Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester play music that sprung from interwar Berlin and dress up pop songs like Brittany Spear’s “Oops…I Did it Again” and Tom Jones’s “Sex Bomb” with Weimar kitsch.  Raabe and his big band perform at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on October 18 as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival. 

The German ensemble, led by the willowy vocalist Raabe, offer up cabaret tunes from the aforementioned bygone era not with the campy, garish make-over found in many of today’s clubs, but with a shrewd sensibility about what’s still clever and enduring about that time period: for example, Raabe’s original composition “No one ever calls, no one has a care for me,” a cabaret-infused lamentation on a modern problem: waiting by the phone. 

Raabe’s baritone, backed by plucky clarinet, strings, sousaphone, and banjo—along his gift for comedic rambling between songs—enables the group to transport the listener completely to a smoky Berlin club.  High on the success of last year’s sold-out show at Carnegie Hall, Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester will certainly please similarly discerning Bay Area crowds.

by Kate Cohen