jack_babalon | History Schoolin' : My two cents on a three penny opera

I have a problem.
I can't stop myself.
I try, I really do. I tell myself I won't but...
"On the sidewalk, one sunday morning
Lies a body, oozin’ life
Someone’s sneaking ’round the corner
Could that someone be mack the knife"

"..ummm exscuse me, Rob..."

"From a tugboat, on the river going slow
A cement bag is dropping on down
You know that cement is for the weight dear
You can make a large bet mackie’s back in town"

"Rob..."

"My man louis miller, he split the scene babe
After drawing out all the bread from his stash...."

"ROB!"She slams her hand on the cube wall.

I pull off my phones and realize i've once again commited the cardinal sin in the office.
Thou Shalt Not Sing along when wearing thy headphones in the cube. Two of my coworkers are standing there looking at me shocked... shocked I say to find out there's been singing in the office.

"What the hell are you singing?"
"Heavy Metal?" the other answers for me.
"No... 'Mack the Knife'" I say exhausted already
"See I told you it was heavy metal..."
"It's Frank Sinatra actually" One of my coworkers answers from the cube behind me. The two women look at each other and then me and then her.
"Really?" they say in stereo
"Really" I answer
"Well it sounds all crazy to me..."
"Like a serial killer..." the other one continues
"Nah... think of this as ... ummm... the gangsta rap of it's time. Only with Sinatra 'gangsta' isn't merely a euphemism in this case." I tell them with a wide clever little smile. The two of them just shake their heads to themselves and look at me like I just sprouted a pair of antenae and asked them to take me to their leader. They walk off laughing about my singing shennigans. I catch one of them mumbling something about 'Heavy Metal' again.

Actually it's not 'Heavy Metal' it's a Moritat the medieval term for Murder Ballad. Mack the Knife is based on the adventures of the highwayman Macheath of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. His crimes include rape, murder, arson & tearing off the tags on mattresses. The song we all know and love comes from Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, a German music duo (nice to know that the krauts were giving us murder music even before the likes of Einstruze Neubatten & Funker Vogt). The song was part of a Dreigroschenoper or a "Threepenny Opera" and this one was originally called "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" back in the Berlin of the roaring 1920's. In fact it was said to be Rommel's favorite song and he often hummed it to himself while riding around in his Panzer across the African Desert...
"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne,
Und die trägt er im Gesicht.
Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer,
Doch das Messer sieht man nicht." ... actually no not really but it's a funny image.
It took the legendary Satchmo (aka Louis Armstrong) to introduce it to the American HIT PARADE way back in the atomic age and Bobby Darin & Ella Fitzgerald each added a little something to it. Or as the version I have goes: "They all sang it, with so much feeling/ That old blue eyes, he ain’t gonna add nothing new". And here, sitting in a cube, in an office, in a city in the bible belt listening to a digital recording of a Ratpack Vegas cover of a Berlin Threepenny opera version of a medieval murder ballad.