Blues Brothers vs. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Blues Brothers and Hedwig

Comparison of Music: Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Blues Brothers

Hedwig and the Angry Inch was designed in part, according to Billboard (Paoletta, 2001), to help rock fans overcome a certain kind of paranoia of attending a "movie musical." "Hedwig is a serious rock musical blending glamour and punk in a style reminiscent of David Bowie," Paoletta writes. Serious? That's up for debate. But the score, by Stephen Trask, goes the route from country, to sassy David Bowie imitations, to grunge, to punk, and back to country. The film is taken from an off-Broadway show, a show which gave birth to a CD in 1999. This album from the film version is riotously louder, featuring songs like "Sugar Daddy," "The Origin of Love," among others.

To compare the Hedwig CD to the Blues Brothers soundtrack would be like comparing the screech of tires from a car going a hundred miles per hour on hot asphalt in North Texas in July (Hedwig) to a lullaby being sung to a baby in a hammock on a lovely quiet island in May. The terrific R&B tunes from the Blues Brothers, the soul and blues numbers, offer a rich sense of Americana in the fifties and sixties, while Hedwig is the nightmare that came to visit when bible-belt mom and dad find out junior is gay.

The music aside, Hedwig is not a musical so much as it is a pilgrimage into gender confusion, vulgarity, and a plethora of piercing sounds and pierced faces. Wildly erotic, yes, and emotionally tear-jerking on occasion, the "world tour" that takes Hedwig and her troupe to myriad venues, shocks with lines like "my penis used to be where my vagina never was." And, "My first day as a woman and it's already that time of month."

This is sexual theater, with music, where one must have an open mind or already be part of the scene. Millions of youthful fans loved it, and bought into the weirdness.

As for the Blues Brothers album, this a terrifically classic popular blues score; this is a wonderful throwback of "old school" sounds from the fifties, sixties, seventies. And the appearances by the likes of the late legendary Ray Charles, James Brown (without the "Famous Flames"), John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, and Cab Calloway, adds a class to the craziness and reckless folly the boys, including the late John Belushi are on.

Though Hedwig's genre certainly stays true to that particular cult of musical shrillness and messiness, it just seems quite forced and absolutely confused about its own identity. Hedwig appears to be an instance where a movie is wrapped around music - whereas the Blues Brothers music actually wraps music around the scenes and characters. The Blues Brothers soundtrack makes the movie come alive, become more complete, more believable, notwithstanding the outrageous car chases and stunts.

Boom, Boom, Boom" by John Lee Hooker is entirely appropriate during the scene at an outdoor street scene in front of a discount music score. And Aretha Franklin singing "Freedom" in the Soul Food Cafe is lovely, as a big city restaurant becomes a Broadway show tune extravaganza. James Brown in the church is fabulous, and the dancing of the congregation is a stunning and perfectly produced parody.