If you want to hear the edgy tunes of your youth re-orchestrated to sound like Muzad…buy this album…if you want to feel the thrill from 40 years ago…stick with the original.
Rating: 1 / 5

This CD of the Broadway revival of “Hair” is crisply recorded, energetically sung by an enthusiastic cast and smoothly supported by a first-rate band. So why are the results so utterly abysmal? Well, for starters, “Hair” has to have one of the worst, most amateurish scores ever written. There are perhaps four or five memorable songs, but the rest is made up of scraps of things that rarely last beyond two minutes. Vamps, chanted choruses and pastiche parodies don’t add up to much. And the lyrics are some of the clumsiest concoctions ever heard on Broadway. “Singing…our space songs on a spider web…sitar…life flows around you and in you…answer for Timothy Leary…deary.” Huh? Lyricists James Rado and Gerome Ragni must have been enjoying acid trip #364 when they came up with that lulu. Throw in the knee jerk mockeries of the “Hail Mary” and the Constitution (shorthand at the time for showing you were “with it”) and it becomes clear that these guys aren’t songwriters; they’re hacks.

The cast members try but the problem is, they try too hard. The vocal mugging and gosh-darn earnest euphoria is so over-the-top they sound like they just came off the bus-and-truck tour of “Godspell”. Everyone has a terminal case of the cutes. Even though they’re singing about hashish, LSD, war and various sexual activities, they sound about as threatening and subversive as the Partridge Family. Will Swenson as Berger is the chief offender. His vocal affectations and attention-seeking swagger are relentlessly overbearing in a show-offy way. After a while, I forgot he was supposed to be playing a hippy…I thought he was the reincarnation of Sammy Davis Jr. Brutal. Gavin Creel is less offensive as Claude, but his reedy, wan tenor is a slight instrument that never registers. The only ones who come out unscathed are Sasha Allen, who does just fine with her stirring rendition of “Aquarius”, and Cassie Levy, who brings a simple gracefulness to “Easy to Be Hard” and “Good Morning Starshine”. The energy-soaked “Hair” survives nearly unscathed as a hippy-dippy anthem. Of course, it’s hard to completely botch this song since it’s such a euphoric upper, but Will Swenson’s overkill almost succeeds in doing just that (can someone please make sure his Ritalin is replenished…SOON).

Unfortunately, the few glimmers of hope are surrounded by so much pushy theatricality that listening to this CD becomes an ordeal. Somebody forgot to inform the singers that they don’t need to hit the back row of the balcony on a cast recording. Easy to be hard? For this bunch, it’s apparently “hard to be easy”.
Rating: 2 / 5

This was a show I doubted would ever be revived since it was so specific to a time and attitude. Well, this is not so much a revival as a reconstruction. What had been raw and immediate has been reimagined and turned into the perfect “period” Broadway musical. The edge is gone. It might as well be “No, No, Nanette” or “Me and My Girl.”
Rating: 3 / 5

Maybe it’s because I’ve listened to the original for years and years, or maybe it’s because I’m just a middle aged fart, but this version didn’t quite cut it for me. I agree wholeheartedly with Terry’s American Idiot singing styles comment. But….while the vocals are good, they don’t POP. The vocals for the most part seem rather bland and generic. And the tempos all seem slower and less energetic then the original.

The band and instrumentals also don’t seem as powerful to me. While I certainly don’t expect a carbon copy of the original, I at least expect the new version to have the fire and passion of the original and it just doesn’t. Maybe on stage it does. I saw the original touring company in Chicago in 1970 (I think that was the year) and it was great, and maybe on stage this one is as well.

This is a good revival, but if you want the real thing, treat yourself to the recording of the original.
Rating: 3 / 5

After seeing Hair on Broadway in April, I couldn’t wait for the official recording to come out. Listening to this CD takes me back to that fun, moving, memorable night in the theatre. I love singing along with (most of) these songs!
Rating: 5 / 5