Erin Stewart as Yitzhak and Jerrik Hoffer as Hedwig!
Photo by: Christopher Nelson

Before last week, I had only ever seen Hedwig on film. Being one of the movies I love SO dearly, I was both excited and nervous about seeing it on the stage. I mean, I KNEW I'd love the story itself, because it's fantastically written, and it was performed as a stage play to begin with. But still. Would this production live up to my high expectations? Would Hoffer be able to channel Hedwig as well as John Cameron Mitchell? And most importantly, would I be able to sing along to all my favorite songs? 

The answer to (most) of these things is a resounding HELL YES. 

Jerrik Hoffer is AMAZING as Hedwig. By the second song, I was like "JohnCameronWHO?" (kidding JCM! kidding. I still love you!). But no, seriously. You guys. Hoffer rocks the shit out of this role, as does Erin Stewart as Hedwig's long-suffering love, Yitzhak -- and they are ably backed by a band composed of local guys who play their instruments and comedic back-up roles with equal skill. 

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{Searching for Sugar Man opens in Seattle on Friday, 8/24 and is screening at the Landmark Harvard Exit}

I’m in a meeting room at the W and it takes me more than a few minutes to process the fact that I am sitting across from an. actual. legend. A guy who was at one time as big as Elvis and the Stones. A guy who fans say is “better than Bob Dylan”.

A guy who, depending on who you ask, either burned himself to death on stage during his last public appearance, or shot himself in the head. 

But the guy—Rodriguez—is less than 5 feet in front of me, alive and well. And learned in 1998 that virtually all of South Africa thought of him as one of the greatest singer/songwriters ever.

Rodriguez released 2 albums in the 1970s in the U.S. on Sussex Records, both of which flopped miserably, even though everyone making them was sure they were amazing. Whether it was due to poor marketing or just the fact that music listeners in the states didn’t like what they heard, no one knows. And when they flopped, he disappeared from the public eye. 

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“Do you have Some Girls?” I asked the guy at Bop Street, fingers crossed.

“Yup! Got it right up here. Oh look, we even have the uncensored cover.”

And this is how I bought my first vinyl since the 80s.

My boyfriend and I had recently decided that we definitely needed a turntable—me, after many years of hemming and hawing about getting one, him, swayed by the release of Tomahawk’s Eponymous to Anonymous—and what better day to set out to do it than Record Store Day 2012?

But what vinyl would I buy? What would be my first purchase? I thumbed through the bins at Sonic Boom, stopping on The Cure Entreat, a collection of Morrissey records, and gazing fondly at the GIGANTIC Joy Division and Smiths sets I couldn’t possibly afford—when I found it: The Rolling Stones Some Girls. But wait—this was the reissue, and the reissue didn’t have the pull out cover with the band’s faces and the wigs that I remember so fondly from my youth.

As soon as my hands touched the copy from Bop Street, I was back in my parents' house leafing through my dad’s record collection and carefully sliding the cover back and forth, counting how many different face and wig combos I could make, gazing at Marilyn and Lucy and admiring the rainbow colors.

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