Song, by Toad

Soundtracks #10 – Grand Finale – Why Soundtracks Just Don’t Work

[This is the final post in this splendid series, and a massive thank you to all who have taken part. This all started a couple of months ago when Ian, guitarist with Toad favourite Broken Records, sent me a message about having a soundtrack rant brewing. It went largely along the lines of 'don't get me started'. Mrs. Toad then suggested making it into a feature where everyone can make a contribution, and here we go. I think I let it go on a little long - maybe a week maximum next time - but it has been splendid fun, and I thought it only fair that Ian, the man whose fault the whole thing is in the first place, be allowed the final say.]

My rant about soundtracks is a bit different to Mr Toad’s previous postings on the subject of the great “music-inspired-by” rip-off. My main truck with soundtracks is that, on the whole, they are thoroughly unsatisfying to listen to as albums. Now, you may think that a little unfair – soundtracks are meant to work in conjunction with the film and this is arguably the best context in which to appreciate them. But if you like the music you might well be tempted to buy the album as well and more often than not I’ve found myself thoroughly disappointed with the final results. And here’s why.

To make this clearer I think there are two main types of soundtrack. First is ‘The Compilation’ which usually involves various artists often from differing eras and vastly differing musical styles. This is all well and good for undemanding teen-comedy-high-school-frat-boy bollocks [Mrs. Toad sharpens claws!] where the music is often not much more than a background collage of whatever current bland pop nonsense has been in the charts that year. But this is not the sort of soundtrack I’m going to listen to anyway. I’m as guilty as anyone of becoming a sucker for the shuffle function on my ipod but I’m also a traditionalist who likes to listen to albums from beginning to end and it should be no different to soundtracks. When a compilation soundtrack tracklisting jars horribly and there are only a couple of decent tracks on there you might as well be on shuffle.

A case where I think a compilation soundtrack probably comes closest to working as an album is 24 Hour Party People. You may argue it’s no more than a “Best of Factory Records” album, but the songs are integral to the film (they bloody well should be in a music biopic!), well chosen and chronicle the development of a musical movement over time. Sure the Durutti Column songs jar with the Happy Mondays, but this is not such an issue because they have a shared context. There’s also an excellent beefed up mix of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control” which is worth the price alone.

Another fairly successful soundtrack which I’ll defend to the bitter end is (deep breath) the Forrest Gump soundtrack (don’t hurt me!). Dreadful film. Great soundtrack. As a compilation it follows the development of American pop music from Elvis to Lynyrd Skynyrd. On top of that it’s chronological which makes it less of a jump in style and as a result the whole thing flows rather nicely. My only criticisms are the omission of certain songs that featured in the film (The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, etc) but this was probably down to legal and licensing issues, and the addition of Alan Silvestri’s original score piece “Forrest Gump Suite” in all its overly sentimental and bland glory. But at least it’s at the end of a double album and you’ve probably got your money’s worth by that point.

It seems that what often makes a good soundtrack is the directorial input and proper use of the songs in the narrative of the film itself. One director whose soundtracks usually hit the mark, despite a positively deranged level of eclecticism is Mr Tarantino. Almost. He probably gets away with it because the song choices can be pretty obscure and he seems to have an uncanny knack for melding the songs with the images to create iconic scenes. He’s been so successful at this that I defy anyone who’s seen Reservoir Dogs to not immediately think of ears and razor blades any time they hear Stealers Wheel. But what makes Tarantino soundtracks fail as great-to-listen-to albums is the constant interruption of snippets of dialogue from the film itself. I don’t think many would say the man doesn’t have a talent for language and witty dialogue, but by Christ do they grate on about the 4th or 5th listen. I’ve therefore removed as many dialogue tracks as possible when transferring these sorts of soundtracks to iTunes just for preservation of my own sanity.

The other main type of soundtrack is the “Original Score”. In theory, this should be more satisfying to listen to because it ought to be a more coherent piece of work as a whole. It will probably have been composed to match the footage and will likely have a consistent theme. But I’ve often found that this is another way that soundtracks fail to satisfy. In many cases the composer will start with a theme and develop, repeat and vary it for the duration of the film. While this may work well in conjunction with the film, as a soundtrack album such repetition can become very trying. If the music is composed to fit a scene of a certain length this usually results in some very short album tracks of under a minute but where bugger all happens other than a main theme played a slightly different way. And that just becomes tedious.

Two examples of this are the soundtracks for The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, both by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. The Proposition is probably the reason I got thinking about soundtracks in the first place. When Mr Toad pointed out that one of our Broken Records tracks had an (unintentionally) identical opening couple of bars to one of The Proposition tracks, I began wondering how I hadn’t noticed. I realised that although I had listened to it a couple of times it hadn’t sunk in to listen to as an album because there was so much repetition and very short tracks. Don’t get me wrong – I love Mr Cave and I think as a soundtrack to accompany the film it is incredibly atmospheric and coherent (I suppose it helps that the script and the soundtrack were both written by him), but it’s not something that would go on my stereo regularly. And, for me, with it’s longer pieces and wider variety of themes, the Jesse James soundtrack is far more palatable to listen to.

Probably the best example of a composer getting it so right and so wrong is Michael Nyman. While his score for The Piano has some of the most beautiful pieces of music ever put to film (I drove my flatmates to near violence when trying to learn how to play The Heart Asks The Pleasure First – but it’s their fault for buying me the sheet music in the first place!), it suffers from annoyingly short tracks and over-repetition of the main theme in an uninspiring variety of tempos. Where he gets it right is his soundtrack for The Draughtsman’s Contract. All the pieces are full length (often clocking in at over 6 minutes), each one significantly different in theme, and brilliantly coherent in style with its minimalist pastiche of baroque. It works perfectly with the film, and on its own. The main track, Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, is so good it was later nicked for A Cock and Bull Story.

Probably the worst (ok – massively disappointing) soundtracks fall into a category somewhere in between. The ones that don’t know what they’re trying to be by combining original score with painfully incongruous compilation tracks annoy the tits off me. A Clockwork Orange does everything so well with the contrast between the traditional orchestral versions of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the Walter/Wendy Carlos Moog versions. Then Singin’ In the Rain comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything. Why on earth is it on there? I know it’s a key scene in the film but it simply doesn’t fit. And Burgess hated it, so there.

But the one soundtrack that pisses me off so much that my teeth begin to itch is Out of Sight. It’s a good film and the David Holmes score is really quite funky. But whoever put the soundtrack together is an appalling excuse for a human being and thoroughly deserves to have their ears removed with a rusty razor-blade (cf paragraph on Tarantino….). In this case the tunes admittedly don’t jar too badly, with the Isley Brothers and Dean Martin nuzzling up to David Holmes lazy funk, but it would have been better if it was just a David Holmes-only score. It’s guilty of pretty much everything cited above – crap dialogue inserts, tracks that don’t go anywhere and just a general lack of coherence. More film stars should be like George Clooney. He’s just a bit too cool with his 50’s matinee idol style his renaissance-man skills for acting, directing, writing and production. But after listening to him use up the first minute and a half of the soundtrack effortlessly smooth-talking his way through a bank-job while simultaneously smooth-talking his way into the cashier’s gusset, it all gets a bit smug. But then, THEN, the intro to It’s Your Thing wafts in. Which is great. But Clooney still hasn’t finished cracking on to the scared, yet curiously aroused, cashier and it just spoils everything.

A similar thing happens at the end of Dean Martin’s Ain’t that a Kick in the Head. It’s all going brilliantly until the final line is cut off by faux radio static. Why would anyone think that’s a good idea? Why? That aside, the whole soundtrack is peppered with intrusive and infuriatingly mediocre dialogue. I’m not sure which fuck-wit is responsible (and I hope it isn’t Soderbergh, please let it just be some studio goon) but they’ve really arsed the whole thing up. At least Tarantino has the decency to make dialogue tracks separate. Out of Sight is just destroyed by crap dialogue inserted over the music. What a bloody waste.

I could go on about many, many more soundtracks but I fear I would either bore you or make myself incredibly angry. However, these are the ones that I think work and those that really don’t.

Got it Right:
Michael Nyman – The Draughtsman’s Contract (see above)
Clint Mansell – The Fountain (Good long tracks and varied but coherent themes. And a dream partnership of Mogwai/Kronos Quartet!)
Various – 24 Hour Party People (see above)
Yann Tiersen – Amelie (works well on it’s own and nicely reworked instrumental versions of his older songs. Although points off for being lazy and recycling some tracks in his soundtrack for Goodbye Lenin)

Got it Wrong:
David Holmes/Various – Out of Sight (Bollocks. See above.)
Various – Friday Night Lights (Don’t bother – just buy The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky instead.)
David Holmes/Various – Out of Sight (Again. It really has made me that angry.)

The Isley Brothers – It’s Your Thing
The Michael Nyman Band – Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds
Joy Division – She’s Lost Control
Dean Martin – Ain’t That a Kick in the Head
Yann Tiersen – Comptine D’un Autre Été: L’après Midi

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #9 – Judgment Night

[One of the things I have been utterly fucking dreadful at recently is exploring the world of new music blogs. Blogs pop up all the time, some last and some don't. Matthew from Draped in Velvet got in touch to pop over a post about a film and music I don't know from a blogger I don't know, so I think it's fantastic that he wants to post in this series. It's also a really good piece of writing (like I'm qualified to judge) from a blog with a mere nineteen posts to its name, so go and have a look at his stuff. Here he writes about a soundtrack he loves, and a film that utterly failed to live up to it...]

Alas I am a fellow burdened with many musical and movie guilty pleasures. Should you know me then perhaps you may have heard me pontificate at length on the many hidden merits of Kevin Costner’s universally panned epic ‘WaterWorld‘ or even share my delight and passion for the post-modern classic that is ‘Last Action Hero‘- however possibly my favorite soundtrack comes from a film, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, even I can’t justify its existence. Yet because of its outstanding soundtrack I will bravely (and somewhat foolishly) endure the appauling movie every time its shown on TV.Firstly, let me assure you that I acquired this compilation on the strength of the album’s first single: ‘Another Body Murdered’ by Samoan hip hop giants BOO-YAA T.R.I.B.E and Faith No More, rather than as a direct result of watching the movie. This single had everything an middle class white boy living in a sleepy town could possibly wish for; chug-a-long metal guitars, Mike Patton’s trademark bonkers screaming and some fat guys in hats taking about street crime and gang culture.

Having annoyed my family and the surrounding neigbours with the endless repeat plays of this track, I popped into my local Our Price (at the time my local town’s only record store) and ordered myself a copy of the album on cassette after it received favourable reviews in Select Magazine. Approximately 2-3 weeks later I received a phone call informing me that said purchase had arrived.

I listened wide mouthed and in awe as I walked back home from town with the album playing on my cruddy Matusi Personal Stereo. The likes of Mudhoney & Sir Mix-A-Lot waxing lyrical on subject matters I couldn’t possible comprehend (I just liked how it sounded), Slayer & Ice T’s L.A 92 riot themed track ‘Disorder’ cleared my sinuses and scared the be-Jesus out of me; and of course Pearl Jam & Cypress Hill’s ‘Real Thing’ (which was surprisingly a million times better than the other Cypress Hill collaboration with Sonic Youth on ‘Mary Jane’) which on its first listen gave me goosebumps.

The two stand out tracks amongst these ‘masterpieces’ are Dinosaur Jr & Del The Funky Homosapien’s ‘Missing Link’ which, like the other finer collaborations featured on the album, balanced the two artists’ inputs evenly to produce this spiffing example of genre crossing music. A truly great and very much under appreciated MC accompanied by a truly great and much under appreciated guitarist (and in this instance drummer and producer). This song contains as good of a guitar lick that Mascis has ever committed to record.

As good as their collective efforts were, the other standout track, Teenage Fanclub & Del A Soul’s ‘Fallin’ is this bar none this compilation’s crowning achievement and also makes rather good use of a Tom Petty sample to boot. Perhaps it stands out so clearly as it’s the only laid back tune on the album surrounded for the most part by bands laden with loud and abrasive guitars and rock drumming.

Thumb clicks, laid back clean guitar strumming, tambourines and the understated rhythm section from The Fannies provide the backing for the equally laid back rappers. Even now some 15 years after its original release, I include this song on mix tapes for friends and family unaware of this songs existence and the results (to anyone with a soul) are very much the same as when I first heard it all those many moons ago. A serene smile will creep its way on to ones lips, followed by the warm feeling of content washing over you.

It pained me when some two years later after many thousands of listens of this compilation, I finally watched the film which featured everyone’s favorite Bill Hicks impersonator Dennis Leary, all round annoying dick Cuba Gooding Jr supporting everyones favourite Martin Sheen offspring Emilio Estevez. Aside from the poor dialogue, bad direction and for the most part poor acting, I was incredibly angered that the music was used so sparsely throughout.

As the whole Rage Against The Machine (and to a lesser degree Senser-and to an even lesser degree Collapsed Lung) had taken off with a angry explosion back in 92/93, I was surprised that there was so few rap/rock outfits emerging at the time. I thought that I’d heard the future. I thought the merging of two of my favourite music genres would create some form of utopian musical society, uniting the world and putting an end to poverty, war and disease. Naturally, this vision never came to fruition and it pained me to see the rap/rock genre was to take off several years later with disastrous effects thanks to Fred bleedin’ Durst, tainting the phrase ‘rap-rock’ for evermore. Lest we not forget just how close to perfection this brave artists got on this album.

I certainly haven’t.

Faith No More & Boo Yaa T.R.I.B.E – Another Body Murdered
Dinosaur Jr & Del The Funky Homosapien – Missing Link

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #8 – In the Mood For Love

[This series just gets more and more fun - excellent! I'm delighted that you all seem to be into it. Here's Tim from The Daily Growl. He's from the Diplomatic Service of the The Nation of Scottish Bloggers, being a Glaswegian (you know, slightly malnourished, likes to glass folk, etc...) posted to the London office for the foreseeable future.]

I love this film. Never tire of it. It’s nothing really to do with the story – it can’t be, there’s almost none there. It’s just a very simple tale of unrequited love. But that’s maybe why I love it so much. Without having any plot twists to worry about, Wong Kar-Wai puts all his effort into making it a film that you feel. Everything about it is great, from Christopher Doyle’s amazing cinematography, the period detail, the splendid costumes, the slow but certain way that the story unfolds. To cap it all, Maggie Cheung is totally gorgeous (and if it’s men you like, Tony Leung ain’t half bad either) and looks even better in costume designer William Chang’s wonderfully retro cheoungsams. Just watch her as she swishes downstairs, all dressed up to get some soup from the stall outside. Surely the sexiest soup-run ever.

The whole thing is a sumptuous, sensual delight and being such, it’s not all about what you see. The score is an integral part of its lusciousness. Hearing tracks on their own (as you will below) somewhat disjoints them from the whole piece. Sure, the main theme is beautiful, and there are plenty other pleasures and curios to be heard, from Nat King Cole’s Spanish language versions of his famous songs, to traditional Chinese music, to something that can only be described as proto-Cantopop. But they have to be heard as part of the film, or at least the soundtrack album, to be appreciated properly. So do yourself a favour.

I’ve written this piece so far in the first person, but I need to add that this movie, and the films of Wong Kar-Wai more generally, are a bit of a shared passion of Mrs Growl and I. So much so that when we went to an exhibition of Christopher Doyle’s work in an East London gallery a few years back, we just had to fork out an unreasonably high amount of cash for a print from the making of In the Mood for Love. Maggie Cheung stares upwards towards the camera, looking as fine as ever. Wong sits overseeing his masterpiece. It’s a great shot. All that’s missing, in fact, is the soundtrack.

Nat King Cole – Aquellos Ojos Verdes
Yumeji’s Theme (by 梅林茂 of course!)
Michael Galasso – Blue (this sounds like an instrumental version of the gospel standard Wayfaring Stranger, but with a definite Chinese twist)

Definitely, definitely Wayfaring Stranger. What a fine version too.

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #7 – Films in Songs

[Okay, well I've let everyone else have a go, so it's time I slapped my nuts on the line and had a go myself. I've cheated slightly and altered the theme for my own benefit, but hopefully you'll agree that it fits.]

I know this is cheating, but I thought it might be interesting, not least because I haven’t thought it through very clearly and I reckon my readers will be able to add way more to this post than I can. So get your comment fingers twitching and get on with it. We’ve seen what a song can do to a film, good or bad, by bringing all that extra contextual baggage with it when plopped into the middle of a key scene. Well, it works the other way round too, only songwriters tend to handle it an awful lot better.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a picture worth? A songwriter, with so few verses at their disposal, can add a lifetime’s worth of meaning and imagery into a movie. You can nail a person by describing a shit film they like, you can nail the atmosphere of an evening by talking about what you watched, you can nail a time and place by describing a movie that was popular at the time.

I’ve only got three examples here, but I am sure you can think of many more:

Firstly, Barefoot in the Park by Cinerama. David Gedge is a master of turning normal phraseology in a poetic way, but this song is one of his worst lyrical efforts if you ask me – cringeworthy rhymes like “it’s because you’re so sublime/ that I think about you all the time” really put me off. But the one and only great trick in this song is the couplet: “Let’s lie all day here in the dark/ and watch Barefoot in the Park”. With than one line he conveys everything that this song is about: that indulgent, lazy, amazed period when you first fall in love with someone and things like grotty days in bed watching romantic movies are the most cocooned and intense times you spend together. And how does it he do it? By co-opting all the emotional baggage of Barefoot in the Park and using it to express the mood of the scenario he’s describing. Neat and economical.

Secondly, Clem Snide’s Made For TV Movie. It’s not about a specific film, this, but it uses the connotations of being made for TV in a similar way. Instead of the heady heights of first love, Barzelay uses this trick to convey the normal everyday feeling conjured by the image of curling up on the sofa together and watching whatever happens to be on at the time. We’ve all had evenings like that. They’re ordinary, pedestrian and the absolute meat and potatoes of being with someone. It’s what you do in the non-special times that defines a relationship if you ask me, and this one phrase places you exactly in those times, and defines the emotional pitch of the song.

Finally, a bit of a cheat. There is one really obvious song about Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which fits entirely with what I am talking about in this post. But I’d rather talk about The Divine Comedy’s Woman of the World, which is also about the enigmatic Holly Golightly. Neil Hannon is big on conceits. Some of them, lots even, are grating and pretentious, but this is one of his more successful. Why? Well because it’s a little enigmatic. He’s singing about Holly herself, and in a more general sense about the film. But is he just casually singing about a movie, or is he using the iconic Golightly character to describe a woman he knows. Given this is on the same album as Frog Princess, it’s tempting to think that he might be using a well known character comparison to try and understand someone who he is struggling to come to terms with in real life. It’s probably not true, but it shows the power of bringing imagery into a song which carries a whole artistic back story to it that you could never hope to achieve in a chorus and a handful of brief verses.

Cinerama – Barefoot in the Park
Clem Snide – Made For TV Movie
The Divine Comedy – Woman of the World

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #6 – Natural Born Killers in Three Sentences

[You know when you haven't explained yourself properly then there's a mixup and then you end up thinking, 'ah, fuck it'. That is this post. When I invited the Readers of Toad to contribute posts for this series on soundtracks I meant entire posts - you know a couple of hundred words, a little story or a bit of a rant. When John sent me his email on why he loved the soundtrack for Natural Born Killers I thought 'Oh for fuck's sake, I've ballsed this up. I really haven't been very clear have I.'

Then I looked at the post he'd sent through and, although it crossed my mind that I should email him back and explain that I kind of had a little more writing in mind, that really wasn't necessary. I mean, what he says is coherent, makes sense and is a single, complete thought neatly expressed and in need of no further elaboration.

The other reason I wanted to post it is because John is entirely new to me. He's never left a comment and this is the first time I knew he read my blog. I get this sometimes with people who say hello on Last.fm or Facebook. This blog gets over a thousand hits a day and maybe thirty people leave comments on a regular basis. Now I am not complaining about this at all, but it means I write this stuff, throw it out there and have little idea who is out there either enjoying it, hating it or just downloading the mp3s and fucking off, never to be seen again.

So it seemed sort of fitting that the first time John took the time to say hello I should just take him at face value, post what he wrote, include the rather excellent song choices and let you all meet him too. So, without any further ado, Natural Born Killers...]

My first soundtrack love was the Natural Born Killers disc produced by Trent Reznor. Like the movie, some people say it’s too jumbled and too ecclectic, but I say it works. Even the softer tracks like Patsy Cline’s ‘Back In Baby’s Arms’ take on a sinister edge.

Leonard Cohen – Waiting for the Miracle
Patsy Cline – Back in Baby’s Arms
Patti Smith – Rock & Roll Nigger

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #5 – Art Without Context Loses Most of its Meaning

[Welcome back to our soundtracks series. This time it's the turn of my little brother, sound designer for the Boston Ballet, who has previously written this excellent post about recording quality in rock music for the site, which went down very well indeed. Here he tackles the problem of soundtracks and their context - either they are removed from it or imported music can bring too much baggage. But I'll let him explain all that...]

The single largest problem with soundtracks, to my mind, is quite simply you are either taking art and removing it from its context, or you are inserting it into a context where it doesn’t belong. Quite simply, in most cases soundtracks, if they do not have the emotional context of the film behind them fall rather flat. This can go the other way, in which case you have a moment in a film, and in a clumsy attempt to insert a recognized song, a song that seems out of context and strange.

Let us address the latter problem first. The two most glaring examples of this are when music exists firstly as a soundtrack piece, but also as a marketing tool. The most successful example of this that I can think of is Titanic. Celine Dion released her dreadful song months before the film, and in building hype for the film the song gets played. After it’s been played, it gets over-played. Now let us really suspend disbelief (and I don’t mean buying that Kate Winslet has a tattoo, or would pose naked for a man she barely knew, or married Billy Zane in the first place or…) and imagine that you actually got caught up in the love story. Leo and Kate are parading themselves in full view of the entire ship (sorry, at it again aren’t I…) and falling in love. At the climactic moment as they release themselves from the shackles of their class and feel the freeing wind in their hair the strains of an orchestra swell behind them and the entire audience at once says to the loved one they are sharing the moment with “Oh, that’s that Celine Dion song isn’t it?”. And the moment (or what there ever was of it) is lost.

The same applies, and more so, for the movie Armageddon. Only there in our climactic love moment (and you’d have to be really struggling to get caught up in this one) they weren’t even bothered to take out Steven Tyler’s voice. The audience is removed from the movie long enough to think, “Hey, that’s Aerosmith” or possibly “Hang on, that’s her Dad singing, while she’s shagging Ben Affleck. Oh God, this is wrong, this is all wrong. I need to get out of here. No no. All wrong”. These are clumsy examples but, this is not isolated. Think of every time you have been watching a movie and “I’m Walking on Sunshine” comes on. First thought: “Huh, they always use this”.

It also works the other way around. The studio that brought you “Four Weddings in Notting Hill Actually” are masters of putting songs where they don’t quite belong. The song ‘Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone’ implies that the lady in question is coming back. Hugh Grant is facing life with Julia Roberts for ever (can’t imagine why he’s actually upset, but what do I know…) and hence it just doesn’t work. Quentin Tarentino does it as well. The song ‘Street Life’ sings about a person growing up in a poor neighborhood fighting for survival, it does not refer to stewardesses fighting to get themselves out of sticky a situation, largely of their own making. Still, they are both about black people, so Quentin probably thought that made them ‘street’, and therefore appropriate. Sorry, I’ll move on to my home ground before I get myself into trouble.

Now let’s we address classical and custom writing music used in film. This I always feel works better. For a start classical music is by its very nature more abstract. No feelings are specified, and what you feel is largely between you, the conductor and the composer (if my boss reads that last sentence I’ll never work again, so don’t quote me…). However, because of this it tends to be more malleable. The scene in Battle of Britain when you see the Luftwaffe appear en masse: with mighty sinister strings it’s terrifying. The scene in Lord of the Rings where the trees (alright, Ents) walk to invade the evil kingdom, knowing they’re going to die (they don’t die, but Peter Jackson doesn’t let that ruin the pre-fight moment), the build in the music is fantastic. Now listen to those pieces out of context. Not bad and all but, they don’t really do it. The problem is that a piece of music needs to build, the themes, tone mood, strains need to be established, need to be layered, the listener given time to submit himself and be lead to his climactic moment.

But in a film this process of emotional foreplay takes place on the screen, or at least bits of it do. If you feel scared when the Luftwaffe show up it because you’ve seen them training, you’ve seen the citizens of London digging holes, you seen the RAF trying to find their feet, and then, when the planes show up the music puts you over the edge. Same goes for the March of the Shrubbery from Lord of the Rings. The wrenching process of watching the Council of Ferns decide whether to go to war or not, and knowing that time is running out, brings you to the point where the choral crescendo is appropriate. Robbed of the back story, and the visuals, it’s just you listening to a warbling Celtic woman in your living room. This is no disrespect to the writers of these pieces. I’m sure they have more than enough ability to write a piece that reduces me to tears and that manipulates my emotions all over the place, but that isn’t what they are doing. They are writing a piece that complements a scene that manipulates ones emotions. The upshot of this is that I almost never buy soundtracks because, robbed of the film, they are intolerably uninteresting.

This is the problem with soundtracks. It takes a very specific set of circumstances for them to work as both stand alone pieces and complements to the movie. Bull Durham springs to mind, as does the Big Chill and (thank you Toad for getting this in early) Dead Man Walking. In all of these cases music you listen to is used, and played, just as though the characters themselves were listening to it. Therefore, given your characters are people of some taste it stands to reason the songs they listen to would be good; hence you just have a mix tape compiled by a fictional character. Excellent.

All this might lead you to believe that I think soundtracks shouldn’t be released, or that they are largely rubbish. Of course that is not what I’m saying. It’s music, and good music by and large, but should be appreciated for what it is, and understood as such. Both from the listener who buys a CD, and can’t figure out why it’s not that powerful in his living room, and by music exec’s who can’t figure out why the excellent song they chose doesn’t quite fit in the film they are making.

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – Tracks of my Tears FromThe Big Chill
Tom Waits – Walk Away Dead Man Walking
Bruce Springsteen – Dead Man Walkin’
Ben didn’t mention High Fidelity but, mediocre as the film was (and the book is fucking awful) I thought they used the soundtrack pretty well, so here’s a couple of songs from that:
The Velvet Underground – Oh Sweet Nuthin’
Bob Dylan – Most of the Time

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #4 – Tom Waits – One From the Heart

[The latest installment of our soundtracks series is even more rambling than some of my own screeds. Christ you lot are like a burst dam aren't you! Allow me to present one half of Drunk Country, generally known as DC to you regular commenters, and a man who harbours a Tom Waits obsession that may even eclipse my own, although I think I'd give him a run for his money. He also, along with a dubious cast of cohorts, presents the fine show The Waiting Room on Error FM. It can be downloaded as a podcast, and I recommend you go and do just that. Perhaps start with The Waitsing Room, for some topical material.]

In 1981, when essentially rebuilding a career that had stalled after 8 moderately well received albums, Tom Waits decided to do voice-over work on a television commercial for Ralston Purina (now owned by Nestle). The product was a dry dog food called Butcher’s Blend. Waits’ unmistakable bourbon-cracked delivery was underscored by a light, feathery blue-smoke jazz, almost identical to that taking centre stage on his meisterwerk Nighthawks at the Diner. Embarrassingly for him it earned three prestigious industry awards: the Toronto Television Cinema International Winner, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival & Clio Awards Festival, New York. He vowed it would be the first & last whoring of his personality & talent.

Since then it has been well documented that Waits harbours an indelible distaste for artists that ‘appear’ in commercials. That little blip in 1981, against his better judgement but necessitated by financial desperation, sharply refocused his opinion that “Commercials are an unnatural use of my work”. Ever since, Waits has “adamantly & repeatedly refused this dubious honour”, referring to it as “like having a cow’s udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful & humiliating” – a perfect Waitsian metaphor if ever there was one.

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Soundtracks #3 – He was like “way”, and I was like, “No way, gag me with a spoon!”

[After the success of Crash and Nate, I am afraid I have been bullied into allowing my darling girl a go, by dint of threats of castration, involuntary abstinence and not having my tea on the goddam table when I get home from work. So without further ado I cast you into the arms of my one true love, the gorgeous, the swoonsome, the dazzling Mrs. Toad...]

Ah, the High School Movie, that much maligned genre. Cherished by few regular movie goers, certainly few over the age of 25. My guilty pleasure and the cause of numerous taunts and exclamations of, “oh, for fuck’s sake” from Mr Toad at the video store.

These films are inevitably focused on a few themes; the ascendance to high social status through some crafty plan, bet or blackmail (The New Guy, She’s All That, Can’t Buy Me Love), the last blast of youth before adulthood beckons (American Pie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, American Graffiti, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), breaking down social boundaries (The Breakfast Club) or a love story worthy of Austen or Choderlos de Laclos (Clueless, Cruel Intentions). Occasionally attracting critical acclaim (Brick) but more often leaning towards the execrable (Road Trip), I hire them all with a frisson of pleasure and anticipation.

Snort with disdain, but some of the films above helped launch the careers of George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker and Reese Witherspoon, a fair shake of Oscar winners and nominees. So the next time you see some teenage pap on the boards at the multiplex, take a shufti. You may just find yourself one up in the “I saw him/her first” Dinner Party Artistic Oeuvre Sweepstakes one day.

Now, the other facet of High School Movies is that they generally enjoy a healthy turn from their soundtracks. A party scene is inevitable, being the main forum (apart from exactly where one sits in the canteen/bleachers, a curiously US phenomenon) where social wheat is sorted from chaff. If you wish to see dancing scenes that approach the horrific brilliance of David Brent in The Office, 80’s High School Movies are often fertile ground for a spot of coordinated white boy body poppin with bat wing sweaters and rat tails flying (Corey Haim has a lot to answer for). You can laugh but 20 years ago you wanted to be them, Ice Ice Baby…

Soundtracks are often complemented by “live” prom turns from bands on the up and coming (or down and out..). The prom night denouement is virtually universal and real bands often turn up to have a turn on the silver screen. The legendary Pretty in Pink features the Plimsouls and the Rave-Ups at various points. Its such lucrative ground that some artists such as Sixpence None The Richer specialise in offering journeymanlike poppy nonsense just for the market, having scored “Kiss Me” on She’s All That, they later feature in Smallville (TV) and Not Another Teen Movie (shitting on their own doorstep surely?). Still, it has to be a step above screeching “Whoaaah, Bodyform!!! Bodyformed for youuuuuuuuu” in fanny pad ads at least. We can’t all be Radiohead (who condescended to have a song on the Clueless soundtrack btw). Of course, featuring on a film soundtrack is no guarantee of enduring success. One hit wonders are a frequent occurrence, Steal My Sunshine by Len anyone?

I could talk High School Movies all day and I’m always looking for more to watch, so suggestions welcome. In the meantime, I will leave you with a few instantly recognisable tracks from High School Movies past. In memory of Heath Ledger, who you may remember from an Oscar winning turn in Brokeback Mountain but I from such delights as 10 Things I Hate About You and medieval High School Movie, A Knight’s Tale, I have listed a couple of tracks from those movies.

Len – Steal My Sunshine (From Go)
David Bowie – Golden Years (From A Knight’s Tale)
The Raincoats – Lola (They weren’t on the soundtrack to 10 Things I Hate About You, but pretending to like them was Heath Ledger’s opening gambit in snaring Julia Stiles.)
Sixpence None the Richer – Kiss Me (From She’s All That)
The Platters – The Great Pretender (From American Graffiti)

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #2 – Why Shit Films Can Have Great Scores

[The second in the series about movie soundtracks comes from Nate Underkuffler who plays viola in the brilliant Young Republic. He's so into film music he used to record them on a tape player held up against the speakers on his television. Apparently the string arrangements for recent single Blue Skies were influenced by the soundtrack to Men in Black, so I thought I'd ask him to explain himself. For more on The Young Republic, here's a review of their new album 12 Tales From Winter City, and here's my recent interview with Julian and Chris from the band.]

How many people here periodically reflect on the breathless, exhilarating rush of creativity and manic sophistication of the 2002 Eddie Murphy film The Adventures of Pluto Nash? (The man on the moon.) How about marvel at the genre-transcending elegance and blossoming masterful skill which culminates in a sheer undeniable artistry that is found in the 1993 Wesley Snipes sci-fi film Demolition Man? Well, I certainly do. But alas, these traits cannot be found in all aspects of the films, but only in their music.

Wait, those movies had music in them? Oh they most certainly did, original music written by young artists who were riding the wave of their talents at their young and wild crest.

For some reason, people find it difficult to believe that a terrible film could have great music. Poor screenwriters and actors! It’s them who seem to be the one stop along a movie’s long assembly line that gets the brunt of audiences’ critical abuse. “The story didn’t go anywhere and was unrealistic.” “Some of that dialogue was so embarrassing!” “She was just terrible in that role!” are common complaints we all make when walking out of the movie theater. The more experienced of us may look to the direction or attention-grabbing special effects for sources of praise and disappointment, but few will venture to the more subtle crafts like lighting, sound effects, or apparently, original underscore.

Which has always been a mystery to me. If you’re reading this then chances are you have more than a passing interest in music, yet in the theater, the onrush of images seem to distract everyone from the virtually always-present distinctive and beautiful voices in contemporary music composition. Well, fair enough, I suppose the film-going experience is supposed to be a package deal.

People always find it odd when I sing the praises of scores to critically and popularly loathed films like The Musketeer or Legends of the Fall, but what they forget is that film composers are not inherently tied to the merits of the films they work on, but are in fact individual creative beings unto-themselves, who follow the same dynamics which govern any musical artist. Radiohead was the above-average 90s rock band that suddenly broke their way into exciting, creative ground in Ok Computer, and in turn developed these fruitful ideas to create the landmark and influential Kid A. In the same respect, John Powell is the above-average young film composer who suddenly found this tremendously exciting and unique side to his voice with his score to The Bourne Identity in 2002, and when he signed on to score the Ben Affleck sci-fi film Paycheck the next year, developed these ideas into a phenomenal piece of work. Little did it matter if Paycheck was a stupid movie or not. The notes Powell wrote were generated by his own head, not Affleck’s onscreen performance. A futuristic thriller gave him the guidelines to write great music, never mind if the film was actually a good futuristic thriller. After this undeniable talent was displayed, Powell’s films have since improved in quality. But a great score for a bad film is most likely to occur when the composer is young and really coming into their own, and the quality of the films they score haven’t caught up to the quality of their own talent.

But there is another situation where a great score can come from a bad film – the grand cinematic failure. The misguided Hollywood film that has all of the resources and technical talents money can buy, but is doomed by some fatal flaw(s). The first Pirates of the Caribbean film has, in my humble opinion, absolutely insipid, horrible music. But the two sequels –which I think we can all agree are inferior works to the original- are blessed with far more creative, accomplished music. This is because the schedule of the first film was such that a team of B-level composers had literally 2 weeks to write and record the music, but after that film’s success the filmmakers were able to hire the very accomplished, and undeniably talented (as well as more expensive) composer Hans Zimmer. Although the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies were hollow and a muddle of narrative carelessness, like any Hollywood sequels meant only to make money, they did still intend to be grand adventure films. And a film composer does not score a film’s failure, but the film’s intentions. The final sequence of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is supposed to be this cataclysmic, supremely epic pirate showdown, yet it mostly just ends up being really stupid. Zimmer, however, does his job, and writes this grand pirate cataclysmic showdown symphony, and it may not be Beethoven, but it kicks ass. Unfortunately music can’t save a picture that’s already dead.

Of course, to be able to distinguish a film’s score from the merits of the overall film, as well as the ability to understand what makes a great film score, takes time, and a genuine interest in the art form- for example your mother probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Pavement and her neighbor’s crappy garage band. But the next time you have to sit through “We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story” on a bus ride, try to ignore the animated dinosaurs and keep your ears open; it may not be as bad as it looks.

Hog Chase Part 1
Meeting Cocteau

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!

Soundtracks #1 – The Commitments & the Enthusiastic Amateur

[This is the first in our series of posts about soundtracks. I really appreciate you all chipping in and making a contribution like this. We start with the splendid Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song. Enjoy.]

There’s an argument that tribute bands do a lot to help live music, filling schedules and keeping venues open that would otherwise struggle to scratch a living, but that this aside they’re generally to be sniffed at – folks who might be technically competent but are being fundamentally unimaginative.

Why then is a film about a covers band, essentially a tribute act for a label, if not a genre, so bloody good? And it’s not just about a blinding script and great performances, a rock solid sense of location and just that perfect feel, it’s also got a fantastic soundtrack even if it’s a soundtrack played by the tribute band.

It helps that they’re singing such fantastic songs (I’m reminded of one of the Python’s comments on the solid narrative structure of Life of Brian – ‘Yes, it has got a bit of shape, hasn’t it’) although this could easily mean that they can’t possibly do any of them any justice and you only end up hating them more.

I love the songs and I love the way they’re delivered here, with fun and passion and, well, yeah, commitment. I love the rehearsal scene up above the snooker hall – none of this packaged up ‘on three and into studio quality sound’ nonsense, their rehearsal is real, with the noodling around and the picking up each other’s instruments and the jokes and the baby (there isn’t always a baby but there’s always someone or something completely out of place – I remember being at a band rehearsal where there was a clown), and a launch into a performance at last which is substandard and messy and needs doing all over again.

I love the live shows – there’s an audience’s longing for that sense of community that The Commitments is very happy to exploit. I love the way everything comes together just for the song. I love the look and the sound of them. I love the fact that, as a rule, it’s not the obvious frontline tracks that they play but the things you might really love, the stuff you’d be putting on tapes for your mates ‘cause these were the less known songs they should really be listening to.

It helps as well that it all goes so horribly wrong. I love Joey’s line at the end (I love most of Joey’s lines, we’ll come back to this in a minute) that ‘sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff but that would have been predictable’. What’s so wonderful is that for all of their fantastic individual talent and their wonderful if occasional cohesiveness on stage is that they’re never more than committed and enthusiastic amateurs.

And it occurs to me, in a bit of a half-arsed ‘might not have thought this through’ way, that this is us, this is what we do – we find stuff that we care about and, committed and enthusiastic amateurs that we are, we go on about it without any sense of professional detachment and we maybe put a bit more of ourselves into this than we should, and just for a little while there’s a real sense, I think, that we get to live the dream. So if you’re one of Mr Toad’s many readers who isn’t actually a blogger, and, I have to say, if you’re maybe in your 30s, and you have a reasonably fulfilling career and you’re doing okay, and you’ve always had a bit of a thing in the back of your mind about doing some writing but you’ve never quite worked out how to get around to it, this is how. You start a blog. You go to blogger or wordpress or typepad and you sign up and you choose a name (you’ve already chosen one and you know it) and you think about that first entry. There’s a community out here that you can connect with you will read you and agree with you and disagree with you and nudge you along. You might not have very much initially but it would be a start and, as Joey would say, I believe in starts. Once you have the start the rest is inevitable.

The Commitments – Destination Anywhere
The Commitments – The Dark End of the Street

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!