It was nice to see Tracy Chapman return to the spotlight last year, and many pointed out how out-of-step with the times she had seemed when she arrived on the scene around 1989. But before there was Tracy, there was another out-of-step, retro singer/songwriter lady who made a mark during the electronic, big hair decade – Suzanne Vega. And today we’ll look at one of her best tracks, and for many of us here in North America the first one we heard by her – 1986‘s “Left of Center”. The single came out this day that year.
Or maybe didn’t. The exact day of release seems in dispute; mysterious – a little like Suzanne herself and certainly like the character described in the song , “in the outskirts, on the fringes, in the corner…”.
It was made for the Pretty In Pink soundtrack, one of John Hughes best films and his best soundtrack. We’ve noted before that Hughes felt the music was almost as important as the script in setting the mood for his 1980s movies and he leaned towards the new music young people (whom he usually was writing about) would gravitate to. Pretty in Pink was no exception; in fact the whole idea for the film came to him from a Psychedelic Furs song. He got the Furs to re-record the theme song for him, and added in a great assortment of mostly British new wave, via Echo & the Bunnymen, The Smiths, OMD and New Order, to name a few. But as Udiscover Music put it, “someone needed to speak musically for the outsiders in the John Hughes film.” The outsider would be Andie, the gal played by Molly Ringwald who was the central character. From the wrong side of the tracks, literally, Andie liked the outsiders in her school and local record store, didn’t have money and dressed in her own unique style. As Vega would sing “I think they think I must be out of touch.”
It could have described Vega herself. In the age of synthesizers and hair gel, she wrote and sang simple, personal songs, accompanied by her guitar and some acoustic instruments, much like people like Joni Mitchell had done almost two decades earlier. “I tend to write from a very individual point of view,” she says, “that’s most human, so that in that I often affect other people.” As Britain’s The Guardian put it, she made “negligible recognition of the past ten years of pop music.”
The song was written by Vega with help from her producer Steve Addabbo. At the time, the 26 year-old had one album out, which had done alright in Europe and a few other places (it was a top 10 in New Zealand and landed a top 30 hit in the UK and Ireland with “Marlene on the Wall”) but was ignored in her native U.S. This song would begin to change that, and she made a major impact the following year with her Solitude Standing album and it’s hits, “Luka” and ”Tom’s Diner.”
The soundtrack has sparse details about who was on the song with Suzanne but we do know that wonderful, tinkling piano was courtesy her A&M Records label mate, Joe Jackson.
“Left of Center” didn’t actually chart on the regular singles chart in the U.S., but did get her airplay and noticed. It did best in Ireland, where it reached #28 and it was a top 40 in Britain and Australia too.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we wrap it up with one more soundtrack, this one picked by me at A Sound Day:
Again, I want to thank our seven guests you did great…as they always do! Seven different films with seven fine soundtracks that spanned a lot of musical territory.
I had many in my mind when thinking of the topic, ranging from early musicals like The Sound of Music where the soundtrack was half the movie, to the big-sellers of the following decade. Saturday Night Fever in particular stood out, both because it was the first one where the music was incidental rather than the focus of the movie that went on to sell into the eight-digit numbers. Plus, while I don’t by any means hate disco (unlike many) it isn’t my #1 choice of styles but SNF really did disco right thanks to the Brothers Gibb. I figure it was disco’s finest hour all in all. But even with that, I’ll move along one more decade for my pick. Into the ’80s and … isn’t she Pretty In Pink ?
The 1986 John Hughes movie was just about the ultimate in ’80s teen romcoms, a genre that seemed very in vogue then and that disappeared seemingly as quickly. It vaulted Molly Ringwald, who was already quite popular and the object of many a high school lad’s fantasies, into near super-stardom. She was the “it” girl for a brief moment, thanks largely to the shy-ish, poor but stylish high schooler she played, Andie. Of course, a love triangle develops between her nerdy pal Duckie, the handsome, rich boy Blaine and her, just in time for prom! Oh the tension! Not unimportantly (for this discussion) Andie’s best gal pal, the older Iona, runs a cool indie record shop that she sometimes hangs out at. A pretty good way to put some cool tunes into the movie and let us know that Andie, despite her love for pink dresses, had some pretty cool musical tastes for the times. As many high schoolers did at a time when their parents were perhaps grooving to Kenny G or the suddenly softer-edged Heart.
Hughes had already tasted a fair bit of success as a movie-maker in the decade, putting forward such hits as Vacation, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club (the latter two which both also starred Ringwald.) The latter two had seen him adopt the usage of cool, modern and often unknown music in the soundtrack (The Breakfast Club of course spun off the mega-hit “Don’t You Forget About Me”) but he really took it to another level this time around. One can debate which of his teenie flicks is the best, but it’s hard to argue that the music on any was better than Pretty in Pink. There was nary a throwaway on it and it helped bring two or three previously under-rated and largely unnoticed (in North America) bands to the forefront – the Psychedelic Furs, Echo & the Bunnymen and OMD.
The whole movie came about because Hughes himself was a fan of the Psychedelic Furs. He loved the song “Pretty in Pink” they had put out in 1981. However, as the band’s Richard Butler explained, John didn’t quite “get” the song. The Furs wrote it as a song about a confused and rather , ahem “easy” girl. “Pretty in pink” meant, in the context of the song, she looked good nude. John Hughes however thought it was meaning a girlie-girl who was obsessed by pink clothes and décor and took the film that direction. Either way, it worked out fine with the movie being a hit and the Furs doing well on the British and American charts with the newer version they recorded for the movie.
Other than that, nine other tunes were included, ones which would have no doubt met with the uber-cool Iona’s approval. Many were created specifically for the film, including Orchestral Manoeuvres “If You Leave” which, hitting the top 5 in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand became their biggest hit. Echo & the Bunnymen contributed “Bring on the Dancing Horses”, a song they’d slid onto a greatest hits the year before with almost no attention being paid to it until this soundtrack. New Order, the royalty of dance-new wave at the time put out a new song for John, “Shell Shock” but just to change the mood a bit, up-and-coming New York folkie Suzanne Vega contributed the lovely, slightly haunting “Left of Center” with Joe Jackson tinkling along on the piano. And let’s not forget, INXS and The Smiths were on there too, as was former Three Dog Night singer Danny Hutton who re-emerged to cover Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good”. Nik’s version had been a top 10 hit in Britain, Australia and Canada not long before and I always wondered why the film-makers didn’t use his version, but whatever the cause, Hutton did a fine job on it.
I was a little out of high school by the time the movie came along, but I probably would have related to Duckie in the film, the nerdy guy who had a crush on the school’s “it girl” … as did as every jock and rich guy there! But as it turns out, I didn’t see the movie until well into the ’90s, when I likely rented it. The soundtrack however, was a different deal. I bought that right away and played it endlessly. So did quite a few others, it would seem. It hit #5 in both the U.S. and Australia, and finished in the year-end top 50. In Canada, it went platinum in three months.
Hughes wasn’t the only movie-maker to understand what a good soundtrack would do to a film back then, of course. Ahead of Pretty in Pink in American year-end sales were the soundtracks to Top Gun and the Miami Vice TV show. Not often a film captures the zeitgest of the times, but Pretty In Pink seemed to…and at a time when I guess I was living the zeitgest of the times too!
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we get to hear from Max from Power Pop blog. We know Max loves his power pop music and British Invasion acts, plus older TV shows and films… will that influence his choice of movie and soundtrack?
This is not my favorite soundtrack by any measure, but I think it was an important one. In 2014 my son Bailey wanted me to go see the new Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy. I must admit I did enjoy Ironman and a few others. Do I consider them masterpieces? Uh no, I don’t but they can be enjoyable. So far it sounds like I’m apologizing for seeing the movie and in the Citizen Kane part of my brain, I am.
I didn’t really want to go…I didn’t think this one would be good at all. I was so wrong in this case. I’ve always liked Chris Pratt but other than that it didn’t look good. It has a very lighthearted feel throughout the movie and the music sends it over the top. Song after song was good and then better. They did a good job in this movie of selecting the songs.
Why is this movie soundtrack important? So many kids were exposed to some wonderful ’70s music in this movie and soundtrack, and it sold very well. The Director James Gunn wrote scenes with these songs in mind. The executives were horrified that a bunch of seventies songs would alienate kids…they wanted newer songs. Gunn got his way, and it was the right choice. The soundtrack blew up and got a lot of airplay and streams.
It peaked at #1 in the Billboard 200, #1 on the Billboard Soundtrack albums, #2 in the UK Soundtracks Album Chart, #1 in the Canadian Album Charts, #7 in the New Zealand Album Charts, and around the world it did very well.
We are talking about songs over 40 years old at that point. To hear them being received by teens so enthusiastically was special. Could you imagine a soundtrack being released in 1974 with 1930’s songs being so embraced by the youth culture?
I kept hearing Redbone and The Raspberries blast from Bailey’s room shortly after and then he asked me about The Raspberries.
At the time he was 14 years old so that was music to my ears. I will admit that most of the songs we have heard a lot but think about how many teens learned about these singles. The other Guardians movies also have new batches of seventies songs also. From The Raspberries he wanted to know more bands like them and I showed him Big Star and Badfinger.
I asked him last night what made him latch on to these songs? He said that the music that he was hearing that was popular sounded like a commercial, but this sounded heartfelt.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we go to the Peachtree State to welcome John from The Sound of One Hand Typing. There he dishes up a tasty mix of music and general thoughts on life’s meanings and moments…including perhaps movies to see.
The first movie I can remember wanting to see was The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, which starred The Beatles, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, John Junkin, and a host of other British actors and actresses. I was eight and a huge Beatles fan already, and pestered my mother to see it. She said “one day after school, Johnny, I’ll take you.” Needless to say, I never got to see it then.
I would have seen it then, except Mom came home from school and announced that she had to go to some sort of assembly that evening, and since she couldn’t get a sitter, we would have to go with her. I watched as much as I could before I was ordered to turn off the TV and come on. After said assembly, she was angry at me for acting like I didn’t want to be there. I thought to myself, it wasn’t an act, I didn’t want to be there.
It was several years later that the planets aligned and I finally saw the movie. And, naturally, I loved it. (It was probably better that I saw it at home: a friend of mine went to see it at the theater, and said he couldn’t hear half of it for all the screaming girls.)
The logline for the movie is “Over two ‘typical’ days in the life of The Beatles, the boys struggle to keep themselves and Sir Paul McCartney’s mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance.” In the interest of brevity, I won’t go into many details, except to say that the Fab Four are forced to “adult” when they really want to “kid.” One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when they escape from the TV studio to go play in a field, to the tune of “Can’t Buy Me Love.”
Another favorite scene is where George gets lost in the studio and ends up in a marketing office, where he is asked for his honest opinion and he makes the mistake of giving it.
When all is said and done, The Beatles put on their TV appearance, they’ve made sure Paul’s grandfather can’t get away, and they all live happily ever after.
I can’t do the movie justice in a brief blog post. It’s available to stream on YouTube and Amazon, and I recommend it highly.
The music is, of course, the real star. All of the music scenes were extracted and summarized in this video.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we welcome Keith from The Nostalgic Italian. He worked for radio stations for years, so he’s probably had more than a little experience in hearing soundtracks to choose from:
Once again, Dave Ruch from A Sound Day has offered up a gem of a topic for his monthly Turntable Talk feature! This month it is a topic that I have been hoping he’d get around to. Per his instructions:
“This time around, let’s look for THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES ! Pick a great movie soundtrack and talk a bit about it. It can be from a great movie or a dog of one (or anything in between), one made specifically for the film or one assembled from existing tunes as long as it’s one that works for you!“
There are certainly many fantastic soundtracks to choose from. Movies that are known for being a great film and also their great soundtracks include American Graffiti, Smokey & the Bandit, The Wedding Singer, The Sting, and Forrest Gump. Those aren’t even considered “musicals!” When I think about musicals, wow, that list is a long one.
Plenty of movie (and TV) soundtracks can be found in my collection. When I worked in radio, I would often buy soundtracks so I could uses some instrumental tracks as voiceover beds (music that plays underneath your voice as you are doing a bit or talking to a listener). I used a variety of cuts from Napoleon Dynamite, Stripes, The Three Amigos, Dragnet, and movies that were box office bombs! My pick comes from a movie that was far from a bomb. It was one of the biggest films of the 1980’s.
The one soundtrack that has always been a favorite for me (and it doesn’t even contain all the songs featured in the film) is The Blues Brothers. It has some fantastic cuts from John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as well as musical legends like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Cab Calloway.I had this soundtrack on vinyl and I played the heck out of it. Many of the songs were featured on my “driving mix tapes” when I had my first car! While the album contains 11 great tracks, the film included many other classics that I wound up searching for to add to my collection. The music doesn’t follow their chronological appearance in the film for some reason.
She Caught the Katy
The album opens with this Taj Mahal song. The Blues Brothers version has a lot more sound to it. It is so much fuller with the horns and guitars of the band. It is the song that the starring credits roll under. The opening guitar lick leads to the first big horn stab (and we see Belushi) then you have another horn stab (and we see Aykroyd) and the third big horn stab hits as we see the movie’s title card.
Belushi’s vocal on this is perfect. I like his vocal on this cut more than any other song on the album.
Peter Gunn Theme
This is the first of two TV themes on the album. This instrumental plays as the Blues Brothers are driving back to Elwood’s place. There are some really great shots of the city of Chicago in this scene. As you listen to this one, you can hear the talents of Tom “Bones” Malone, “Blue” Lou Marini, and “Mr. Fabulous” Alan Rubin. If I had a dollar for every time I used this as background music to introduce a wedding party I could fly to Italy!
Gimme Some Lovin’
Best known for being a hit for the Spencer Davis Group (and a young Steve Winwood), the soundtrack features the full song. In the film, the band begins to play this song at Bob’s Country Bunker (a country bar) and the owner shuts the lights off on them. If I had to choose between the two, I’d pick the Spencer Davis version over this one, but it is still a great jam.
Shake a Tail Feather
Originally done by the Five Du-Tones of Chicago in 1963, James and Bobby Purify had a bigger hit with it in 1967. This version tops them because of one man – the great Ray Charles. In the film, he owns a music shop and the band is buying new instruments. Ray is asked about a keyboard and Murphy Dunn tells him that the “action” of the keys is not that great. Ray sits down and says, “I don’t see anything wrong with the action on this piano” and launches into this song.
As Ray plays, a crowd gathers outside the store and dances along with the song doing all the dances mentioned in it (the monkey, the jerk, the boogaloo, etc…). This song is fantastic.
Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
The song was written by Solomon Burke and recorded by him in 1964. Wilson Pickett’s 1966 cover is probably the best known version. This song is featured at the Blues Brothers’ big concert toward the end of the film. Over the intro, Elwood (Aykroyd) speaks to the audience and thanks “the members of Illinois law enforcement” who are present and waiting to arrest them. We get to hear a big more of Aykroyd on this track.
The Old Landmark
When you mention the Blues Brothers to someone, they will often quote “We’re on a mission from God.” This song is performed by the Godfather of Soul, James Brown who plays a preacher. Jake and Elwood are attending this church service and it is a pivotal moment in the film (and what sets them off on their “mission from God.” )
The Old Landmark is a gospel song written by Dr. William Herbert Brewster Sr. back in 1949. It has been recorded by the Staple Singers, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and many others. James Brown takes this to a whole new level. It’s hard to imagine anyone performing this. He performed/recorded this one live on set.
Think
The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, performs this one as she is telling off her husband Matt “Guitar” Murphy. The song was a hit for Aretha in 1968. For the film, they bump up the tempo and add some dancers. This track is SO good! ”Blue” Lou Marini grabs his sax midway through the number and really jams through the end.
This was one of the harder songs to do in the film. Aretha had recorded the song and found it difficult to lip synch to her vocals as they filmed. It was a scene that needed many takes to do. This version is far superior to her original version.
Theme From Rawhide
The second TV theme on the album takes place in that country bar. After the lights go out they band has to figure out something that the audience will like. They wind up performing this one. Aykroyd’s vocal is just awesome here not to mention the “call and answer” between him and Belushi. Add in a whip and you have a real country hit on your hands!
This scene always makes me laugh because they perform on a stage surrounded by chicken wire. Why? Because the crowd gets so excited they throw beer bottles at them!
Minnie The Moocher
This was a song that Cab Calloway had been singing for decades! He was the “Hi-De-Ho Man.” I just love this version of the song. The rumor is that Cab wanted to do the disco version of the song that he had recorded in the past. They insisted that it needed to be the jazz/big band sound.
The song itself send you right back to the 1940’s. The full sound of the band, the horn section, and the amazing trumpet solos by Alan Rubin. Without a visual, it is still fantastic. Watching it in the film only enhances the experience.
They band is on stage waiting for Jake and Elwood to arrive. The crowd is getting antsy. The band is dressed in street clothes and look sort of shabby. Cab asks if they know the song and the band says they do. He yells, “Hit it!” and the curtain opens. Out struts Cab in a white tuxedo backed by the band, wearing black tuxes and looking sharp. The stage now has an backdrop of famous 40’s places with neon signs and a sweet looking band stand.
As a trumpet player, I can’t NOT mention the spectacular trumpet playing of Alan Rubin on this one!Cab was a scat singer and his call and answer with the audience is just priceless. I’m not sure how old he was here, but his vocals are right on! He was a legend!
Sweet Home Chicago
This is the longest track on the soundtrack. The original version was done by Robert Johnson in 1936. This is the second song the band plays at their big concert (and the one where they make their escape, hence the long instrumental ending). As they intro it, they dedicate it to the late, great Magic Sam (who was from Chicago) who recorded it in 1967.
This is such a fun song to listen to and to watch in the film. The looks that they give John Candy’s character and the other folks who have been chasing them always make me smile. The song serves as the background music as we transition from night to day and the ultimate finale of the movie.
Jailhouse Rock
Movie Spoiler: The entire Blues Brothers Band gets arrested at the end of the movie. Naturally, the final song of the movie is “Jailhouse Rock”, originally done by Elvis Presley. Trivia: In the film, the first “prisoner” to jump up on the tables and dance is Joe Walsh!
On the soundtrack, the song is a bit different than in the film. You have a complete cut on the album, while in the movie each band member has a little solo as their name appears in the credits. In the film version you also get a line or two sung by James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and more. It’s a perfect capstone to wrap the soundtrack.
I have played the songs on this album over and over again on vinyl, cassette, on my iPod, and YouTube. It remains one of my favorite soundtracks of all time! What disappoints me is the many songs that were featured in the film that didn’t make the soundtrack. They are worth finding and checking out!
Of course, I can’t tease those without listing them, so here goes:
Somebody Loan Me a Dime – Fenton Robinson (Plays while Jake is escorted from his prison cell)
Shake Your Moneymaker – Elmore James (Plays while Jake and Elwood visit with Curtis at the orphanage)
Soothe Me/Hold On, I’m Comin’ – Sam and Dave (Plays on the 8 track in the Bluesmobile while Jake and Elwood are driving and get pulled over)
I Can’t Turn You Loose – The Blues Brothers – Originally done by Otis Redding (Plays while they drive through the mall and as they take the stage at the Palace Hotel Ballroom concert)
Let the Good Times Roll – Louis Jordan (Plays on the record player in Elwood’s place)
Anema e core (Until) – Ezio Pinza (The piece is playing the apartment that Tom Malone and Lou Marini used to stay – the “Are you the police?” scene)
Quando, Quando, Quando – Murph and the Magictones (Plays in the Holiday Inn scene)
Just the Way You Are – Muzak version of the Billy Joel song. (Plays in the Holiday Inn scene)
Die Romantiker (The waltz that plays at the Chez Paul restaurant)
Boom Boom – John Lee Hooker (Plays as the Blues Brothers are going to meet Matt “Guitar” Murphy)
Mama Lawdy/Boogie Chillen – John Lee Hooker (Plays when Jake calls Maury Sline and on the way to Bob’s Country Bunker)
Your Cheatin’ Heart – Kitty Wells (Plays as the Blues Brothers enter Bob’s Country Bunker)
Stand By Your Man – The Blues Brothers (Plays at Bob’s Country Bunker)
I’m Walkin’ – Fat’s Domino (Plays as Jake and Elwood and the orphans promote the concert)
Ride of the Valkyries – Richard Wagner (Plays as the Nazis are chasing the Blues Brothers toward the end of the movie)
The Girl from Impanema – Muzak version (Plays, naturally, in an elevator as the Blues Brothers go up the 11th floor with the tax money)
The Blues Brothers may or may not have been the first movie of “mine” that I made my wife watch with me. I’m sure that she made me watch one of her tear jerking chick flicks to get back at me afterward. To me, this movie remains a classic. As far as the sequel – not so much. It did have a decent soundtrack, but that is about it.
I have been wanting to write about this album for a long time and am glad that Dave finally gave me a reason to indulge myself with this blog. I am also excited to see what the rest of the bloggers have chosen for their soundtrack.
I’m already looking forward to next month’s topic! Thanks for reading!
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we cross the sea for Paul from Once Upon A Time In The ’70s. Will that website’s name give us a clue as to his pick? Let’s find out:
First off, props to Dave for serving up another delicious Turntable Talk for us all to get our teeth into, who doesn’t love a great movie soundtrack?
As a pre-teen growing up in the 60s, I remember our house being filled with soundtrack music, my Mum had them all – ‘West Side Story’, ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘Dr Zhivago’, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, ‘The King and I’the list goes on.
Back then I had no idea who Leonard Bernstein was or how prolific Rodgers & Hammerstein were and in truth I could have cared less. I had no time for singing nuns or sweeping orchestration, I wanted to listen to The Beatles or the Stones and the stuff in the Top 30.In short, as far as I was concerned, soundtrack albums were to be avoided at all costs, that was until Leslie Low came along.
Leslie, or Les as we called him, lived across the street from us, he must have been 4-5 years older than me, and he was obsessed with motorbikes. We watched as he graduated from mopeds to scooters to small motorbikes and then to his pride and joy, a chopper.
My pals and I would gather round whilst he tinkered with his latest hog explaining the difference in the size and output (cc’s) of the various engines and entertaining us with stories about the notorious Blue Angels, Glasgow’s version of the Californian Hells Angels motorcycle gang.
Like I said, Les only had one passion in life, he wasn’t interested in sports or music and as far as I knew he only owned one album…. see if you can guess?
Yup, you got it in one – the soundtrack to ‘Easy Rider’
So, when Les asked me if I’d heard this motorbike movie soundtrack he must have sensed my apathy (in truth he lost me at soundtrack), nonetheless it didn’t stop him waxing lyrical – “this is the best soundtrack to the best movie ever made since Brando’s The Wild One”, then off he went to his house and came out album in hand… “listen to this”.
I’d never heard Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’, any version of ‘The Weight’ or Hendrix’s ‘If 6 were 9’ before, but I was sold…. this was my kind of soundtrack, and it got better. When I told Les how great it was and offered him his album back, he said “nah, keep it, I don’t have a record player anyway”
Anyhoo, as good as it is, ‘Easy Rider’ is not my soundtrack of choice for this month’s Turntable Talk. That distinction goes to a movie that could be served up for Thanksgiving with all the trimmings. It may well have been one of the biggest turkeys of the 70s, but it still managed to produce one of the decades’ finest soundtracks. No mean feat when you’re up against – ‘Shaft’, ‘Superfly’ the imperious ‘Last Waltz’ and the record breaking ‘Saturday Night Fever’.
So, let’s get the movie out the way first then….
You’ve probably never seen the movie ‘FM’, if not, don’t worry few have. I saw it years ago on glorious VHS, inspired by the soundtrack and the casting of Cleavon Little, fresh from his rip-roaring performance in ‘Blazing Saddles’.
I would describe the plot in detail if there was one, but basically, it’s about an FM radio station where the evil execs conspire to sell more advertising space at the expense of airtime. This doesn’t go down well with the egotistical DJs who are ‘just in it for the music, man’ so they rebel, take over the radio station, chaos ensues…. the end! If you’re looking for a film with a conscious, it’s no ’12 Years a Slave’.
It’s not all bad though, as well as the excellent background music there’s a live sequence showcasing Linda Ronstadt at her peak with Waddy Wachtel on guitar, belting out a great version of “Tumbling Dice”
On its release the film was universally panned by critics with Rolling Stone, a publication that the movie makers hoped would be suitably sympathetic, particularly damning : “I feel sorry for the parents who will disown them. I feel sorry for the children who will be beaten on their way home from school for years to come. I feel sorry for everyone who ever touched anything connected to FM, because their fingers are going to turn green and fall off”, Charles Young wrote for them.
Now that I’ve given it the big build up here’s the trailer to the movie
So now onto the interesting bit…. the soundtrack to FM.
I first spotted the soundtrack on its release in the spring of 1978, I’d never heard of the movie but after the success of Saturday Night Fever and Grease , the soundtrack sections of most record shops were thriving.
The first thing that grabbed my attention about FM, the soundtrack was that it included a new track by Steely Dan and to be honest after playing Aja to death for the previous 6 months I’d have paid the purchase price for that track alone.
However, there was more, the album provided an abracadabra that only the best compilations offer, where even though you have most of the tracks anyway, you’re hooked, because to have all these favourite songs in one place somehow makes it unique. The original vinyl version was a double album which was de riguer at the time, and the artist roster represented the cream of American rock with Queen and Foreigner present as the token limeys.
The album included lots of big-hitters, but the poster boys were undoubtedly The Eagles and Steely Dan, both riding high following the release of their respective masterpieces – Hotel California and Aja.
Impressively, 46 years after the release of FM both bands are currently belting out songs from both these great albums as they currently tour together. FM’s curator cherry-picked prime cuts from Tom Petty, Steve Miller, Boz Scaggs, Linda Ronstadt, Billy Joel, Doobie Brothers, Boston, Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor, a case of all killer, no filler, although the Dan Fogelberg track could fall into the latter.
Hugely successful, the album went platinum, was top five in the US and Canada and even won a Grammy for Steely Dan’s engineer Roger ‘The Immortal’ Nichols, although the most prominent music exec on the project was the uber-influential Irving Azoff, who at the time just happened to manage the Eagles, Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs, Dan Fogelberg and Jimmy Buffet.
The story goes that there was lots of tension and creative differences behind the scenes with Azoff as one of the movies producers concerned that it was becoming a different type of movie to the one he’d envisioned and bought into.
Azoff was no fool and after seeing a rough cut of the movie shortly before its release he asked for his name to be removed from the film’s credits and distanced himself from the project.
He knew he would make his money from the platinum selling soundtrack.
So, there you have it, a movie so bad that it rated a measly 20% on Rotten Tomatoes with only 10 reviews, yet still managed to produce one of the best soundtrack albums of all time, go figure.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we turn north to Deke from Deke’s Vinyl Reviews & More. We know two things about Deke that are certain – one, he’s proudly Canadian and two, he likes his music to have a bit of crunch and energy! Does that apply to his movie choices too?
I was never big into soundtracks but when Dave brought up this topic, I had to think about how many soundtracks I had owned in my life.
Two came to mind. One being Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey . Today’s focus though is theLess Than Zero soundtrack which was a first for me musically on a few counts.
I saw the movie in the theaters at the time and I could hear snippets of certain rock tracks in it, of which many made this soundtrack. One omission I believe ,and I’m going on my memory here, is that The Cult’s “Lil Devil” was used in the screen version but wasn’t on the soundtrack for some weird reason.
Being a metalhead, I bought this soundtrack on cassette tape as it featured Aerosmith, Poison and Joan Jett doing songs that weren’t on their albums, just on this soundtrack. So they roped me in that way. Slayer doing a cover of “In A Gadda Da Vida” is brilliant. I have never been into Slayer at all but this three and a half minute version kicks serious ass.
Poison covers KISS’ “Rock And Roll All Nite” basically to a T ,which is fine as back in ’87 KISS wasn’t doing much business so I’m sure Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley enjoyed a few dollars being dropped into their pockets thanks to Poison.
Thanks to this soundtrack, as it was my first exposure to the beats, vibes and sounds of L.L Cool J. and Public Enemy. Up until this soundtrack all I knew was Run D.M.C and The Beastie Boys. So my mind was opened to this style of music that fit on this album along with Roy Orbison and The Bangles who scored a Top 10 hit with “Hazy Shade of Winter” and pushed Less Than Zero to Gold.
Producer Rick Rubin had a big hand in putting this soundtrack together and the sequencing even works mixing up all the artists basically as one big mix tape.
I know Apple Music here in Canada does not have it on the streams but you can find it on good ol’ YouTube and get a great shot of the boogie woogie flu amongst all these various artists!
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
Today we start with Randy from Mostly Music Covers. Living in Canada, we wonder if he’ll still look to Hollywood, or pick something from a film close to home.
First, I would like to give the proverbial movie salute of “two thumbs up” to Dave at A Sound Day for creating and maintaining the Turntable Talk series. It’s one of the highlights of my own writing as well as the reading of the other contributions.
My favorite movies are The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, of course based on what was originally just one book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Not surprisingly these are also my favorite books, ever since I read them for the first time as a teenager, all 481,103 words. The three films were separated much along the way the book was divided and published as The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The Hobbit is a separate book, initially aimed at children and it too was made into a three-part movie series with music by the same composer. Also, part of that same world created by Tolkien is The Silmarillion it is a collection of stories telling the creation and origins of the Fantasy World known as Middle Earth, which is where the movies take place.
A bit of background will give us some context. Of course, the soundtrack is built on the writings of Tolkien and the movies created by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. But there is a history attached to this Fantasy world he created. A musical legacy unlike any other film(s).
Poetry is a critical part of Middle Earth and Lord of the Rings. Music itself is central to the storyline of the books and in fact it is at the heart of the creation myth described in The Silmarillion. Actual recordings started many years ago with Tolkien himself singing “The Song of the Stone Troll” in 1952. Donald Swann composed and recorded six songs in 1967. The Dutch Composer and trombonist Johan de Meij wrote a Symphony in 1988. Also unrelated to the films is the Danish group The Tolkien Ensemble who recorded several songs of compositions based on Tolkien poems and languages.
Many will know references to the Lord of the Rings is made in the Led Zeppelin song “Ramble On” as well as “Misty Mountain Hop”, and “The Battle of Evermore”. Also, Joni Mitchell’s song “I Think I Understand”, Black Sabbath’s “Wizard” and “Rivendell” by Rush. These are just a few of the examples.
The above clip is the main theme from the Lord of the Rings composed by Howard Shore.
Being my favorite soundtrack, I think the score for the movie was brilliantly done. Composer Howard Shore matched the music to individual characters, places, and events which I think helped one to identify with them more closely. For people that watched the movies without the benefit of reading the story, the music, if only subliminally gave more connection, than say a more overriding composition. To say the music matched the movie is a bit of an understatement, the two are more intricately entwined than most any other films. This was thanks to Shore working so closely with Peter Jackson and Co-Writer/Producer Fran Walsh. Not to mention the history I just mentioned.
For those of us who feel we know the stories so well, the music helped to bring those characters, these old friends, to life. We all read books and imagine who these people are and what they would look like. The movie did not disappoint in this regard, and I think the music did an excellent job of supporting what was on screen. For such an epic and heroic set of movies, one could expect an equally monumental musical score. There are 13 hours of music, performed by musicians in several configurations ranging from as large as The London Philharmonic Orchestra to solo artists.
The Composer, Howard Shore was born and raised in Toronto and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. As a young man and multi-instrumentalist, he was part of the Canadian Rock-Jazz fusion band Lighthouse where he principally played the alto saxophone. He would then work with his childhood friend and creator of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Micheals as the shows Musical Director. In the late 1970’s while still with SNL he started to score music for movies. To name just a few he has done, Mrs. Doubtfire, Philadelphia, That Thing You Do!, The Aviator and Gangs of New York.
For his work on Lord of the Rings Shore won three Academy Awards, two for Best Original Score, for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
One of the many parts of the brilliance of Tolkien’s creation is the languages of Middle Earth, including Quenya and Sindarin for the Elves and Khuzdul (known as Dwarfish). These languages and more were spoken throughout the Movies. Several of the songs were sung in these languages which adds a complicated task for the composer and artist but gives an unprecedented level of authenticity.
“The Passing of the Elves” is a pivotal part of the storyline. It was originally arranged/written and performed by Donald Swann (1967) but this version is by Plan 9 and David Long and Directed by Howard Shore. The song is in the Tolkien created language of Sindarin, it’s a recital of a poem A Elbereth Gilthoniel, written of course by Tolkien. Just a small part is used in the first film The Fellowship of the Ring.
A major contribution to the soundtrack was made by the Irish singer Enya. Shore had asked Director Peter Jackson to approach Enya about composing and singing songs for the films. Part of that effort was “May It Be”. Composed by Enya with the lyrics that included words in Quenya, the Elvish language I mentioned above. As lovely Enya’s voice is she owes much to her lyricist Roma Shane Ryan who in this case studied the languages words and skillfully added them in this song that can be heard in the video clip.
Howard Shore, Fran Walsh, and Annie Lennox as the songwriters received an Oscar for Best for “Into the West” from The Lord of the Rings third Movie Return of The King. The song was performed by Annie Lennox and appears in the end credits. The song would also win the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
The music from the films was reworked by Howard Shore into the form a Symphony, it is available on a CD that was released in 2011. In the vernacular, my interest in LOTR (Lord of the Rings) just may make me a Ringer. Not sure I reach the level of obsession to qualify, but I sure have enjoyed the books the movies and the music. Thank you, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973).
”People go ‘what’s that?’ and I go ‘I dunno. Good isn’t it?’” So described this month’s Forgotten Gem by its artist. And while on the 75th anniversary of his birth, Robert Palmer is far from forgotten his early 1988 single “Sweet Lies”, certainly qualifies. It was, to be blunt about it, probably his least successful single of the second half of the ’80s, but was deserving of a better fate.
Coming between the biggies “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On”, from Riptide, and “Simply Irresistible” off Heavy Nova, “Sweet Lies” was the highlight and title track from a soundtrack album which Palmer produced and largely created. That in itself was part of the reason it didn’t exactly fly off record store shelves. While the ’80s produced many smash hits from movie soundtracks – “Footloose”, “Purple Rain”, “Flashdance” etc – they were all movies that people saw and liked. Sweet Lies on the other hand seemed to come and go in the bored blink of an eye. It starred Treat Williams as an investigator who went to Paris to investigate…something… and ended up being investigated by three lovely ladies who set out to seduce him but end up falling in love. The most notable name on the bill was Julianne Phillips, and she merited mention only because at that time she was Mrs. Bruce Springsteen. Whether or not she won Treat over, I can’t tell you. Not because I’m afraid of revealing a spoiler, but rather because main movie sites like IMDB have one or two sentence summaries of the film. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 25% rating. It didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, and without people going to see the film, there wasn’t a rush from the theatre to the record store to find the music from it. It’s also likely Island Records, knowing his Heavy Nova was almost ready, didn’t go big on promoting the album.
The song though is pretty good. Don’t take my word for it, take Robert’s.
He called it a “lovely tune” and said “it came out of the blue. I was merely channeling it. These chord changes, I have no idea where they came from… it was like automatic writing.” He shared the writing credit with Dony Wynn and Frank Blair however. Blair played bass on it as he had on the past two Palmer albums, while Wynn drummed. He’s apparently a Tennessee artist who according to his own website “roams the earth like Godzilla, hot in the pursuit of sweetness and puppy breath.” That alone is probably reason enough to want to listen to the song!
The NME liked the single, calling it “an engaging ballad…exactly the sort that has made Palmer a latter day renaissance man.” They particularly liked his singing, using “the sort of classic voice that works best when not over-stated.” Smash Hits though noted it was “slightly more laid back than Palmer’s previous rombustious efforts” which gave it “really a rather peculiar sound.”
The single topped out at #58 there in the UK and only #94 in the U.S. Fans who missed it had another chance a year or so later when he put it as the b-side to a re-released, rerecorded version of “Bad Case of Loving You.”
The failure of the record didn’t stop Palmer from going back to soundtrack work; in 1990 he’d score a Canadian top 40 hit (and American rock radio top 10) with “Life in Detail”, from the Pretty Woman soundtrack.
As you likely know, Palmer’s life and recording career was cut short when he died of a heart attack in 2003.
It’s fitting that on Thom Yorke’s birthday (happy 55th to him), we also look at the inspiration for his band’s name – Radiohead. Or, as it was when it inspired them, “Radio Head.” It was one of the songs off equally quirky band Talking Heads seventh regular album, True Stories, which came out this day in 1986.
Talking Heads were founded by people who met at an art college, and with their reputation for being unusual (particularly the main writer and singer, David Byrne) it’s little wonder that they’d do things a bit differently. So True Stories is basically a soundtrack to a movie that Byrne wrote and starred in, which also came out this week in ’86. The movie, fittingly quirky, stars Byrne as an outsider who visits a town in Texas which is having a big celebration for the 150th anniversary of “Texas independence”. There he meets all sorts of oddball characters from a kid who receives radio signals through his teeth to voodoo practicioners to of course, being Texas, slightly odd ministers. Among the stars in it were John Goodman and Swoosie Kurtz. The album though isn’t the exact soundtrack, with the characters singing, but neither it should be noted, is it a typical Big Movie Soundtrack of the ’80s with hit songs piled onto it that somehow got molded into the movie for the sole purpose of selling records. Instead, it was Talking Heads re-recording the movie songs with Byrne singing, which wasn’t the case for much of the actual film. He wasn’t that happy with it really, and later released the actual soundtrack, complete with “incidental” music from between scenes, to much less acclaim.
As with most Talking Heads music, it’s varied and – there’s that word again – quirky. There are bits of Mexican influence, dance numbers, country-ish ones…all the sounds of Texas interpreted by a New England art major. Among the guest musicians is Pop Staples (of the Staple Singers) and Steve Jordan, a Tejano musician nicknamed “the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion”. He plays on the song “Radio Head”, which yes, was the song from which that British band took its name.
The movie went on to become something of a cult favorite but took in less than $3 million at the box office, but the music did somewhat better, although critics didn’t quite know what to make of it. Spin gave it 6 out of 10, the Village Voice a “B”. The Punk Panther suggests it’s an “often unfairly overlooked and sometimes criticized album.” Rolling Stone wrote an unusually long review of it, being fairly impressed with it. They declared it “neither Talking Heads platinum-seller nor their masterpiece” but liked the way Byrne “never sounded more excited or less detached” and highlighted “Papa Legba”… “a total mystery…it’s all so weirdly melodic and eerily rhythmic that its hard not to be enchanted” and “People Like Us”, “this LP’s peak” a song about ordinary small-town people and a “paen to the simple life” they found heartfelt. On the downside there was the first single, “’Wild Wild Life’, the closest Talking Heads have ever come to formula. Naturally, it’s already getting radio airplay.”
That it did. While “Love For Sale” didn’t resonate with radio, “Wild Wild Life” did, hitting #25 at home, the second-highest for any of their singles. They liked it even more Down Under, where it rose to #13 in Australia and #2 in New Zealand. That helped the album become their second #1 album for the Kiwis. It made it to #17 in the U.S., where it went gold (as did most of their records), and #7 in the UK, the best they’d done there, although they would top that with their final album, 1988’s Naked.
Not everything they did worked well. But one has to give Talking Heads full credit for making music their own way. True Story.
Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our 23rd round, and our third calendar year, for those keeping count. If you’re curious, there’s a bit of an index to past topics we’ve covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month our topic is The Soundtrack of My Life. We asked our guests to pick a great movie soundtrack and tell us what’s great about it. For almost as long as there’ve been talking movies, producers realized that a good soundtrack adds to the product… and for almost as long as there’ve been record albums, the record companies have known a good movie tie-in can generate sales. Old, new, original songs for the film or a compilation of older tunes… there’s a lot of celluloid vinyl to choose from!
A Sound Day 