Hast Du Grad' Mal Feuer?

Last night when I got home there was a little package in front of my door, a little CD-shaped package from VBeta. Beta tried to send me a CD for Christmas and was probably pissed off for months that I never thanked her for it. However, the CD never arrived and now that we have proof that a Mr. Sneaky McThieving Pants lives in my building, she believed my tale about the CD being MIA and decided to resend it.

This is the story about a gift that got progressively more wicked awesome in the ten seconds it took for my brain to process the information.

"Cool," I thought. "A Mix-CD." It's always fun to get a mix-CD but let's face it, it's a bit of a gamble. You could hate the mix-CD, you could like it, but even if you love it I guarantee it you will never love it as much as the person who actually put the mix-CD together loves it or thinks you should love it. Or maybe it's just that the people I make Mix-CDs for never get sufficiently excited about them because my musical taste has been described by friends and loved ones as "crap". (I confessed to my Boss today that I was an a cappella fan. There was context there, trust me, but it's too long to get into now).

Am I making sense? It's been a busy day. Anyhow, I thought, okay, let's see this Mix-CD from VBeta. When I opened the CD, the first thing I saw was the logo for the Broadway musical RENT. Whoa Nellie. If you are of a certain age (mine) and were of the drama club persuasion in high school (guilty) Rent was probably the biggest thing that happened to you when you were 14 years old. Oh, how we loved this show. We used to hang out in someone's basement and since the score. When I was 15 the touring cast came through Providence and I went to see the production. That was a hot night in Rhode Island, let me tell you. Anyway, I had by and large forgotten about Rent by the end of high school. Then I was taking a road trip one year in college and I came across the CDs so I decided to throw them into the car. Somewhere outside Montreal I popped them in and surpised myself (and tormented the driver) by singing along. I still knew every goddamn word.

Okay, I thought, Beta burned me the Rent soundtrack to recapture some good old nostaligia. But I think I still have my own copies of the CD around here somewhere... then I looked at the CD closer and saw the following words: RENT: Das Musical auf Deutsch . Oh. My. God. The soundtrack to Rent, in German. Instantly my eyes rolled back into my head and I was overcome by a rapturous joy. My tongue lolled over and fell out of the left side of my mouth, I think I actually had a petit mal seizure.

Then I saw that she had photo-shopped my head onto one of the bodies on the CD cover. Do you see how awesome this is?

Of course, I played the entire first CD and got through part of the second one and I am so totally loving it. Since I am so familiar with the English version, I'm perceptive to every single change that was made in this adaptation and it makes me consider just what an awesome undertaking such a translation is. You have to account for meter, musicality, local cultural references, furthering the plot, etc .... If anyone elses wants to play along, there's a link to the German libretto here. (That's right, I said libretto boy-oy!).

The CD is interesting because the songs are performed live and although the vocalists are good, there is a smattering of underwhelming applause after each song, as if this was a community theater performance in the local church basement. Beta, did you bootleg this or what? Or is that how you spent that year in Germany, adapting the book and lyrics and mounting a high school production of one of the biggest Broadway hits in the last ten years? And if not, do you think I can get a Fullbright to do that? I swear I'm just one good idea and a whole lot of follow-through away from a Fullbright.