Tag: Soundtrack

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Tunes

100 best covers: #30 Eddie Vedder “You’ve got to hide your love away”

<< #31    |    #29 >>

Well, we’re finally breaking into the top thirty on this list of my favourite ever covers and it’s Pearl Jam frontman doing The Beatles’ “You’ve got to hide your love away”.

This is the fourth cover of a Beatles song we’ve seen on the list so far* and the third track to be pulled from the “I am Sam” soundtrack. In the two previous such posts, I mentioned how the soundtrack for the 2001 film consists solely of Beatles covers, faithful in track length and time signatures, given the filmmakers were not granted the rights to include the originals and that the songs had already been selected for already filmed scenes. It was a brilliant save by the filmmakers and the result is probably a more interesting soundtrack than it might have been, as great as The Beatles’ originals of those seventeen songs were.

It’s no accident that I am timing this post to follow the one counting down albums ten through six in my Best film soundtrack series. If you’ve been following along, you’d know that “I am Sam” didn’t appear as one my honourable mentions back on February 1st, nor was it amongst the latter half of my top ten. And when I saw this particular post on radar to write, I thought I’d take the opportunity to clear the air before moving into the top five – “I am Sam” won’t be one of them. Great concept yes, and some of the renditions were quite successful, but I’d say that almost of half of them were less so, making the whole less than its parts. An uneven listen.

Eddie Vedder’s cover was another one of the bright spots. Faithful to the original, not only in sound but also in spirit, a playful wink of the eye.

Much has been made of the fact that the John Lennon-penned “You’ve got to hide your love away” was his attempt at Bob Dylan. Successful or not, the fourth track on side one of 1965’s “Help” album is Lennon singing solo overtop a bed made of mostly acoustic guitars. Sure there’s a bit of percussion but it’s definitely before Dylan went electric and where Mr. Zimmerman would typically accompany himself with a harmonica, The Beatles opted for some flutes in its place.

Vedder opted for similar ethos with his cover. You can almost imagine him standing on a New York City street corner with a harmonica neck holder around his neck, a kick pedal attached to a high hat at his feet. The production even sounds dusty, DIY, and of a different time.

Lovely stuff indeed. Better than the original? Well…

Cover:

Original:

*The three previous posts were Rufus Wainwright’s “Across the universe” at #90, Cornershop’s “Norwegian wood (this bird has flown” at #69, and Sarah McLachlan’s “Blackbird” at #58.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Albums

Best film soundtracks: Albums #10 through #6

Just over a couple of weeks ago I gave a sneak preview into my new “Best albums” series and provided a handful of ‘honourable mentions’ just to whet your appetite. If you missed that post, go on back and check it out. I’ll wait. If you’ve already perused that piece, you’d know that I am (or at least I was) almost as big a fan of films as I am of music.

What I didn’t mention two weeks ago is that I’ve never been a huge collector of film soundtracks. No. As much as I appreciate how the choice of music can elevate a film immeasurably, how much I enjoy well placed songs and picking and pointing them out when I recognize them, it’s a rare thing for me to want to sit down and listen to film soundtrack more than just the one time. The albums in this list will represent the exceptions to the rule. These are soundtracks that are not just great accompaniments to the films for which they were compiled but are also great listens in their own right. In some cases, they perfectly evoke the feeling of the films and remind of particular scenes. In others, the compilations stand on their own, even transcending the films to become a cultural phenomenon.

In today’s post, I’ll share albums ten through six of my list of ten favourite film soundtracks. Then, I’ll share the top five, giving each their due in their own post, over the next month or so, interspersed with the other lists that I’ve got on the go. As always, I welcome your comments and perhaps your own favourite soundtracks as we go.

Let’s start.

#10 “Marie Antoinette” (2006)

Sofia Coppola often used indie music to great effect in her films, especially in her early work. Her third feature length film was a biography on Marie Antoinette, beginning with her being married off to the dauphin of France and ending at the eruption of the French Revolution. If you put on the soundtrack without context, you likely wouldn’t guess the story it was meant to help tell, but accompanying the highly stylized film, it was perfect. Mostly pulled from the original wave of post punk and new wave of the 80s, which was seeing a resurgence in indie rock during the time that the film was released. Great tunes by Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, The Cure, and a well-placed “I want candy” by Bow Wow Wow, but the real treat was two tracks by newer indie rockers The Radio Dept., who I was just falling in love with at the time.

#9 “Clueless” (1995)

A retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, disguised as a teen rom-com, set in Beverley Hills? AS IF! It starred a very young Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd in their earliest film roles, was mildly successful in the theatres but gained traction on video, and has become something of a cult classic. Of course, in the 90s, when alt rock was king, film soundtracks had a habit of playing like a mixed tape of the hottest things or the about-to-be hottest things. “Clueless” had to be hip to be a hit with the teen audience it was targeting and it didn’t fail. It starts with some interesting covers by The Muffs (Kim Wilde), Cracker (Flamin’ Groovies), and Counting Crows (Psychedelic Furs) and rounds things out with some hit Britpop (Radiohead, Lightning Seeds, Supergrass), my favourite Bosstones track, and introduced me to The Smoking Popes.

#8 “Fear & loathing in Las Vegas” (1998)

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.” I remember being super hyped when I first heard that “Fear & loathing”, one of my favourite books at the time, was being adapted for the screen by Terry Gilliam and would star Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro in the principal roles. I went to see it in the theatre with my friend Crissy at the Promenade Mall north of Toronto and we howled all the way through, even as the half-empty theatre drained by half that, even before the quarter mark of the film. The soundtrack features psychedelic rock of 60s, notably, Jefferson Airplane’s “White rabbit” which features prominently in a particular scene in the book, as well as Vegas residency crooners (like Tom Jones and Perry Como). Dialogue bits by Depp and Del Toro lead into most of the tracks and are interspersed between them, as if Depp is narrating the soundtrack as he does the film. A drug fuelled trip chasing the American dream.

#7 “Vanilla sky” (2001)

Back at the end of the 90s, Tom Cruise convinced Cameron Crowe (who he had worked with on “Jerry Maguire”) to remake Spanish-language film “Abre los ojos”. I went to see it in the theatre, not for Cruise, but because I’d always admired Crowe’s work. I remember enjoying it at the time but remember very little of the film, save for its surreal quality and how it was left open to the audiences’ interpretation as to what was real and what was not. Of course, Crowe’s soundtrack contributes to the dreaminess of it all. On paper it might seem eclectic, ranging from R.E.M. to Bob Dylan to The Monkees and Peter Gabriel, but collected together, it’s a beautiful thing. Indeed, this soundtrack completely changed my outlook on “Solsbury hill” and “Sweetness follows” and it also introduced me to Iceland ambient rock band Sigur Rós. Lovely stuff.

#6 “(500) Days of Summer” (2009)

“This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know upfront that this is not a love story.” “(500) days of summer” is an indie non-romantic comedy that stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and indie it-girl Zooey Deschanel as its two principals. Their story was not straightforward but it was bound to end in heartbreak. Of course, it was. It had its start in a shared love of The Smiths. In a film where the music was almost a third piece in a love triangle, an integral character, the soundtrack would without a doubt be something special. It plays like a mixed tape put together by Tom and Summer from their collective collections, featuring Doves, Black Lips, Hall & Oates (!), Feist, Regina Spector, Simon & Garfunkel, and unsurprisingly, The Smiths. And if you get the deluxe editions, you get the songs performed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Pixies’ “Here comes your man”) and Zooey Deschanel (Nancy Sinatra’s “Sugar town”) during the karaoke scene. Definitely a compilation as fun as the film it accompanies.

Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

Categories
Albums

Best film soundtracks: Honourable mentions

And now for something completely different… er… perhaps just a mild change of pace.

I’ve been doing these ‘Best albums’ series pretty regularly since I started this blog close to 10 years ago. But up to now, each of these series have been focused on a specific year, whether it be an end of the year recap of faves or a fond nostalgic look back on a certain year. For my first ‘Best albums’ series of the year, however, I’ve decided instead to go thematic and focus on my favourite ever motion picture soundtracks.

Back when I was a teenager and into my early twenties, I was a rabid cinephile. Indeed, I almost spent as much time watching films as did listening to music. It was a love I got from my mother, who’d been watching films since her own youth and began collecting films as soon as they were available in a format to watch from home, first on VHS and later, DVD. The household collection grew quickly and I never wanted for something to watch. In fact, it was often a bigger problem and took a herculean effort to choose just one film. It wasn’t long before I had my own favourite actors, directors, and screenwriters that I would follow and typically knew when they had something new being released. After moving out of my childhood home, my film watching slowly waned and I eventually got to a point where I would watch films weekly rather than daily, quality rather than quantity.

Still, many of my favourite films are from the days of my youth. And of course, I still love sitting down to dig into a good flick. Maybe I won’t watch just anything these days but certain actors will always tempt, as will anything that focuses on writing and writers and to be sure, anything to do with music.

Which brings us back to the task at hand: film soundtracks. We’ll get down to my top ten favourites over the next few months but first, on this first day of February, I’m going to whet your appetite by sharing a handful of great soundtracks that didn’t quite make the cut.

Action!

21 (2008):  A slick and hip, indie-heavy soundtrack that perhaps even out-hipped the slick, heist film that was based upon but over-sensationalized real events.
Check out: “L.S.F. (Lost souls forever” Mark Ronson feat. Kasabian

24 hour party people (2002):  The soundtrack for the amazing biopic on Factory Records, Tony Wilson, and the Manchester scene features a number of artists, both well-known and lesser-known, associated with Factory.
Check out: “Love will tear us apart” Joy Division

Forrest Gump (1994):  A double album of strictly American musical artists that reflect and embody the three decades – from the 50s to the 80s – that we experience of Forrest Gump’s remarkable life.
Check out: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The Byrds

Rocky Horror picture show (1975): The soundtrack of the cult film/musical/phenomenon features the film’s cast*  belting out those twisted numbers we all know and love.
Check out: “The time warp”

Stand by me (1986): Music from the 1980s film based on the Stephen King novella “The body” perfectly evokes being a teenager with your friends on an adventure at the end of summer in 1959*.
Check out: “Stand by me” Ben E. King

*Including Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Richard O’Brien, and Meat Loaf.

**Okay, I wasn’t there, but that’s how I imagine it. That’s certainly how it felt for me at that age in the 80s, but with different songs.

I’ll be back very soon with albums #10 through #6 for my Best film soundtracks list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.