Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider sings a new (show) tune in ‘Broadway’

It seems a career path has emerged for rockers looking to transition gracefully into musical maturity once the amplifiers have stopped buzzing in their ears.

With Rod Stewart and and even Iggy Pop having lent their voice to the exploration of pop standards in recent years -- Stewart seems particularly enamored with the transition, given his seemingly endless “Great American Songbook” series -- why wouldn’t a one-time shock-rocker like Dee Snider follow suit?

Released Tuesday, “Dee Does Broadway” finds the one-time frontman for Twisted Sister leaping into the Great White Way’s songbook with both feet, albeit with his taste for metal intact with arrangements that recall theater-ready rock operas.

Apart from the red-herring opening of Snider’s take on “The Threepenny Opera’s” “Mack the Knife,” which features a swing reminiscent of Bobby Darin (shown in a pretty funny YouTube clip here), the songs come with a crunch of electric guitars that the Associated Press described as “think Angela Lansbury meets Alice Cooper.”

And he has help. Patti LuPone turns up on a bombastic “Tonight/Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” and Clay Aiken trades verses on a demented “Luck Be a Lady” from “Guys and Dolls.” Fellow MTV alum Cyndi Lauper also is on hand to gamely team with Snider on a deliriously over-the-top “Hey, Big Spender” (from “Sweet Charity”) backed by a mix of horns and chugging guitars.

It’s not the sort of thing that will please purists, but for a guy who memorably testified about offensive recordings before Tipper Gore’s Parental Music Resource Center in the ‘80s, that seems about par for the course.

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