Bodies of Song

Common wisdom holds that music is a universal language. Every culture seems to share the use of voice or creation of instruments with which to create melody and manipulate sound. One distinction, however, can be made that seemingly few pieces of music, when compared to the amount that is recorded over any given year, will stretch across time and touch people in other generations. In the case of Europe, or it's descended cultures, classical composers such as Beethoven, Handel, and Bach have enjoyed most of the limelight in terms of historical longevity. Popular music, on the other hand, seems to come and go without notice.

But an exception to this rule seems to exist within the world of Jazz. There is a catalog of songs that nearly all Jazz musicians and singers are able to perform, commonly called Standards. These tracks help to form the basis of Jazz as a genre as well as a musical technique. Songs such as "When The Saints Go Marching In" and "In A Sentimental Mood" have been played, altered, and recorded for many years, and likely will not disappear.

One song, however, holds a deeply unusual place; a piece of music with lyrics that often don't match the tune, almost deranged in it's happy mood when considering it's subject matter. It was originally known as "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." It's best known today by it's adopted and accepted title: Mack The Knife.

The origin of the song lies in the hands of a pair of musicians and Socialist commentators: Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Brecht and Weill began performing a show in Berlin called The Threepenny Opera during 1928, shortly before the rise of Nazism. The inspiration for the show was an 18th century musical known as The Beggar's Opera which was a commentary on the state of the British monarchy. Like so many others in showbiz, Brecht and Weill updated the show's premise to reflect the world of Post-WWI Germany, but in this transformation, a sharp and ugly thing occurred. In The Beggar's Opera, the character Macheath was a dashing hero in the spirit of Robin Hood. Under the satirical gaze of Brecht, Macheath went from a romantic thief to that of a violent sadist who killed children, raped young widows, and would be described in his introduction as more like a shark than a man. In an irony fitting of Weimar Republic-era Germany, the song was not initially slated to be in the show - it was added to sate the vanity of it's original performer.

The Threepenny Opera was performed over 1,000 times by the time the duo of Brecht and Weill had left Germany in 1933. Little did they realize how one song, written almost as a joke, would leave an indelible mark on music history.

What is interesting about "Mack The Knife" is how it has mutated over the years. In it's original form, the song is not a happy one. Here it is performed in it's original German by Christopher Lee:



This version falls into sharp contrast with how it is best remembered. Beloved singer Bobby Darin in many ways made a career off of the song, and Jazz Legend Ella Fitzgerald received awards and accolades for her rendition. In yet another ironic twist, during her star-making performance of the song, she forgot the lyrics and had to ad-lib her way through it in Berlin.



Yet most modern performances that are not in the mold of Darrin or Fitzgerald have attempted, through this generation's darkened filters, to bring the song closer to it's original intention. For the film and subsequent album September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill, singer-songwriter Nick Cave performs "Mack The Knife" with a nearly-demonic aplomb.



The myth of Mack The Knife, a serial killer with a body count matching many actual modern madmen, is is fixed within the soundtrack of Western Culture. The only thing remaining to be seen is who next unearths his murder ballad and releases it back into the ears of an unsuspecting world.

Intrusion

The technique of using pop culture or consumerism against itself is not a new one. But like any type of controversial act, there must be a starting point or watershed. In the United States, the events on a chilly Chicago night in November, 1987 appears to have set a bizarre standard.

To have the proper perspective of this event, the year of 1987 must be taken into account. The U.S. had been contending with the failing theory of “Trickle Down” economics. Crack cocaine had become a major problem in many cities, met with a police response that was simply not strong enough to match it. The Iran-Contra affair was still a fresh wound, and the Cold War with the Soviet Union was still a black specter hanging over the consciousness of the country. The “Me Generation” had come into being, as such, the 1980s as a whole are remembered as a time period of crass consumerism. In response, a genre of fiction known as “cyberpunk” became popular. Generally set in a near and dystopian future ruled by large corporations, corrupt governments, and saturated in high technology, Cyberpunk stories focused on individuals, often disenfranchised or disillusioned, throwing themselves at the world in an attempt to break down the metaphorical walls of an oppressive world.


One of the most commercially successful pieces of Cyberpunk was Max Headroom. Set in a future of dangerous, aggressive marketing and technology gone awry, the memories and psyche of an investigative journalist are loaded into a computer network. This entity, whose name forms the title of the series, assists freedom fighters with combating this repressive regime. In an irony seemingly lost on many companies (which, in hindsight, is wholly befitting of the 1980s,) the character and image of Max Headroom became associated with Coca-Cola products through a series of television advertisements.

Viewers of the Chicago, Illinois based WGN news broadcast at 9pm were surprised and disturbed to see the nightly sports highlights interrupted by a strange sight. A man wearing a latex rubber Max Headroom mask behaving wildly in front of a sheet of corrugated metal, accompanied by a loud, atonal buzzing noise. WGN engineers, realizing what was going on, changed transmitter, leaving anchorman Dan Roan flustered and perplexed on screen, saying “If you are wondering what just happened, so am I.” At 11:15pm, WTTW, another local Chicago station was struck. This time, audio as well as video came through. For 90 seconds, WTTW viewers watched again as “Max” again to act erratically, mocking Coca-Cola ad slogans, make strange comments regarding dirty gloves, and in a surreal turn, remove his pants to be spanked by an individual off-screen wielding a fly swatter.



This is not, however, the first act of T.V. broadcast piracy. In 1977, a ITN in England news update (which aired on British Southern Broadcasting station) had it’s audio pirated by an individual claiming to be an extraterrestrial who delivered a message claiming to be offering humans world peace and salvation. In 1986, an individual identifying himself as “Captain Midnight” broke through a HBO broadcast with a text complaining about HBO’s monthly prices.

The “Max Headroom Piracy Incident,” as it’s widely known, is exceedingly strange for a number of reasons. Previous signal pirates seemed to have some sort of purpose or message to be conveyed. “Max,” on the other hand, seemed to have little intention beyond hurling irrational insults at local TV stations, humming the theme to a cartoon show, taunting soft drink manufacturers, and to be publicly spanked. One could argue that the acts of the individuals responsible for this act foreshadowed groups such as The Cacophony Society (a band of pranksters from 1970s San Francisco) or Anonymous (Internet hackers, activists, and “trolls” who utilizes websites such as 4chan.)

The television series and adverts featuring Max Headroom have since faded into (no pun intended) virtual obscurity, and are generally relegated to nostalgia, effectively disappearing from the pop-cultural consciousness nearly as quickly as it arrived. There is an irony to the fact that someone using the visage of a character designed to satirize a highly technological world actually being outlived by a further bowdlerization of itself. To date, the persons responsible for the “Max Headroom Piracy Incident” have never been caught, nor has anyone come forward to claim responsibility.