Stephen Trask
Hedwig And The Angry Inch (Soundtrack)

For years I lived with the belief that no musical would ever give me intense emotions like the "Rocky Horror Picture Show," the absolute masterpiece of the genre. There was no "Velvet Goldmine" or "Interstella 5555" (albeit beautiful) that could make me suspect otherwise.

Then one day while downloading an album by Jobriath, a glam icon who disappeared in 1983, I stumbled upon a comment by an American user who claimed that the album was one of the main inspirations for "Hedwig And The Angry Inch". Intrigued, I did some research and discovered it was a musical, released on Broadway in 1998 and in a film version in 2001.

The direction is by John Cameron Mitchell, who also plays the protagonist, and the music is by Stephen Trask. It tells the story of a penniless transsexual singer from East Berlin (Hedwig) and the adventures that led him, along with his glam-punk-rock band, to play around the States concurrently with the tour of a Pop-Rock idol of the moment (Tommy Gnosis) who has stolen his songs. The angry inch in the title refers to what remains of Hedwig's penis after the operation, as he himself recounts in "Angry Inch"...

"The hole closed up and the wound healed And I was left with a one inch mound of flesh Where my penis used to be Where my vagina never was A one inch mound of flesh With a scar running down it Like a sideways grimace On an eyeless face It was just a little bulge It was an angry inch".

It’s a moving, exciting, original film, extraordinarily acted... among the most beautiful of the last 10 years. The soundtrack consists of songs sung by Hedwig or by Tommy Gnosis. The voice of Stephen Trask (assuming it is him singing??) is among the most unique I have ever heard... androgynous, warm, almost a mix between D. Bowie and B. Molko, and the lyrics are intense and exciting, sometimes ironic, but always moving. In this sense, "The Origin Of Love" deserves a special mention, the best track on the soundtrack, a pang in the heart from the first to the last second...

"You had a way so familiar, But I could not recognize, Cause you had blood on your face; I had blood in my eyes. But I could swear by your expression That the pain down in your soul Was the same as the one down in mine. That's the pain, Cuts a straight line