For some unknown reason my parents owned the original Broadway cast recording of HAIR on vinyl and as a young impressionable lass I listened to it ad nauseum. I memorized all the lyrics of all the songs (even if I didn't know what the lyrics to "Sodomy" actually meant...)

I also loved the cover with its bright orange and green 'fro heads. I’m not sure I really knew what "the american tribal love rock musical" meant exactly, but I do remember singing "Good Morning Starshine" in elementary school, and everyone sang "Aquarius" from Sonny and Cher to Perry Como!

"Frank Mills" was my favorite song (no relation to "The Music Box Dancer" guy...I think) and I was always a little freaked out by the beginning of "Don't Put It Down"...folding the flag is like putting it to bed for the night...eeks, he still gives me the creeps.

So when the movie version of HAIR came out, with Treat Williams, and Beverly D'Angelo -- and choreography by Twyla Tharp -- I skeptically listened to the soundtrack. It seemed so overproduced and slick compared to what I had been listening to all those years. But over the years I stopped listening to my HAIR record and the movie soundtrack became the standard HAIR fare.

A couple of weeks ago I finally went out and bought the original Broadway cast recording on CD. It also included six previously unreleased tracks -- "I Believe in Love", "Ain't Got No (Reprise)", "Going Down", "Electric Blues", "Manchester England (Reprise)" and "The Bed". Not surprisingly, it seemed rougher, rawer, and more true to the original intent of the show. Diane Keaton and Melba Moore were in the original cast, as were the book and lyric writers Gerome Ragni and James Rado (they're also on the album cover of the Off-Broadway cast recording, pictured above). You don't see that too often, now do you? Can you imagine, COMPANY starring Stephen Sondheim as Bobby? Or Stephen Schwartz as the Wizard in WICKED? How about me in a stew outfit in PLANE CRAZY?

It was great listening to the old version again, especially "Frank Mills", and the CD liner notes includes a great picture of the authors -- long-haired, groovy-looking Gerome Ragni and James Rado, and a short-haired white-shirt-and-tied Canadian, Galt MacDermot. There is also a wonderful synopsis written by cast member Lorrie Davis of what went on onstage at HAIR. Here is just a snippet:

Hud, a pioneer Black hippie type, is carried onstage by two White boys hanging upside down from a pole. Hud sings "Colored Spade," listing the stereotypes people have labeled Blacks -- colored spade, nigra, black nigger, jungle bunny -- while three Black girls "tar" (mud) and feather Claude. While he is being washed clean of mud and feathers, Claude sings "Manchester". Then Hud, Woof and a new tribal member, Dionne, sing a song about have-nots. ("Ain't Got No"). Sheila enters as if on horseback and Hud hands her a poster. After her song, "I Believe in Love", the protest rally begins with Sheila, as leader, asking the cast what they want: Cast: Peace! It became a chant. A trap door in the stage opens and out pops Jeanie who sings "Air" a song about air pollution. At the end of the song, Jeanie climbs out of the manhole to reveal she's pregnant by a crazy speed freak, and is in love with Claude.

Crazy man!

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