Soundtrack of Our Lives
If you are like me, many of your memories can be triggered by hearing a certain song. You can be in a car driving to the supermarket and hear something that takes you back to a different time and place. For me anyway, memories are invariably linked to some song or album. From my mother listening to Saturdays with Sinatra to driving to Florida on Spring break and listening to Elton John’s Don’t Shoot Me I Am Only The Piano Player at least 300 times on an 8 track stereo. “Have Mercy On The Criminal” still reminds me of Stuckey’s in South Carolina.
Anyway, we all have some memories directly tied into some music and whenever that music is played, those memories come flooding back. Why do you think Sirius Radio is so successful? They play every type of music to elicit every type of memory.
Shockingly, That isn’t really what todays column is about. It’s about great soundtracks from movies or TV shows. To compile this list, I really didn’t have any preset boundaries other than the soundtrack had to have at least one great song that fit the moment. Oh, and original scores are ok but not my main focus here.
Speaking of that one great song to fit the moment. AC/DC’s “Who Made Who” opens what might be one of the worst adaptations of a Steven King novel, Maximum Overdrive. It is the opening song and if ever there was a great way to open a movie, this is it. Unfortunately, those three minutes were the highlight.
On the other end of the spectrum, a great song opening a great movie, The Graduate’s opening sequence with “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel may rank right up there as maybe one of the best songs ever included in any movie. The overall soundtrack to The Graduate was incredible with “Mrs. Robinson” and “Scarborough Fair” used liberally throughout the film.
Princes’ Purple Rain is another incredible soundtrack to a pretty good movie. The bulk of the songs are performance songs, meaning that they show Prince and The Revolution actually performing the songs and of course, my favorite, The Time. This was such a unique picture when it came out that it was hard to describe it initially. It still holds up well and believe it not, I even thought Apollonia was pretty good. The original version of “Nikki” is worth watching the movie for.
There will be some purists that will argue with this assessment but I feel that “American Graffiti” was the soundtrack that set the bar for all other soundtracks to follow. While I don’t usually include any songs from 1965 or earlier, I will make an exception here. This movie is a masterpiece and it never gets the credit it deserves. Probably because “Happy Days” was a sort of spinoff and “Happy Days” while popular was a lousy show. Yes, I used to watch it but I don’t think I ever laughed once while watching it. I am no judge for humor I suppose. I thought “The Honeymooners” was vastly overrated (and still do). I digress. If you go through the story and the music that was used in “American Graffiti” it is very clear that George Lucas knew what he was doing, even back then. The songs are a true reflection of America in 1962 and created a wave of nostalgia for that era unlike any other movie.
Speaking of another soundtrack that encapsulates an era, The Big Chill does just that. This is another example of using songs of an era to encapsulate the scene on screen. While the movie takes place in the early 80’s, the soundtrack is decidedly 60’s and early 70’s based. I don’t own many soundtracks but I do own this one, even though I pretty much have every song from every artist on their own albums. It just comes together beautifully as one long classic album.
Now, we go to the best soundtrack ever. Hate me or love me, you cannot argue that the soundtrack from “Goodfellas” isn’t the best of the bunch. Martin Scorsese has an incredible talent for putting music to work in his movies. I don’t even know where to start but to show what a masterpiece this soundtrack is think about this: What director would put Mick Jagger’s “Memo From Turner” and Harry Nillson’s “Jump Into The Fire” in the same movie and have those songs come on at just the right time. Somehow I feel that Scorsese put the action to the music instead of the music to the action. Whatever film making tricks he developed in this movie probably will never be replicated. The movie is one of my top five of all time and to have a soundtrack that is so far above and beyond anything done before or since has to land this movie and it’s soundtrack in a very special place. I could even argue that because of the soundtrack and the timing and use of the music, this is a better film than the Godfather and Godfather II. Come on, “Monkey Man” by the Rolling Stones while Karen is hiding everything. I got to meet my connection from Pittsburgh.
I would be remiss if I didn’t put “Saturday Night Fever” on this list. It wasn’t only The Bee gees that made this soundtrack great, it was KC and The Sunshine Band and Tavares and of course, The Tramps. This was THE soundtrack for the Disco era and yes, the World is a safer place without Disco, it is still fun listening to this album. I thought the movie was kind of dumb but Travolta knows how to dance and again, the music was well placed. I think it may be the biggest selling soundtrack album of all time.
There are hundreds of great songs buried inside mediocre soundtracks and it would take me weeks to include them all. Couple that come to mind are Isaac Hayes’ “The Theme From Shaft” and “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf (Easy Rider). Two totally different movies and songs but both fit the positions in their respective movies perfectly.
There are two TV shows that I thought did an excellent job of putting music in it’s rightful place. “Weeds”, from the beginning you knew was going to be different. Opening credit background music was “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds and it just got deeper from there. I fell in love with “Ganja Babe” by Michael Franti and Spearhead. Plus, the series pushed Surfjan Stevens in almost every show and I became a fan as well. The other show that had an intimate relationship with its music was of course “Miami Vice”. Maybe a little too Miami 80’s for you but any show that made a TV Star out of Glen Frey from The Eagles understands how music can play a vital role in connecting story lines. Frey’s “Smuggler’s Blues” is still the standard drug running song till this day.