the modern sound of yesteryear
February 20th, 2008
Max Raabe
I was at Pasha’s apartment in Brooklyn years ago and I asked him what he was listening to that I should check out. I always respected Pasha’s taste in music, so when he told me to check out Max Raabe, I dutifully did. And discovered this strange, Germany-in-the-20’s cabaret orchestral sound, which is pretty unique.
Also around this time I saw The Comedian Harmonists with my family, and I remember liking it quite a bit, liking the old-timey feeling of the music and harmonies, and there was some great stuff in the film too about how they dealt with the war and so on…
The most interesting (or accessible) of Raabe’s stuff is the record he did called "Super Hits", which features his interpretation of the modern hits of the day. I’ll never forget being at Deep Creek with a bunch of people, DJ’ing in the lazy hours of a winter afternoon, and SK requesting some Britney Spears…so I played the Raabe version of "Oops I did it Again" and we were treated to a stunning dance interpretation of the song by the same SK, who had been an (ahem) exotic dancer…a magic moment to be sure…
I’ve always wanted to put his version of "We Are The Champions" at the end of a mix, but it’s so different from everything else that it always comes too far out of nowhere.
And who suggested that he should cover "King of Bongos"? Genius. (end of mp3 is corrupted for some reason…I’ll try to fix at some point)
Finally I’m putting the Abba cover here too because this morning I went to the dentist and they were playing Abba during my whole check-up. At first I was going to say something snarky to my dentist like "Yuck, Abba…" and then the chorus of "Fernando" kicked in and I remembered how Abba was my favorite band when I was seven. Raabe’s version of "Super Trooper" sounds like it’s an original.
Max Raabe – Oops I Did It Again
[audio:Oops.mp3]Max Raabe – We Are The Champions
When did we go see the Comedian Harmonists?
[…] putting the j in jjosh wrote an interesting post today on the modern sound of yesteryearHere’s a quick excerpt … ng in the lazy hours of a winter afternoon, and SK requesting some Britney Spears…s… […]
KT I should have specified, it was the film called The Comedian Harmonists, and I know I saw it with mom & dad, thought you were there too, maybe not? And check the comment above this, my first spam-blog comment! All because I wrote “britney spears”…
Reminds me of the original the King of Bongos – been a fav of mine since Josh and I met.