Concert reveals Randy Newman's gifts, limitations

Wednesday, January 22, 1997 By JOHN CHARLES --

In Randy Newman's song Love Story, the singer imagines a romance from marriage to the grave, and when the couple have their baby it's expected to be "straight, we don't want him bent."

Newman, however, is at his best when he's bent, as last night's Pops Super Special with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, at the Jubilee demonstrated.

His sardonic lyrics for Short People, once a very controversial song, or Political Science - in which the singer gleefully plans to "drop the big one" on Europe "because it's too old," and South America, which "stole our name," - demonstrate a shrewd understanding of the petty and spiteful in our society.

If you were around in the 1960s you may remember the cabaret songs of Tom Lehrer, a popular political satirist on college campuses. Newman's best songs have that same apparently friendly cutting edge set to deliberately disarming tunes.

The most haunting song was Germany, about a child murderer, based on the Peter Lorre movie M. With high strings and chilly woodwinds, the dreamy Kurt Weill-like melody and its dark lyrics were a perfect match.

But you were also aware of what a small store of tunes Newman has, some songs indistinguishable from the last, with simple old-timey hymn chords, and musical styles borrowed from Southern black music pre-First World War.

When he sings Emotional Girl in his worn-out, boozy voice which is barely in tune, it's powerful and intense, like a B version of Try a Little Tenderness. But I Love to See You Smile (from the movie Parents), and Feels Like Home To Me (from Michael), couldn't be more sappy, and without a shred of irony.

It was interesting to hear some Newman movie scores, especially when played so well by the ESO, conducted by Newman (elsewhere the symphony's assistant conductor David Hoyt waved the baton).

His main theme for Ragtime was effective in that movie, but heard by itself you're aware Newman can write a "new" song of 1910 very well. But why bother when we have all those real 1910 songs?

Avalon was more wistful nostalgia, a mode Newman employs too often and played too straight. Music for The Natural, the Robert Redford baseball yarn, had a big mythic feel, with swooping horns and a lingering trumpet solo. This is very entertaining music if pretty unoriginal (lots of Aaron Copland outdoor stuff).

Much the best was Toy Story, which was inventive, frisky and colorful, with a lot of menace and a dark-hued march straight out of Gustav Mahler.

Newman is a lively stage presence, making cracks about our weather, and talking very directly to the crowd of 2,000, which frequently whistled and burst into applause as a familiar accompaniment began.

Newman said his song Dixie Flyer is as close to autobiography as his works get. In it a young Jewish boy from California goes to Louisiana, falls in love with the whole atmosphere and longs to be a gentile, an "American Christian."

It's a fine song, but genuinely revealing when you recall that his stage persona is invented - the Southern rural accent he sings with drops away when he speaks, and his recent "geriatric rock opera" Faust, (recorded with James Taylor, Don Henley and others) is like an imitation of an old minstrel show, with God and Satan singing gospel songs.

This isn't exactly moving forward.