Friday July 17th sees the release of the first live album from the provocative award-winning Australian singer and performer Kim David Smith. We fell in love with Smith’s addiction to the songs from the Weimar era in Berlin when he mixed them with a program of Kylie Minogue song for a sold-out performance in Provincetown.
He has developed this much further with t.his album Kim David Smith: Live at Joe’s Pub at Midnight, Match 2, 2019 . It reimagines the music of Marlene Dietrich, Kylie Minogue, The Supremes, Madonna, and many glittering others naturally through the sound and mien of Weimar-era Berlin,
You get the true essence of Smith’s highly stylised performing style that had The Wall Street Journal calling him ‘slyly subversive” and The New York Times hailing him as ‘a male Marlene Dietrich‘.
We tracked Smith down in NY and he explained that “Kim David Smith: Live at Joe’s Pub” is something of a greatest hits of his small-stage output. “incorporating music from 10 years of cabaret programs – including celebrations of my personal muses Kylie Minogue and Marlene Dietrich – and my own reimagined pop music from my dance albums Nova and Supernova. I’m very proud of my working relationship with music director Tracy Stark, and it means the world to have our exploits captured on an album, recorded at our beloved Joe’s Pub at the Public. I’m especially excited about the cover art by fashion illustrator Clifford Faust, who has expressively captured the spirit of our music.”
The album’s highlights include Smith’s wry, theatrical take on “Dracula’s Tango” – the campy chart hit from 1980s British new wave group Toto Coelo – which has been an essential part of his repertoire for years. “My mum worked as an aerobics instructor when I was young,” he remembers. “She would play her class tapes in the car when we were running errands. ‘Dracula’s Tango’ was my favorite of her workout songs, and I’ve had the best time rearranging it for the stage. We’ve mashed in a little bit of Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head,’ and made it as fun and diverting as possible.”
In addition to Kurt Weill, Smith has championed iconic German composers Friedrich Hollaender, who is represented by four selections here. The album’s version of “Jonny, wenn du Geburtstag hast?” is interwoven with strains of Madonna’s “Erotica,” the song’s contemporary spiritual cousin. “I’ve always found German to be such a sexy language,” says Smith, “I love the pleading, pulling sensuousness of the song’s melody, crafted by Hollaender, my absolute favorite composer of the Weimar era. And I especially love his fabulous compositions where they intersect with the grandeur of Marlene Dietrich.”
https://music.apple.com/us/album/kim-david-smith-live-at-joes-pub/1521527844P.S. You may also like to read this:
https:// queerguru.com/kim-david-smith-think-marlene-dietrich-crossed-with-kylie-minogue/
