Awaiting the distribution of the palms before Mass Sunday.
Well, yesterday was Palm Sunday, so that means it’s time to listen to “Jesus Christ Superstar” over and over, at least for a week.
I don’t think that is an actual, formal, official thing in the liturgical calendar, but it’s long been a habit of mine, as you can tell from such posts as this one and this one.
Last year — or was it the year before — I finally broke down and bought the album (the original cast album of course) from iTunes. This was good because, since I no longer have a working turntable for my vinyl (I have one that connects to my computer so I can make MP3s, but no way to play straight to a speaker), and listening to my “Jesus Christ Superstar” station on Pandora meant listening to extraneous stuff as well.
So Saturday, I was working in the yard, listening to it on my iPhone, and trying to remember not to starting dancing about to the livelier parts of “This Jesus Must Die” — an appalling notion that I hesitate even to write, but the song is infectious.
“Superstar” has loomed large in my legend since the original album was out, and it has always dwelt in this confusing area where the sacred and the profane intersect. I first listened to it in a beach house at Barber’s Point in Hawaii in the spring of 1971. Or rather, I sat watching Mary Riley as she lay on her back on the floor with her head between the stereo speakers and her eyes closed, listening to it. She was transported; I was transported. All sorts of things were mixed together in the moment.
“Superstar” portrayed Jesus and his followers as a sort of itinerant hippie commune that really knew how to rock. And that made a certain sense to me. We were about long hair and faded jeans and other expressions of naturalness. (Later, I would have trouble with my kids wanting to dye their hair unnatural colors and cut it in strange ways, in part because it just seemed uncool to me.)
There was this small poster I saw one time in the early ’70s up on the top floor of the Gay Dolphin in Myrtle Beach that seemed to capture well this intersection between Jesus and the counterculture. It showed a smiling Jesus, depicted in the traditional Sunday school kind of way, with a caption that went something like, “You guys can wear your hair as long as you like. Tell them I said so.”
My hair wasn’t all that long when I acted and sang in a community production of “Superstar” in the early 80s, although it was still a good bit longer than now. And I grew out a nice, full beard for the occasion. I was an apostle. It was my first play, and the director didn’t have the confidence to put me in a larger role. But I enjoyed singing “What’s the Buzz?” and “Look at all my trials and tribulations” and so forth. If I were ever to audition for such a production again, I’d go out for Pilate. The songs are within my range, and it’s a meaty role.
Now, as a lector and Eucharistic minister in my church, the liturgy reminds me of the rock opera, and the rock opera of the liturgy. And I manage to reconcile Holy Week and Jesus Christ Superstar Week occurring at the same time every year, like Passover.
Below is a snippet from the procession with palms at Mass yesterday at my church. It’s not “Hosanna, Hey sanna,” but I like it. One of the many singable tunes our Spanish choir does at the noon Masses.
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By the way, y’all lucked out on this post. I sort of composed it while working in the yard Saturday and listening to “Superstar,” and it was much longer and more rambling then. But since I didn’t get around to actually typing it until now, I forgot some of it.
So it could have been worse.
Speaking of the Pilate role… While I think the 1970 studio recording is the gold standard for “Superstar,” I’m not crazy about the guy who did Pilate in that version. I see from Wikipedia that his name was Barry Dennen, and he once had a thing with Barbra Streisand, for what that’s worth.
I think he does Pilate in a cliched manner reminiscent of a certain effete, ineffectual, decadent stereotype that you often saw in Hollywood movies in the 50s and 60s. He sounded like the character actor Jay Robinson, who played Caligula in “The Robe.”
I think of Pilate as different from that. I see the procurator through a modern lens, as being someone rather like a U.S. Army general dealing with both the military situation and the convoluted politics of Afghanistan today — a professional, a graduate of the war college with a special concentration in counterinsurgency.
Yes, Pilate was weak to give in to the mob when he saw no harm in Jesus. But he was doing the job Rome assigned him to do, maintaining order in a volatile situation. While condemning him for giving in, I at the same time give him credit for even raising objections to the crucifixion, and trying various strategems to avoid it — sending Jesus to Herod as a jurisdictional dodge, offering the crowd a chance to choose him over Barabbas, trying to reason with Jesus himself to say or do something exculpatory.
In that time and place, under the Roman system, he must have had an unusual streak of decency in him, and perceptiveness.
But of course, in the end, he gave in…
Thanks for the annoying ear worm.
“What then to do about this Jesusmania?
How do we deal with the carpenter king?…”
JC Superstar does have some mighty infectious tunes. But I found it even more entertaining to find many of the lyrics to “Godspell” in the hymnal of the Episcopal church I was attending at the time that production was popular. “Day by Day” still sticks with me more than anything from Superstar…despite my increasing agnosticism as I grow older.
I was in New York when “Jesus Christ, Superstar” was playing and saw it there (I also caught a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream). Yes Palm Sunday; the only day of the year where we start out processing and singing “Hosanna” and about 30 minutes later cry “Let him be crucified!” Makes for an interesting service.
Joining in with the congregation to say “Crucify him!” during the Passion is perhaps the most chilling thing in Catholic liturgy. Makes ya think, ya, know?
To paraphrase the Stones, “when after all, it was you and me“…
It cuts through, and negates, all that “the Jews killed Our Lord” stuff. By doing the liturgy that way, the Church makes it clear that we all share the culpability.
Now if we could just do something about the way the Gospel of John is written…
Precisely.
By the way, Matt DeGuire would probably hate that I posted that video shot from my phone. The sound quality isn’t flattering to the great job he and others in the Spanish-language choir do week after week. He is a tremendous talent — you may have seen him on the local stage, and we’re blessed to have him at our church. That’s him coming down the aisle singing and playing his twelve-string.
But I liked the clip because I like the fluid, informal, celebratory movement in it. I see some small part of the spontaneity of the original Palm Sunday in those few seconds, with the kids running around with their palms and people trying to find their seats, singing along…
Then there’s “Muppet Christ Superstar,” which a young man named Christopher Graham produced all by himself, using karaoke for the instrumentation and doing all the voices himself. Impressive.
I just listened to the Tallis Scholars’ recording of the Allegri Misere. That’s music! Even better live in a stone church.
The Vatican would not allow the score to be taken outside the Vatican, so Mozart transcribed it from memory. Those were the days.
Those were the days, and Mozart was the guy…
Allegri was awesome, too. Have a listen if you aren’t familiar, but understand that tinny computer speakers really won’t do it justice. I thought St Pete’s did it fairly recently….