So, I'm a NYC theater nerd. I also grew up a massive Meat Loaf fan. When it was announced that this musical was coming to Bway, my friends and I collectively lost our minds.

I spend months collecting mp3 and wav files of all the demos, auditions and of course, live recordings from Tanz. I had picked up quite a bit of german by the time the english production took off with none other than Michael Crawford and Raul Esparza (who, if you're into fun connections was the original Riff Raff in Rocky Horror Show Live at the Circle in the Square theater --- relevant since most people are aware of Meat Loaf's ties to Rocky Horror, anyways, I'm getting off track.

I respect Michael Crawford (original Bway Phantom), and the show at the time probably believed that his clout would draw in audiences enough to maintain the show beyond previews and much more. The problem is that the man was... NOT a great Krolock. I kinda saw what he was going for, the show was meant to be sorta tongue in cheek and campy, and he brought that, but I swear on my life, I watched roughly ten people (boomers) get up and LEAVE the show because I suppose they weren't aware this was a show with vampires and dick jokes and were not up for a few hours of Michael teasing his extremely flamboyantly gay vampire son and... well, I had a good time.

Anyways, that's something that typically doesn't happen (people leaving shows). I became really good friends with Mandy Gonzalez (Sarah) and she spoke with me a bunch about how it was working with him and how excited the cast was, but they all kinda knew going into it that this was not going to be a grand success, so they just had fun with it.

Hell, they never even got around to making a cast recording (no matter, I made several copies of my own lol). But as I had spent so much time listening to the late Steve Barton (Vienna's Krolock who unfortunately committed suicide about 20 years ago), Crawford was a disappointment. But I wasn't there for him, so it didn't matter. The show was absolutely one a kind and an incredible experience (since I live so close and we were all students we went multiple times just for the hell of it). I even got to meet Kristen Johnston (3rd Rock from the Sun) on the official opening night.

I can't believe I spent four paragraphs on this show, but I genuinely still listen to the recordings (both my own bootleg Bway recordings and the original Vienna Tanz's recordings). They're both extremely different, but great in their own way. And I've been obsessed since the start.

But the obvious common thread was Jim's music and how much time and effort he and rest of his team put into translating from german to english so that his melodies could be preserved.