance. The Saratoga Springs
native made his name on TV’s Frasier, but his Tony
Award-winning Broadway role proves him to be that rare all-around
entertainer who can also sing and dance.
We learned that, of course, from his acclaimed turn as one
of the original Spamalot leads, but Curtains
gives him the juicy role of a stage-struck detective whose
murder investigation draws him not only into the lives of
the suspects—all of them associated with a musical foundering
in its Boston tryouts—but into the show itself.
Curtains
began life as a Kander and Ebb show, a promising prospect
given their history of providing songs for such shows as Cabaret,
Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman. It would
reunite them with book writer Peter Stone (1776, Sugar)
with whom they’d written Woman of the Year. But the
project was delayed by the deaths of Stone and Ebb. Rupert
Holmes was brought in to rewrite the book and add more lyrics.
When it opened on Broadway last year, reviews were mixed,
but audiences were enthusiastic, and Curtains netted
eight Tony nominations, winning the abovementioned award for
Hyde Pierce.
Although the recording is an obvious souvenir for one who’s
enjoyed the show, it also exists independently, and as such
it’s a welcome return to the Golden Age of Broadway musicals,
that period in the 1950s when such shows as Hello, Dolly!
and Gypsy overflowed the stages.
And Debra Monk has a 1950s kind of presence and brassy voice
that makes a number like “It’s a Business” arresting and timeless,
as if you’ve been hearing it on the radio for years. She’s
teamed with Hyde Pierce in the show’s anthem, “Show People,”
which I’m hoping might replace a certain overplayed Irving
Berlin song for a while.
As a singer, Hyde Pierce isn’t what you’d call a honey-voiced
balladeer. His solo, “Coffee Shop Nights,” shows to be in
the James Cagney tradition—he puts the number across, dammit,
and it’s full of character.
Shows about shows risk losing themselves in eddies of narcissism
and in-jokes, but this one clearly is written as a crowd-pleaser.
Even the clever trashing of critics in the song “What Kind
of Man?,” which will please actors forever, has wit enough
to appeal to those outside the biz.
As a recording, Curtains is a trip back in time in
this post-Sondheim, Spring Awakening era of musical
theater. If it delivers no standards into the repertory, that’s
more the product of a world that no longer prizes such songs.
But it’s a wonderful last look at a tradition that never should
have disappeared.
—B.A.
Nilsson
 Smashing
Pumpkins
Zeitgeist
(Reprise)
This summer brought the return of two things that were comfort
culture for me, and likely for a number of 20- to 30-somethings:
Transformers and Smashing Pumpkins. We lost Optimus Prime,
fearless leader of the Autobots, when he sacrificed himself
for the greater good; later, we lost Pumpkins leader Billy
Corgan to the pillar of crappy electronica. But now our geeky
father figures have returned.
Some people were upset that the Transformers of this summer’s
blockbuster film weren’t realistic enough. (No, alien robots
from space never were realistic.) Other critics are
upset that Zeitgeist, the disc from the reunited Smashing
Pumpkins, is way too metal, with too many loud guitars. But
Smashing Pumpkins have been metal since their debut disc,
Gish—they just tricked people into thinking they were
alternative with a couple of acoustic ballads. Siamese
Dream was drenched in the kind of slabs of thick distortion
and guitar squealing that could have made Tony Iommi blush.
Yes, the last few years of the Pumpkins’ first stage were
focused on boring, half-assed synth-pop, but that is not the
stuff fans have been clamoring for. They, like me, wanted
that warm blanket of guitars, not heard since Mellon Collie
and the Infinite Sadness, to sweep them off their
feet. Does that happen on Zeitgeist?
In places, it does. Opener “Doomsday Clock” has that gnarly
Corgan spite wrapped up in raging guitars; “Bring the Light”
and “Come On Let’s Go” return to the old Pumpkins formula
of basing songs on sparkling guitar leads and big, dumb emotion.
“Starz” could be a Cars track, thanks to the production.
But by the album’s end, it seems that something is missing.
Zeitgeist never hits the emotional and musical heights
of Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. The one
attempt at a typical, epic-Corgan guitar-fit freak-out, “United
States,” feels rigid, structured and boring. The emotional
release, the explosion of a true album closer, is just not
there; instead, on “Pomp and Circumstances,” Corgan returns
to his dull, plodding electronic BS.
Optimus Prime will never win an Oscar and Billy Corgan will
never make it as an electronic-pop balladeer. Just keep playing
your guitar, Billy.
—David
King
 Badfinger
Badfinger
(Collector’s Choice) Wish You Were Here (Collector’s
Choice)
The contrast between Badfinger’s music and the crushing reality
of their bleak history is staggering. Emerging in 1970 on
the Apple label, Badfinger scored four hit singles that found
them harking back to a sound like the Beatles (before they
began their disintegration). Newly signed to Warner Bros.
in 1972, the band looked to have a rosy future, but this quickly
proved to be far from true. A litany of bad management, bad
advice, and disappearing label support gave momentum to a
downward spiral that ultimately ended in the suicides of primary
songwriters Pete Ham and Tom Evans. (Legal wranglings continued
unabated for decades: Read the full account in Dan Matovina’s
book Without You: The Tragic Story of Badfinger only
if you’re on solid emotional ground.)
Newly reissued are the quartet’s final two albums, Badfinger
and Wish You Were Here. A few subsequent releases kept
the name going, but bore little resemblance to the six they
did during the four years that found the flush of early success
giving way to the belief that, by making another solid album,
they’d be able to climb out of the ditch they’d fallen into.
The self-titled release had the misfortune of coming out at
almost the same time as their final Apple album. Its follow-up,
again produced by Chris Thomas, is equally strong and sounds
today like an album that would’ve been a popular favorite
at the time. However, the band’s business manager absconded
with $100,000 from a Warner Bros. escrow account, causing
the label to immediately pull the album from stores and sue
the band.
Perhaps due to the tragic arc of their story, critical judgment
of Badfinger in recent decades has elevated them to a position
not in keeping with what they did. They crafted a wonderful
range of pop songs, from exuberant romps to somber ballads.
They didn’t reinvent the wheel, and never claimed to. These
two albums have a fair share of gems that resonate today,
but they also have some numbers that sound merely quaint at
this remove. The world is full of music, newly minted and
a century’s worth of reissues. There’s dignity in having created
songs like “Shine On” and “Just a Chance.”
—David
Greenberger
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