Lights, Camera, Music!

I was reading an article this week about the impact music has had on films and it got me wondering are film soundtracks as important as the actual film itself? I seem to think so. Now I’m not going to blab on about The Sound of Music or Titanic, but proper films!!! Films with great sound tracks

Nowhere better to start than Reservoir Dogs I reckon. I believe it set the precedent for the modern day film sound track when Quentin Tarantino released his debut film in 1992. Since then, some people have always looked at the track listings before watching the actual film before they pass judgment on whether it was worth the admission fee they paid that ended up lining Mr Tarantino’s pockets. Personally I think he’s never let anyone down with his choice of songs. The iconic opening scene in Reservoir Dogs sits firmly in the mind of any music goer as ‘Little Green Bag’ plays as all the guys walk down the street in their black suits!! Brilliant stuff

Another thing Tarantino has done with some of his collections of songs is inadvertently re-launch the careers of certain bands. Take Steelers Wheel (stuck in the middle with you from Reservoir Dogs) and Urge Overkill (Girl, you’ll be a woman soon from Pulp Fiction). Both of these bands are without doubt hugely in debt to Mr Tarantino. If not, they would have been firmly placed in the archives of music history and a career of obscurity

When it comes to some films sound tracks, I actually prefer the productions that have had the complete score written and produced by the one person. Take the Clint Eastwood classics Dirty Harry and Magnum Force for examples. Both films had the music written by the legendary film scorer Lalo Schifrin. I remember years ago when we used to play at The Picket we used to enter the stage to the opening music to Dirty Harry. Lalo Schifrin also wrote the soundtrack to films such as Enter the Dragon, Bullitt and Kelly’s Heroes and television programmes such as Starsky and Hutch and Mission Impossible. Total legend!!

There is one film soundtrack that I absolutely love to death and it’s a small segment of a film from the seventies called The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty. If you get a chance watch the film and listen to the music in the scene when Beatty goes to The Parallax Corporation for ‘processing’ and they play him a film consisting of a series of images. The music is utterly stunning. No idea who wrote it, but it’s superb none the less.

The best of British films sound tracks has to be Guy Ritchie’s black comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The film itself has such artists as James Brown, The Stone Roses, (Billy) Ocean Colour Scene, The Stooges and the rather superb vocally blessed Pete Wingfield with his high pitched ’18 With A Bullet’. I think Ritchie kind of seen himself as the ‘English Tarantino’, sadly the rather shit ‘Swept Away’ swept away (sorry) any credibility Ritchie had after ‘Lock Stock’ and ‘Snatch’!! Poetic justice really for casting your missus in a film if you ask me! Plus the fact that it was a complete bag of fucking shit also made him lose even more face in the film making department. Divorce soon followed and the rest is history!

But, my all time favourite sound track has to be without doubt Boogie Nights starring Bert Reynolds, Mark Walberg and Julianne Moore. Some absolute classics on there including: Rick Springfield, ELO, The Beach Boys, Marvyn Gaye and The Commodores. Even the utterly shocking songs written by John C Reilly that are performed by Marc Walberg (“Feel The Heat & “The Touch”) as the starring man Dirk Diggler we’re superb comedy value if only for their pure cringe worthy ness!! Superb film as well

But some times it is the music that takes the starring role. Rightly so in this day and age when, sadly, there are not enough decent actors and actresses to go around.

Thank god for music archivists eh?

Mol