[Spoken]
Thank you very much
Thank you
Hello, good evening
Welcome to the Cafe Carlyle
I am Alan Cumming
I'm here to sing sing you some sappy songs
And joining me in that endeavour are the three beautiful people on stage with me tonight
Please give a big hand to, on drums, all the way from Liverpool, England
Skouse is in the house!
Mr. Chris Jago is here
On the cello, the only self-defining woman onstage tonight,Eleanor Norton, ladies and gentlemen
And on the pianoforte, musical director/arranger/composer/co-composer/backing vocalist, Lance Hahn is here!
So, um, it's been awhile since I've able to sing, uh, in this way, and by that I mean, in a place where food is being served
Um, but you know, I like it, I like it
I love the smell of shrimp wafting up as I'm emoting
It's, uh, you know, helps open up the tear ducts
But, uh, the reason I haven't been able to sing in cabaret in this way, is because I was singing, uh, actually for the last year or so until early this year in the show “Cabaret,” not the form cabaret
Oh, I wasn't fishing, but of course, I was
Yes, so I went back to do, to play the Master of Ceremonies in “Cabaret” after a gap of, uh, 15 years
It was really nice to go back to it, and, uh, you know, older and wiser
And I realised that, uh, there's some things I needed to make happen in my life in order to be able to do 8 shows a week on Broadway, and to have a fulfilled and nice time
Basically, I just brought the party to me
I had to have a party every night, so I had to have it in my dressing room
So my dressing room at Studio 54 after “Cabaret” became known as Club Cumming, and we basically used to have parties there every night
The cast would come up, my friends from the show, people would drop by, and we'd just have an absolutely lovely time
We'd listen to music, and we'd have drinks
So kind of tonight, it's kind of like Club Cumming, ladies and gentlemen
And, um, at Club Cumming, we had a sign made which said, guess what, “Club Cumming.”
And so, oh the thing is tonight's almost like Club Cumming, but the one thing I didn't do during Club Cumming at Studio 54 was sing
That is my gift to you tonight
So Club Cumming, as now and then in Studio 54, has a lot of rules or certain rituals we had
Everyone would know it was time to go home when I would play Elaine Stritch singing “The Ladies Who Lunch.”
That meant daddy's tired. daddy's….It's over. Get out
So, um, a lot of the songs I'm going to sing for you tonight are actually songs I grew to love, uh, during that time at Club Cumming
‘Cause I, you know, a lot of people brought music that I hadn't heard before
There's a lot of artists and a lot of songs that I really never thought I would actually like, let alone sing for you live at the Cafe Carlyle
Like, for example, this one . .