CHAT The Ides of March

John Cowan wrote:


> [This posting is by Roger Mills; I am posting it because his attempt to
> do so sent out plain text, HTML, and some mysterious encoded JScript...]
Thank you, John, for rescuing my post.
> "Cäsars Tod"  ("Caesar's Death")
Among the features that particularly strike my fancy, aside from La Lenya's
inimitable voice and the ricky-tick accompaniment (as if an ill-paid,
ill-rehearsed, recorded-in-the-1920's theater jazz band)--
the internal rhyme/alliteration of "immer schlimmer schlug...", the nice
relation (lost in the translation) between "stach" and "Stich",  and the
wonderfully redundant "...(lateinish) wie es dort die Landessprache war".

Curiously, the LP album (all songs from Weill's Berlin theatre days) began
with "Mackie Messer" in its usual ricky-tick version, then went through a
variety of songs in many styles, some funny, sarcastic, heart-breaking, --
only to end, full circle, with "Cäsars Tod" and another "Messer".