What Keeps Mankind Alive: Issa's Sunday Service, #32

This week's Issa's Sunday Service features two repeat offenders: Tom Waits (as musician) performing the work of Bertolt Brecht (as inspiration), in this case "What Keeps Mankind Alive," a devastating little ditty if ever there was one. Monday, December 7th is the birthday of Mr. Waits, hence this week's selection. The song comes from The Threepenny Opera, with lyrics by Brecht and music by Kurt Weill. Here's the words:

What Keeps Mankind Alive

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on

So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?

What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts

Happy birthday, Mr. Waits. And, as a little present, here is ol' Uncle Bill, of Naked Lunch fame, to give his rendition of same:

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This week's feature poem comes from issue #48, a broadside entitled Tibetan Gun Flower by the poet Charlie Mehrhoff. Back in August, I read one of the poems from this broadside, "springtime in a city park,"(page down a bit to see) at the Six Gallery Press reading. Recently, I posted another, entitled "fact:", at the daily Twitter feed (which cross-posts to Facebook). For those of you who don't lean in those directions, here it is:

fact:

to think that god had to become me
in order to throw his cigarette out the window,
write these words.

Charlie Mehrhoff

And here's another from that same broadside, previously unposted:

leaf, green leaf
her shadow
upon the silence of an empty road
that is poetry.

Charlie Mehrhoff

And, of course, the last word goes to the master:

a wood fire--
her shadow in the window
pulling thread

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

Issa's Sunday Service, #11: Bertolt Brecht & Jim Morrison

It is just incredible to think that Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971, 38 years ago at the age of 27. Though this is the first appearance of The Doors at Issa's Sunday Service, it certainly won't be the last, because The Doors were the consummate LitRock band; unlike some, the balance between the rock and lit was never skewed in either direction. Nor will this be the last time that the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill will be featured, a pair of favorites among art rock bands. Of course, The Doors could bring the grit and did; "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)," like many a Brecht composition, actually has some of its darker undercurrents toned down in execution. Still, a classic, if ever there was one. Enjoy.

This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review#20, March 1990. Here's looking at ya ...

don't blame the Third World
for pissing on your grave.
you've got no rhyme
left
in your body.

Charlie Mehrhoff

the smell of piss
wafting too...
chrysanthemums

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don


Click LitRock @ from Issa's Sunday Service for full list of songs and postings.

Muddy Waters and Kurt Weill

You know you may have lived a good life when there is room for Muddy Waters (born 4/4/1913) and Kurt Weill (died 4/3/1950). I have been very fortunate, indeed.

Muddy, born McKinley Morganfield, has been a part of my musical experience for over 40 years, discovered in high school, along with Willie Dixon, while studying the record sleeves of, among others, the Rolling Stones. Muddy was the key that opened the door; with Muddy came Willie, and James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Otis Spann, Jimmie Rogers, Pinetop Perkins, Lafayette Leake, Little Walter and back, back to Lightnin' Hopkins and Robert Johnson, and Son House.

It's safe to say that the world would have been a bleaker, more hostile place for me, without these amazing musicians who could touch the soul with a single, aching, sustained note.

Kurt Weill came later, though Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" had captured the popular imagination early on. I'm sure that I was really first captivated with his music via Judy Collins' recording of "Pirate Jenny" on her seminal In My Life album. His collaborations with Bertolt Brecht are the stuff of legend and certainly what catapulted him into the public eye. The music, however, sustains those lyrics and has been hugely influential, even with someone as seemingly removed as the composer Tom Waits. There have been anthologies of popular interpretations of Weill's music over the years, which can give someone without a classical background an easy way in (it did me). I highly recommend both collections.

So, on this musical Friday, first here's Muddy, with "Crawlin' King Snake" followed by audio of the classic "Got My Mojo Workin':"












Here are three songs by Weill/Brecht sung by Lotte Lenya from a 1962 (or 1958 - I found conflicting dates) episode of the television series "Monitor" filmed by Ken Russell, followed by the scathing contemporary interpretation of "What Keeps Man Alive" by Tom Waits:

making a duet
with my flute...
cry of a deer

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

W. H. Auden & Nina Simone

This past Saturday, February 21st, was the shared birthdays of W. H. Auden and Nina Simone. Auden was never a man of too few words; this poem, however, has the power of his longer works with an unaccustomed conciseness.

Epitaph On A Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter;
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W. H. Auden

Which calls to mind, for me, E. E. Cummings's

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man

There is a kinship here of a bygone era and yet the subject transcends all culture and time.

Also, here is an Auden poem from the 1936 film titled "Night Mail." A minor sub-genre of poetry, the mail is something that habitually creeps into the work of most poets, who are typically awaiting news of a manuscript or proof copies of a new book. In "Night Mail, Auden universalizes this obsession of writers everywhere. Oddly, the recitation of the main verses in the film, in an attempt to replicate the motion of the train carrying the night mail, comes off as a sort of stiff upper lip rap, many decades before its time.

When it comes to trains, give me John Lee Hooker anyday. When it comes to the mail, Auden, however, has the inside track:





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And then there is Nina Simone, who knew how to give a different sort of look at sinnermen. Tt's all about the power, despite the static slide show presentation (lovely as the individual images may be). Just close your eyes and sway ... and, if you are work, make sure the cat is belled.





Finally, here is a 30 minute documentary entitled "Nina Simone." A wonderful snippet of her singing Kurt Weill, whose work I coincidentally spent some time listening to this weekend, is a great moment, among quite a few others. The sound is not up to modern standards and this is a warts and all production, as she notes herself, but well with a glimpse of an artist coming to terms with herself and the world. Enjoy.





best,
Don