Stew's Passing Strange opened yesterday on Broadway, where they say the neon lights are bright and there's always magic in the air. The show has rave reviews at NPR, the NY Times and other outlets, so it could be playing there for awhile. Stew is on the cusp of making the great leap forward from "starving indie-musician" to "star of stage and screen."I saw PS in the Fall of 2006 at the Berkeley Rep, and didn't think it had much of a chance of making it to the Great White Way. The songs were great, but the show seemed like it ran out of steam during the second half. At nearly three friggin' hours, it seemed about a half-hour too long. They've now cropped the running time down to 2:10 which is a good length for a musical. There's no reason for any play or movie to be more than two hours long.
In this NPR interview back in 2003, Stew talked about wanting to take his songs to the stage, since his roots were more in theater and film music than the indie rock of the Negro Problem and his solo albums. So Broadway isn't something Stew is "dabbling in", it's something closer to what he's all about. Still, the moral of Passing Strange is to not forget where you came from, and I'll always think of Stew first and foremost as the leader of the Negro Problem.
For today's leap day, here are a couple of songs from TNP's 1997 debut Post Minstrel Syndrome, and a couple of outtakes from the same Post-Minstrel period (Post-minstrel period. get it?). When I first heard this album ten years ago, "The Great Leap Forward" and "Club Girls Terrain" (the last untitled bonus track on PMS -- track 18 if you're playing at home) were the two songs that told me that this album was something special. This is another out of print record that should go back "in print" ASAP.
The other two tracks ("Amsterdam" and "Flying Naked Through The Air") are from a compilation called Closet Pop Folk. They're early acoustic demos that didn't make the debut album, but "Amsterdam" has been revived as part of Passing Strange.
The Negro Problem
The Great Leap Forward
Club Girls Terrain
Amsterdam
She's Flying Naked Through The Air
2 comments:
Ha - when I went through my database looking for "leap" songs, of course "The Great Leap Forward" was there...but I didn't use it because the "leap" was more metaphorical, so I stuck with songs using the word in a more literal sense.
The only "leap" songs I have are TNP's "Great Leap Forward" and Billy Bragg's "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward". Both of which are metaphorical.
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