nothing you can do will help a dead man

[Joseph Tracy]

I just saw a remarkable operaby Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weil  on a  
DVD of a live performance by LA Opera Company. English translation by  
WH Auden.  It's called The Rise and fall of the City of Mahagonny.

At first I was skeptical but it kept adding layers and the minimal  
staging was pumped to the next level with the use of neon. In the the  
end i was blown away, knocked out, drifting in the dark and seeing  
stars. This is the same opera from which Jim Morrison got "Show me  
the way to the next whiskey bar... ,  called Alabama Song.

At the end of the opera the town founders have killed by lethal  
injection the visionary brawling working man Jimmy Mcguire  for the  
crime of having no dough  and while a neon tickertape flashes above.  
The town  sings "nothing you can do will help a dead man"  to a  
martial but strangely  haunted  Weil melody.

Hard not to see  the carcass of american workers and taxpayers  
condemned to watch while  their entrails  are ripped and chewed by  
the bankers, wall street gamers, and war mongers.