#1501
Posted: 8/10/08 at 2:13pm
I got my copy of Rolling Stone in the mail yesterday (#1059 with Robert Downey Jr. on the cover) and was happy to see a small article about Passing Strange. On page 88, in the New CDS Reviews section, under David Fricke's (A senior writer at RS) Picks, it reads:
"Strange Broadway
Before it was in workshop, off-Broadway, then on Broadway, the electric musical Passing Strange was a life story; the already rich, then brilliantly embroidered autobiography of the singer-songwriter Mark Stewart, aka Stew, who wrote and starred in the show. He rightly won a Tony this year for Best Book of a Musical- Passing Strange is his funny, unsparing dissection of growing up weird, gifted and black- but he and his co-composer bassist Heidi Rodewald, deserved more. Recorded in April before an audience at New York's Belasco Theater, the original cast recording (Ghostlight) arrives a little late- the Broadway production closed in July- but preserves the show's acerbic sting and dynamic whirl of New Wave snarl ("Sole Brother"), skewering vaudeville ("The Black One") and shape-shifting soul ("Keys"). You only get the voices of the superb cast and none of the show's visual, ingenious rock-gig pow, but this album will eventually double as a movie soundtrack: Spike Lee filmed one of the final performances."
There was also a small photo of Stew and Daniel Breaker.
"Strange Broadway
Before it was in workshop, off-Broadway, then on Broadway, the electric musical Passing Strange was a life story; the already rich, then brilliantly embroidered autobiography of the singer-songwriter Mark Stewart, aka Stew, who wrote and starred in the show. He rightly won a Tony this year for Best Book of a Musical- Passing Strange is his funny, unsparing dissection of growing up weird, gifted and black- but he and his co-composer bassist Heidi Rodewald, deserved more. Recorded in April before an audience at New York's Belasco Theater, the original cast recording (Ghostlight) arrives a little late- the Broadway production closed in July- but preserves the show's acerbic sting and dynamic whirl of New Wave snarl ("Sole Brother"), skewering vaudeville ("The Black One") and shape-shifting soul ("Keys"). You only get the voices of the superb cast and none of the show's visual, ingenious rock-gig pow, but this album will eventually double as a movie soundtrack: Spike Lee filmed one of the final performances."
There was also a small photo of Stew and Daniel Breaker.
