First song played on Radio1

Not exakkly- I know the BeeGees did Jive Talkin'- did they have some connection with Chorlton?

You can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man, to time to talk.

Mack the Knife gets my vote: Walter can fill in detail about Kurt Weil and Lotte Lenya.

He could, if he would.

(Wasn't there one on Abuzz centuries back?)

I can officially guarantee I have no clue what you are talking about. Why are you talking like spendius? Stick around fer chrissakes, and get over it. We LIKE you and your brethren. :wink: honestly.

I shall attempt to spread the love:

I love to love you baby...

When you're laying so close to me
there's no place I'd rather you be
than with me here

I love to love you baby...

Do it to me again and again
you put me in such an awful spin
in a spin

I love to love you baby...

Lay your head down real close to me
soothe my mind and set me free
set me free

I love to love you baby...

When you're laying so close to me
there's no place I'd rather you be
than with me here

I love to love you baby...

Do it to me again and again
you put me in such an awful spin
in a spin

I love to love you baby...

I love to love you baby...

I love to love you baby...

Love to love you baby baby...

I love to love you baby...

When you're laying so close to me
there's no place I'd rather you be
than with me here

I love to love you baby...

Do it to me again and again
you put me in such an awful spin
in a spin

I love to love you baby

Lay your head down so close to
soothe my mind and set me free
set me free

I love to love you baby

When you're laying so close to me
there's no place I'd rather you be
than with me here

I love to love you baby

Best Donna Summer song ever, IMO...prove me wrong, I dare ya.

I actually own a wonderful copy of Kurt Wiel's Threepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya singing. Nice stuff.

Marc Almond from Soft Cell was recovering from a bike accident...I loved the Mark-Almond Band and their song "The City"

Cav, what's Sarah on about?

Sarah, I invited you to the party, but you didn't show up. I was hoping you'd give me a quick shag in the closet, but I waited and waited...

Hate it when birds play hard to get Kicky...

Shag in the closet! Moi! closets here in blighty are very small and my particular technique requires a large amount of floor space.

I may be a bird (I love that word) but I'm not playing hard to get (as if) I just cannot join you on some threads........yet. Prepare boys!

Keppel Road is where the heebie geebies grew up, and if I'm not mistaken...there is an album called Keppel Road.

Okay then....whose 'suki tawdry' (that's what it sounds like) and ole Lucy Brown?

Oh the shark babe, has such teeth dear, and he shows them peeeerly white.

Rather long article, but fascinating:

Dear Straight Dope:

What's with the lyrics to the song "Mack the Knife"? I heard a radio report a couple of years ago describing it as a song about the real life Detroit organized-crime scene. Is it really about the Detroit mob? --Harmon Everett


There were no mobs in Detroit in 1728, when the character we know as Mack the Knife first made his appearance. In those days, there were only about 30 families living in Fort Ponchartrain near Detroit du Herie (strait of Erie), and none of them belonged to the Purple Gang. In fact, the reference is to London, not Detroit, and to politicians more than street gangs.

The character of Macheath, later to become Mack the Knife, first appeared in The Beggar's Opera by John Gay (1685-1732). Gay was a popular English playwright and poet, a friend and collaborator of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

The Beggar's Opera is a comic ballad opera, the first of its kind, and took London theatre by storm. Gay uses lower-class criminals to satirize government and upper-class society, an idea that has been used often ever since. A century and a half later, the title characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance note that they are more honest than "many a king on a first-class throne." And in our time, wasn't it Bob Dylan who wrote, "Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you a king?"

The main character of The Beggar's Opera is a swashbuckling thief called Macheath. He's a dashing romantic, a gentleman pickpocket, a Robin Hood type. He is polite to the people he robs, avoids violence, and shows impeccable good manners while cheating on his wife. The character is usually understood as partly a satire of Sir Robert Walpole, a leading British politician of the time.

The Beggar's Opera was a success from its first production in 1728, and continued to be performed for many years. It was the first musical play produced in colonial New York; George Washington enjoyed it.

We now skip about 200 years to post-WWI Europe and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), a distant cousin of this SDSTAFFer. World War I had a revolutionary impact on the arts. The avant-garde movement, in despair after the war, embraced the concept of the anti-hero. Gay's play was revived in England in 1920, and Brecht thought it could be adapted to suit the new era - who's more of an anti-hero than Macheath? So in 1927 he got a German translation and started writing Die Dreigroschenoper, "The Three Penny Opera."

Brecht worked with Kurt Weill (1900-1950) on the adaptation. He did far more than just translate Gay's play, he reworked it to reflect the decadence of the period and of the Weimar republic. Mostly, Brecht wrote or adapted the lyrics, and Weill wrote or adapted the music. Gay's eighteenth-century ballads were replaced with foxtrots and tangos. Only one of Gay's melodies remained in the new work. The play parodies operatic conventions, romantic lyricism and happy endings.

The main character is still Macheath, but Macheath transformed. He's now called Mackie Messer, AKA Mack the Knife. ("Messer" is German for knife.) Where Gay's Macheath was a gentleman thief, Brecht's Mackie is an out-and-out gangster. He's no longer the Robin Hood type, he's an underworld cutthroat, the head of a band of street robbers and muggers. He describes his activities as "business" and himself as a "businessman." Still, the character does manage to arouse some sympathy from the audience.

So, we finally get to your song, the "Ballad of Mack the Knife" (Die Moritat von Mackie Messer) from The Three Penny Opera. The song was a last-minute addition to appease the vanity of tenor Harald Paulson, who played Macheath. However, it was performed by the ballad singer, to introduce the character. The essence of the song is: "Oh, look who's coming onstage, it's Mack the Knife - a thief, murderer, arsonist, and rapist." (If these last two startle you, be patient for a couple paragraphs.)

The Brecht-Weill version premiered in Germany in 1928 and was an instant hit. Within a year, it was being performed throughout Europe, from France to Russia. Between 1928 and 1933 it was translated into 18 languages and had over 10,000 performances.

In 1933, The Three Penny Opera was first translated into English and brought to New York by Gifford Cochran and Jerrold Krimsky. There have been at least eight English translations over the years. In the 1950s, Marc Blitzstein wrote an adaptation, cleaning up "Mack the Knife" and dropping the last two stanzas about arson and rape. At the revival in New York using the Blitzstein translation, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill's widow, made her comeback - she had a role in the original 1928 Berlin production.

Blitzstein's sanitized adaptation is the best known version of the song in the English-speaking world, and undoubtedly the one you've heard. Louis Armstrong popularized it worldwide in 1955 with an amazing jazz beat. Bobby Darin's 1958 recording was #1 on the Billboard charts for many weeks and won a Grammy as best song. It's been sung as ballad, jazz, and rock by many of the greats, including Ella Fitzgerald and Rosemary Clooney.

In the 1970s, Joseph Papp commissioned Ralph Manheim and John Willett to do an adaptation/translation that would be "more faithful" to Brecht. So, if you were surprised at the notion of arson and rape, here's Willett's translation of the last two stanzas, omitted from the Blitzstein version:

And the ghastly fire in Soho,
Seven children at a go?-
In the crowd stands Mack the knife, but
He's not asked and doesn't know.

And the child bride in her nightie,
Whose assailant's still at large
Violated in her slumbers?-
Mackie how much did you charge?

Having hit the heights with Louis Armstrong, it's only fair that we also recount the depths reached in the 1980s with the McDonald's TV jingle, "Mac Tonight." Selling Big Macs - how have the mighty fallen.

Got a question, Harmon Everett?
Get behind old Lucy Brown.
Oh the line forms on the right, dear
Now that Cecil's back in town.

Panzade, thanks so much for the extremely interesting piece on Mac the Knife....i'm so ignorant as to the origins of the song.

Checked out the credits on the Cd...Weill/Brecht/Marc Blitzstein.

Does he say 'Suki Tawdrey' I can't make out the lyric?

Talking of miss-heard lyrics, do you remember the Desmond Dekker song 'The Israelites' and everyone thought he was singing 'me ears are alight'!

Mr Sarah thought the first line to Love is the Drug by Roxy Music was 'T'aint no Big Dick'

I'm getting major deja vu here...

Sarah, Suky Tawdry and Lucy Brown are characters (prostitutes) in 3Penny Opera.

Thanks Mac11 :wink:

Then there's always: ""Scuse me while I kiss this guy"

What! you mean he doesn't say that! :wink:

Funny how lyrics can sound.

My cousin thought the Beach Boys lyric "Went to a dance/ Looking for romance..." was "looking for a man".

Then there's "Happiness is a warm gun"

McTag, I thought it was went to a dance/looking for a mance....just thought it was an 'American' thing.

Ruth (Daughter and heiress to the Morgan fortunes) heard a girl on the bus singing 'Papa don't preach, I'm in purdapeep'

I love that one and tax it frequently, as in "Oh, no, I'm in right purdapeep now!"

Okay I'll buy....not being a Madonna? fan....what's the correct lyric?

As far as I remember, Lucy Brown is the daughter of chief of police, Tiger Brown. :wink:

Re: Walter Pigeon


A small misunderstanding here, I think. I guess from what you wrote earlier, you work/ worked in the building at the bottom of Bridge Street, across from the Pump House?

I (Walter's friend, in case you hadn't guessed....unless he's got another one or two he's not told me about yet...I was that soldier) used to work in the Town Hall.

I like the welter of pop memorabilia going on here, although I am old and am firmly convinced that no worthwhile pop music has been made since 1975.... :wink: