"Hedwig and the Angry Inch," an off-Broadway musical that's been running for close to a year now at the Jane Street Theater, has produced a cast album that's due in stores Tuesday. It's the first rock musical that truly rocks. Next to this, "Rent" sounds like "The Fantastics."
"Hedwig's" creators love and live rock 'n' roll - this show came from the ground up. John Cameron Mitchell created Hedwig in his days performing at the Squeezebox, a Greenwich Village rock-drag bar. (Hedwig is a transsexual former Army wife whose incomplete sex change operation in East Berlin is the title's reference.) Mitchell does most of the singing on the album.
The music and lyrics were written by Stephen Trask, whose group, Cheater, was the Squeezebox house band. Miriam Shor - who appears in the show in reverse drag as Yitzak, Hedwig's Serbian boy-toy valet, takes over on one track.
The story traces Hedwig's flight from Berlin to Junction City, Kan. She (you can pick your pronouns) befriends the son of a general on the local Army base, and helps transform him into Tommy Gnosis, multinational rock star (Mitchell also plays Gnosis). Gnosis drops Hedwig like a bad habit, but they reunite briefly when he sees her in New York's meat-packing district. Mayhem ensues.
Frankly, that taste of the plot is more than sufficient because the songs drive the show. The songs on "Hedwig" are solidly made, with snippets of glam, Meat-Loaf style operatic rock and girl group breathiness. "Sugar Daddy" even has a touch of twang to it.
The disc starts with "Tear Me Down," which is so solidly constructed you could park a tank on it. The song captures Hedwig's knack for survival ("I was born on the other side/of a town ripped in two/I made it over the great divide/Now I'm coming for you") by comparing her to the Berlin Wall.
Probaly the most ambitious song is "Origin of Love," which is based on an idea from Plato's "Symposium" about love as the eternal pursuit of a missing half. This could be unspeakably pretentious. Instead, it comes off as the best song Lou Reed never wrote. Mitchell sings it deadpan, and Trask's music suggests Reed's profound cool.
Even without Mitchell's archly knowing dialogue it's easy to piece the story together just by listening. (The play is framed as a concert by Hedwig to showcase her songs. She says, "We're talking to Phil Collins' people, but then isn't everyone?") Trask is a supple writer ("So you think only a woman/Can truly love a man/Then you buy me the dress/I'll be more woman/Than a man like you can stand" he offers in "Sugar Daddy") and killer riffs. "Midnight Radio," the dazzling power ballad that closes the show, is one of the best homages to the power of rock 'n' roll ever written.
It wouldn't have been written if Trask and Mitchell had gotten the rights to use "You Light Up My Life," the Debbie Boone hit. Talk about your lucky accidents.
Michell also has the vocal power to take on every genre that Trask tries on for size.
"Wig in a Box" bounces through trouble like a grenade. It's a monument to Trask's gifts that this song deftly mixes hair nightmares with some vague notions of empowerment, without sounding stagy. It works, and you're not sure why. "The Long Grift" earns the hoary adjective "Beatlesque."
The underlying sensibility of "Hedwig" has its roots in glam rock, one of the few genres of the recent past that hasn't been exploited beyond all reason.
Glam was the bridge between disco and punk. With its mix of ambisexuality and otherworldly concerns (the phrase "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" pretty much says it all), glam is still not stuff most rock audiences easily relate to.
Glam makes the football team nervous; the cheerleaders twitchy. Next thing you know there will be eyeliner on the quarterbacks; cleats on the women. Meanwhile, the glittery misfits wink and laugh.
"Velvet Goldmine," director Todd Haynes' glam fantasia, flitted through movie theaters briefly a few months ago, leaving in its wake a killer soundtrack helmed by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Hearing Brian Eno, Cockney Rebel and T. Rex was a reminder of how the best of glam stands up very nicely, all painted and perfumed.
Even if you never see "Hedwig," the cast album is strong enough that any rock fan with guts should check it out.
If you so want to see "Hedwig," Michael Cerveris is presently playing the title role while Mitchell is off writing the screenplay. The show is at the Jane Street Theater (113 Jane St.) in Greenwich Village. Call (212) 239-6200.