SOUND OFF: IDIOT's Delight

This week, we are taking a listen to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Green Day's rock opera AMERICAN IDIOT. The show was met with appreciative reviews, yet it seems audiences and the Tony committee are slightly less enthusiastic. So is it an American Classic, An Idiotic Delight or a 21st Century Breakdown? Let's see...

Jimmy, Can You Hear Me?

AMERICAN IDIOT - Original Broadway Cast Recording

SCORE: 7/10

While there are uses of both the four-letter and six-letter F pejoratives spewed forth in the first minute of the cast recording, something seems a little awry in the state of America via AMERICAN IDIOT. The show onstage is engaging - if coming off ultimately a bit too rock n roll cool for Broadway - though I suppose, in a way, that is a case of praise when put in context of the caustic content of this show. As hard as the cast tries to affect a certain shall we say f-you-itude and disaffected nonchalance, they are always forcing comparisons with the members of Green Day themselves, led by Billie Joe Armstrong who pulled it off oh-so-effortlessly and engagingly originally back in ‘03. Tom Kitt is owed a great deal of praise on this cast album for opening up the sound of the score for the theatre and his work is subsequently represented well on this stupendously sonorous cast album that has a real raw edge that seems to be sorely lacking in much of the musical material. Sure, the sung-thru show - onstage and on disc - is in-your-face, edgy, discourteous and roughly exhibits everything else it tries so hard to be, yet in the end it lacks the bite of other scores that tackle this same territory of America awry at the start of a new century - For example: THE FIX by John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe, originally staged at the Donmar Warehouse by Sam Mendes and christened the future of the rock musical by the originator of the rock opera format himself, THE WHO lead guitarist Pete Townshend in that show‘s cast album liner notes. AMERICAN IDIOT wants to be TOMMY, but it's a bit ROCKY HORROR.

The cast album forces comparison with the original recording by the band members of Green Day - not so much because they play on some tracks here as much as the original album is itself a self-proclaimed rock opera concept album like TOMMY - not only because of the original, fully-realized concept recording of the rock opera but also because they performed it, in full, in a concert tour following the album's release. How to top that? While this score seems particularly static and ruminative on stage in concert, only truly set alight in the big anthems, Green Day always give quite amazing live shows and this was no exception. How to mimic or re-appropriate that experience for an audience in a Broadway theatre? This score - even more so than many so-called rock opera scores and the rock musical genre as a whole - is dramatically suggestive rather than depictive. Secondly, the characters are unlikable and crude, lacking much wit in way of lyrics, motivation or emotional content. Third, the addition of female voices to the equally testosterone and adrenaline-fueled anthems only works sporadically and, more often than not, poses the threat of literally taking some of the balls out of the quite powerful male rock trio or quarter material. This is not to say the ladies aren't supremely talented and quite wonderful themselves, for they truly are, yet it is impossible to say this many-member cast can reach the level of the far fewer members of Green Day on the original recording of this material. The album does not lack energy and punch, but there is something missing - namely: Green Day themselves. It's a fine cast album for what it is and taken on its own terms, but it fails in most comparisons to the original album by Green Day. Furthermore, it rarely achieved the level of TOMMY which seems to be its prime homage, but the resultant show and cast album bares closer comparison to JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR and more hook-heavy scores than the emotionally eloquent and politically provocative TOMMY. AMERICAN IDIOT tries valiantly, but falls short of its aspirations. They are far from idiots for trying, though. Idiot savants, perhaps at least from a marketing perspective given the crossover appeal of the show and its hit song.

Indeed, one thing that stands tall in the favor of AMERICAN IDIOT - Original Broadway Cast Recording is the fact that it has generated a hit single that is actually being played on music channels, radio stations, music services and countdown shows which is a fabulous feat and great boon to the Broadway community in general. Much praise is deserved for that. So, for that - and "21 Guns" performed by Green Day and the Cast of AMERICAN IDIOT available on iTunes - alone, this show was a worthwhile entry in the theatrical and cast album canon as far as I am concerned. It has been decades since I can recall a song from a cast album making any impression on the greater music or entertainment scene, but thanks to the re-emergence of the film musical in the form of CHICAGO, MOULIN ROUGE, DREAMGIRLS, SWEENEY TODD and others, as well as GLEE which has featured Kristen Chenoweth, Neil Patrick Harris and Jonathan Groff in addition to regular cast members Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Idina Menzel, we have had no drought of Broadway material of late. This is another notch to the tried-and-true Broadway baby's belt. Of course, all of this is noted as means to align with this concept-album-come-concert-come-stage-show curiosity at hand here to help us get a grip on what exactly standard it is to be held to in analyzing it. Is it an opera, meant to have all those expected excesses? Is it a concert, along with the audience interaction and communal energy of a rock show? Furthermore: Is it a Broadway musical, and meant for the audience that Broadway currently caters to, for better and worse, and held to the impossibly high standards of the great scores of the past? If it is not categorically one of those things from the get-go than I have no trouble understanding why it has not caught on nearly as well as it was expected by most insiders that it would, the hit song notwithstanding. So, what is it?

The cast album is a bit of a curiosity of appropriations and misappropriations. What should it be? Does content dictate form? If so, then what? If we are asking those questions than we get many more. Should it sound like a carefully rehearsed cast album? Should it sound like a raw, live concert recording? Should it sound like a recreation of the original album except with members of the Broadway company in place of Billie Jo & Co. singing the songs? It‘s a bit of everything. Perhaps that's why some of it is excellent and some of it is unobserving, if intriguing. Hence, so is the smorgasbord of styles this score and production attempt to balance. One thing is fore sure, the cast album begins with a bang: "American Idiot" is an explosive and bombastic way to start the proceedings and it immediately establishes the fact that this is not your mama's musical in any way. "Jesus of Suburbia" is an entertaining way to introduce the characters and from the very start it becomes clear the score reigns supreme in this show - although, it does not help plot-point-clarity that the performers sound so similar, but perhaps that was intentional given the message of the show of how we are made to be the same. There are many, many elegant touches to balance out the raucous rock flourishes and the occasional cello solo or acapella voice when juxtaposed with the all-out-rock of many of the numbers provides a welcome respite and adds variety to what could have been a significantly more mundane and repetitive-sounding score. Not to say it is wildly accomplished and varied - for it is unquestionably not, even compared to JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR or TOMMY as far as musical styles go - but there is more variety in the orchestration and musical direction than one may at first assume. It's more variable than varied. To be perfectly frank, you'd be better off listening to the Green Day albums containing this material for a lot of these songs, but the ones that one-up the originals are truly tremendous and make this an essential curiosity for serious cast album collectors to consider.

The star of the show and subsequent cast recording is Tony Vincent. Period. He is resplendent and truly gets to the very heart, gut and soul of his songs. I wish he sang more on this cast album. The rest of the cast fails to leave nearly as much of an impression as Vincent does and it is sad that there are so few new rock scores produced for he could be the 21st century Terrance Mann, Colm Wilkinson or Michael Crawford with the right material. Alas, his is merely a featured role with two or three songs containing enough of his presence to make an impression. He is fantastic. Everyone else melds together a bit, and while the show is certainly excellently played by the lively, amped-up band, everything sort of sounds the same with few exceptions. The female voices don't provide the intended sonic, emotional or dramatic respite and every time the otherwise lovely-sounding ladies appear you know you are due dramatic diligence - whether in the form of a ballad or something even less exciting like whiny dirges or arguments. Again, the cast performs well but they fail to make much of an impression and this show is simply a case of the score always standing head-and-shoulders above any other element of the enterprise and dominating seemingly every element of it - much like claims people make about Andrew Lloyd Webber's shows such as JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR as well as some other mega musical rock musicals of an earlier era. The score is not all sublime but there are as many hits as misses and the heights of excitement are scaled near the end.

"Wake Me Up When September Ends" begins the final, truly transcendent and beautiful final portion of the show where AMERICAN IDIOT briefly accomplishes the artistry it seemingly yearns to achieve all the while. It is here the score ascends to the thrilling highs and descends to the devastating, eviscerating lows at the core of the central drama - as well as an eerie and affecting evocation of the astutely observed numbness in between the highs and lows that so informs the characters IDIOT - and also Townshend's titular TOMMY - no personification of that emotional vacuity than the deaf, mute, blind Tommy or his 21st century extension in the form of St. Jimmy in IDIOT. Yes, in this final section the score the show takes off and makes the somewhat blasé offerings of the first two-thirds well worth the work of getting through, as they occasionally are. "Homecoming" is an absolutely spell-binding, truly transporting nearly-ten-minute opus. The cascading crescendos of the piano combined with the crashing cymbals and syncopation of certain sections seems to intentionally invite comparison with TOMMY and it is in this song - and perhaps in this sequence alone - that AMERICAN IDIOT becomes the 21st century answer to that magnificent rock opera. The last section of AMERICAN IDIOT is enthralling, emotionally-charged, evocative and quite affecting entertainment and were the first two-thirds as good it would undoubtedly be the score of the season. Or even the century (so far). And, even as it stands, it's better than any other new score on Broadway by a long shot and certainly has higher highs than any other cast album this season - with the possible exception of last week's SOUND OFF selection, the exclusive first-listen to FELA! But that‘s a much different sort of score and is not original to the stage as this arguably is given its original intentions as a concept-album-come-concert - but given the scant selection of even acceptable scores in recent memory, that is faint praise indeed. This score does stand up against the other rock musical scores and surely satisfies those wishing for a new rock score to relish. Just don't pay attention too closely or over think the message too much, because it may not weather that wear well.

Is AMERICAN IDIOT just too cool for Broadway and not cool enough to be punk-rock? Right off the bat, the score scores major points from me for having successfully crossed over to the national market and introduced Broadway talent to a wider audience - yet, it loses a few, too, for not quite establishing itself strongly enough as a standalone stage piece. Even Pete Townshend wrote a few new songs explicitly for the stage version of TOMMY, revisiting the score nearly thirty years after he composed it and winning a Tony for Best Score for his efforts. Alas, this show was deemed ineligible for the same prize by the Tony committee though it absolutely deserves it. The score is good, occasionally great. All in all, it just feels like a really well-performed concert - and like a concept album where it should be a cast recording. It's punk, which is really the voice of the 90s generation whereas rap/techno is more the voice of the 25-and-under set so to call it completely current and reflecting the general sounds of now (or the last 10 years) would be misleading. It is not HAIR, or even TOMMY, in that way. Furthermore, cnsidering this is actually the 21st century now - whether old Broadway willingly will admit it or not - it seems that the actually-80s-punk-pastiche-but-written-in-the-early-00s-and-labeled-as-"alternative" (whatever that means) aesthetic of Green Day fails to connect on a dramatic level in a theatrical context more often than not. But, damn, at times though, it truly transcends the rest of it and becomes thrilling theatrical lighting in a bottle. It's not a 100% success, more like a 70/100 with an extra few points perhaps thrown in for its strengths amidst dire competition in cast album land this season: Yes, it's exciting; Yes, it has catchy tunes; Yes, it's at times emotionally effective and occasionally even brilliant. Yet, more often than not, it misses its intended targets as intangible or impossible as they may seem.

In the end, it's a "why?" musical - and just past "in" ("wh-in-y" too) by my estimations as a member of Generation (Wh)Y. Certainly there is a lot of melody and many inventive lyrics in this quite rich score and the creators are due due-credit, and, certainly, over the course of 22 songs - most, it should finally be noted, taken from the identically-titled original album by Green Day but also a few from the follow-up 21st CENTURY BREAKDOWN, incidentally most of the stronger songs it seems come from the latter - I am compelled to praise the songwriting talents at the helm and the cast but not the craft of the show. But, the truth of the matter is: the authors performed it better the first time around in at least half of the cases here. Yet, this is what we have. It is quite good for what it is and technically, compared to any number of other cast albums old and new, it is terrific. Be forewarned: it is loud and mixed to be played as such. I wouldn't want it any other way and the volume levels bring up the material a bit when it falls short of the high highs to be imbibed from time to time in Green Day‘s score. I hope their next joint is a bit more theatre-friendly because they have what it takes to write a true theatrical masterpiece. Until the day that happens: Smoke ‘em if you've got ‘em.

 

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