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Blood & Feathers: Live from the Café Carlyle
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List Price: $17.98
Our Price: $17.98
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Drg
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0021471149029
Format: Live
Label: Drg
Manufacturer: Drg
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Drg
Release Date: 2005-06-07
Studio: Drg
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Editorial Reviews:
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Blood and Feathers was Ute Lemper's 2005 cabaret show at New York's Café Carlyle. It's a partial survey of her career, nodding to, among other things, her affinity with Kurt Weill ("Pirate Jenny") and her Sally Bowles role in (a Cabaret medley). She incorporates more Weill ("Bilbao Song," "Moon Over Alabama") into a "Moon Medley" that includes Van Morrison's "Moon Dance," Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street," Joni Mitchell's "Moon at the Window," the standard "It's Only a Paper Moon," and Tom Waits's "Grapefruit Moon." Lemper also tosses in Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" and a tribute to fellow German chanteuses Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf, and even delivers some of her patter in German and French. To call it an eclectic mix would be an understatement, and she's brash, she's bold, and she leaves it all out there--not your normal honey-voiced cabaret singer. But that also means Blood and Feathers isn't like the last hundred smooth, generic-sounding cabaret recordings you've heard. That's definitely a good thing. --David Horiuchi
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: ute i really like her
Comment: ute.....i really like nearly everything you do...your singling is
more than just singing....it is a type of art presentation.....
she sings...yes...she dances....she talks....and it is amazing to
witness....
it is rare to see any performer that can entertain on a global
scale....most sing or act in their native language....take it or
leave it...with ute; there is something for everyone....
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sing the Song, Ute!
Comment: I was once an Ute Lemper fan - liked her early CDs and enjoyed her in "Chicago" on Broadway - until she developed that tiresome habit some singers develop of departing from the song as it was written by the composer and lyricist. I call it "star-knows-best syndrome".
It's a syndrome that's become more pronounced with each new Ute Lemper CD and finally takes over on this recording. Song after song gets the Lemper treatment as she wails up and down the scale, wherever her voice takes her, to disguise the fact that she has nothing to add to the material. Just listen to the preview of "Moon Dance" and you'll hear what I mean.
Lemper has a well-publicised love-hate relationship with her native Germany. As someone who has made Germany his adoptive home, I'll tell you why. The Germans long ago saw through her one-trick pony act and grew tired of her thinly-spread talent and mannered style. Bitter at this, she now attacks Germany in concerts elsewhere in the world.
If you want to know why no one in Germany wants to hear her anymore, this CD is Exhibit A. Lemper is an anti-singer, an Empress in New Clothes who uses and abuses songs to mask her modest talent. Singers like Barbara Cook and Rosemary Clooney are the opposite: talented singers who have respect for song writers, sing each song as written, and still make it theirs.
My condolences to the Cafe Carlyle crowd. I just hope Barbara Cook returns soon to banish Lemper's bad karma.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Weill, Ebb, and Van Morrison, oh my! Buy it NOW!
Comment: `blood & feathers', a recording of a live Ute Lemper performance at New York City's Café Carlyle is easily one of Fraulein Lemper's most enjoyable albums, a fact over which I could not be more happy, as Ms. Lemper has been my favorite vocalist for the last several years, ever since Barbra Streisand went into semi-retirement and stopped doing `interesting' material on which she based her early career.
I am always just a bit apprehensive of `Live' and `Best of' albums, especially for performers of whom I own a large selection of their recordings. There is always the risk that the albums will simply repeat material I already own. While about half of the material on this album does appear on other Lemper albums, the mix of musical numbers with on-stage commentary and juxtapositions between songs make the whole album a totally new and totally pleasant experience for Lemper fans.
Aside from Lemper's great vocal skills, the most amazing thing about the recording of the stage performance is Lemper's flawless American accent or, to our ears, the total lack of any accent, in spite of the fact that she is a native of Germany, has worked most of her life in Europe, and switches effortlessly between French, German, and English lyrics. Her impeccable English lyrics are not simply the result of excellent mimicry.
Even seemingly tired material is given a new live such as the old chestnut, `Pirate Jenny' from `The Threepenny Opera' is done half in German and half in English with some improvisation on some of the best known lyrics.
The centerpiece of the set is the `Moon Medley' consisting of Brecht and Weill's `Bilbao Song', Van Morrison's `Moondance', Sting's `Moon over Bourbon Street', Brecht and Weill's `Moon of Alabama', Joni Mitchell's `Moon at the Window', Arlen and Harburg's `It's Only a Paper Moon', and Tom Waits' `Grapefruit Moon'. It's such a major part of the set that it's odd the album isn't named `Moon Songs'.
The final track is a `Cararet medley' dedicated to songwriter Fred Ebb, a collaborator on Cabaret and Chicago. The dedication give a great thumbnail sketch of Lemper's career and great stage presence, where she speaks with an assumed Sally Bowles accent which sounds like it grew up in darkest Brooklyn. That is, until she jumps into the German opening to `Mack the Knife'.
Buy this even if you have every other Lemper album ever pressed!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A genuine star
Comment: My name is Gonzalo and I'm from Argentina. I had the pleasure of seeing Ute twice, here in Buenos Aires. She doesn't change her show, it's the same all over the world. Her unique and genuine voice is always flawless and fraught with sheer emotion. The way she carries herself on stage. And she always speaks in several languages urging the audience to pay attention and following her in every word she says, inspiring people to learn languages. She does it all. I had the privilage of sharing the stage with her in Buenos Aires, I'll never forget that night as long as I live. Can't wait for her to come back. She always keeps you guessing...clearly not a predictable artist which we have in abundance nowadays.
Customer Rating:
Summary: it's the performance!!
Comment: This is a live recording that really comes alive with repeated listenings. It's not a ho-hum performance by any means, but an experience as Ute engages the audience and gives them her all.
The Moon Medley has moments ...and sustained moments of shear brilliance. Her selection and reading of songs from different eras brings it all together.
The Cabaret Medley is virtuosity by the singer who has much to draw on and shows her command of singing by inserting others' songs into it besides just a run-through of Kander & Ebb.
It's so wonderful to experience a singer like Ute Lemper who takes risks, has a commanding presence, gives it her all, and without pretentions.
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