Music I Liked – Chthe’ilist, CAIRN, Jesus Christ Superstar

One day last week I couldn’t decide what I wanted to listen to. So I started scrolling through the music on my phone and only got to the letter “C” before I saw two names I didn’t recognize. I knew I’d listened to them and liked them well enough to download at some time in the past. So I listened to Chthe’ilist and CAIRN. And there was this TV musical thing, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Chthe’ilist

I have no idea how you’re supposed to pronounce the name of this band. My best guess would be “the illest,” which sounds way more hip-hop than the music does. Of course, starting with a CH, the name of this band immediately brings Chthonic to mind. It’s a good connotation to have, and not entirely unfair. At least, the music is a lot closer to Chthonic than JayZ. A quick look at their Bandcamp page reveals nothing about pronounciation, but does identify them as a French-Canadian tech-death trio.

CAIRN

I’m not sure when CAIRN landed in my downloads. But after listening to them last week answered the question of why. There are several nearly-identically named bands on Bandcamp, but this is the French black metal outfit in all caps.

Jesus Christ Superstar

I can’t stand Andrew Lloyd Webber. But I love JC Superstar as much as I hate everything else he ever did. The score was originally released as a concept album in 1970, and apparently it never did well as a stage musical, but my first introduction was the movie. I memorized the movie in high school. My first semester of college, when a friend from Spokane announced a theater in his home town was putting on the play, a group of us from my dorm road-tripped to Eastern Washington to see it.

NBC Special

I didn’t know that live TV musicals were a thing. But when I heard about the Easter broadcast of JC Superstar on NBC starring an original Hamilton cast member and Alice Cooper, I had to watch it. Reviews were mixed, and I agree. Overall I liked the staging and aesthetic. Even though some of the costumes were gross, JC’s crew today would be the scabies crowd. I loved Brandon Victor Dixon’s Judas, who has always been the real hero of this version of the story. (Hopefully he got paid extra to wear that International Male angel costume, though.) Sara Bareilles’ Mary Magdalene was different from the movie, but really worked. Most of the smaller parts were brilliantly cast, too. John Legend’s Jesus was hit and miss. When he hit, damn! But I spent half the show thinking, “John Legend just doesn’t have the voice to carry off this role.”

Mostly, I spent too much time analyzing the things that were different from my memory. Was this Jesus more self-involved than the movie Jesus, or am I just 25 years older watching the same character? So of course we had to watch the movie on Friday night.

1973 Classic

The kids were confused. I guess the movie does assume some previous knowledge of the story of Jesus Christ. But I thought the movie held up really well for being nearly 50 years old. I had forgotten how much I loved Yvonne Elliman’s Mary Magdalene, and Carl Anderson’s Judas was a miracle of subtlety wrapped in a dramatic character. The anachronisms are still impactful and trippy. My kids were completely thrown, despite the fact that they’ve seen A Knight’s Tale multiple times. I still like the movie version better than NBC’s – Ted Neeley’s Jesus captured the radical side of the character better – but watching the movie again also made me appreciate the NBC version more. They had captured and updated a lot of details I had forgotten – like the scaffolding on the set, and Simon looking like the tweaker you avoid sitting next to on the bus. Anyway, whether you like the film or the play or, like my daughter, think religious stories are cooties, I really like the music. Which is a good thing, because it’s been stuck in my head all week.