Brecht and Weill were not kidding around.

I’m really really late to the party on this one. Maybe because the only versions of these songs that I’ve heard had so much gaudy, transexual camp on them that it glazed over the cold, hard, vile, scabrous truth to this complex and brutal music.

We did a party at Shanghai Mermaid this weekend and the theme was Weimar Germany. There was one outstanding song that began to point the way for me into this treacherous, macabre and generally thrilling music. The performers name was Lady Rizo and the song that stabbed me was “Pirate Jenny” from “Threepenny Opera.” Basically, the song is a revenge fantasy. A prostitute in a hotel concocts a vision of a pirate ship that will not only save her from her wretched condition and the brutality of how she is treated, but will also ask for her judgement on when to kill each of her persecutors. By the end of the song, no one is spared and she leaves the town on the pirate ship herself. To take the whole thing to the next dramatic level, in most performances the song is sung by a different character to make fun of Jenny for being such a pathetic, powerless looser!!

Lady Rizo gave an epic and drawn out version a la Nina Simone rendition.

Today, I began to study Weill and Brecht a bit and found many different versions of this song. The one I am posting here is probably the closest to the song’s original intent as it is performed by Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya. It is brisk and cold and mean and ultimately horrible. I love it.

Rizo’s version was much more drawn out and in English. A side note and a tip of the hat to a great performer: Lady Rizo had a recalcitrant crowd whipped into submission from the first seconds of her set and continued to spellbind and amaze. To perform a song as unpleasant and murderous as this, with so much text as well (!!) and hold everyone’s attention is a feat of entertainment that I yearn to achieve. I was impressed.