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ON THE RECORD: David Yazbek's "Evil Monkey Man," and "Judy Garland at the Grove"
By Steven Suskin
02 Mar 2008
This week's column discusses the new album from songwriter David Yazbek (of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), and a live recording of Judy Garland's 1958 nightclub act at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles.
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EVIL MONKEY MAN [Ghostlight 8-3308]
Broadway knows David Yazbek as composer-lyricist of two comedic musicals adapted from motion picture hits. The Full Monty was an inviting if somewhat uneven musical that came along in 2000, only to be overshadowed by the Mel Brooks juggernaut The Producers. Yazbek's sophomore effort, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, was fully-realized and musically delightful; it, too, was overwhelmed by a more popular if less musically accomplished effort, Spamalot. If the first of the pair indicated that Yazbek was a promising practitioner in the Frank Loesser vein, the second showed that he now fully understood the vernacular.
Yazbek's heart, though, seems not to be in musical theatre. He came from the world of indie pop, whatever that may be. While Broadway has been good to him (and he has been good to Broadway), he is less interested in writing for a clutch of fictional characters than he is in writing for himself. That is to say, rather than writing songs for Jerry Lukowski of Buffalo or the wily Lawrence and Freddy on the Riviera, he prefers writing in the voice of David Yazbek. "Evil Monkey Man," his new CD, gives us a sample of that voice. Not a happy fellow, I must say; the songs circle around death, destruction and other somber activities. The composer is tormented; he apparently has gone through some harrowing times since those Scoundrels went Rotten, and it is all laid out on a plate. Or a platter, rather.
What makes this collection worthy of attention is that Yazbek seems to have an ingrown comic sense; no matter how weird and far-out he may feel, the music with which he expresses himself — in at least half of the tracks — is bright, bubbly and inventive. His fine comic sense is also apparent in most of the lyrics, no matter how depressing (or rather depressed) he gets. Mr. Yazbek gives us songs like "Monkey Baby Hanging on Chicken Wire," which is not perhaps what you'd expect from the composer of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; others seem to be about death, homelessness, and just plain despair. (It is not always possible to tell precisely what he is singing about.) Even so, the music is often tunesome and the words are filled with remarkably well-crafted images that startle but please.
"Evil Monkey Man" is not a collection of show tunes, no, and is not precisely what fans of The Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels might want to listen to. But Yazbek is such an interesting songwriter that his new album — recorded with his backup trio (His Warmest Regards, they are called) — is certainly worth noting. He is apparently working on a third musical, about Bruce Lee. The arresting "Evil Monkey Man" leaves me even more eager to hear another set of theatre songs from Mr. Yazbek, although I might not revisit these dirty rotten monkeys so soon. Continued...
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