Music choices in movies can be crucial to setting the mood, capturing a moment or moving the plot along. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs for an imaginary movie soundtrack in hour 2. It's an eclectic collection of awesome tuneage. Great for driving through Hollywood, for example.
This playlist doesn't pick up hitchhikers:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Kinski - Experimental Hugs/Stumbledown Terrace
The Murder Capital - Moonshot/Blindness
Art d'Ecco - Survival of the Fittest/Serene Demon
Patterson Hood - The Van Pelt Parties (feat. Wednesday)/Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
Dax Riggs - Graveyard Soul/7 Songs for Spiders
Guided By Voices - Aluminum Stingray Girl/Universe Room
Emerald Comets - Dreamnight/Single
Cutouts - Narc/Snakeskin
Horsegirl - Well I Know You're Shy/Phonetics On and On
Kestrels - Total Bummer/Better Wonder
FACS - You Future/Wish Defense
Charm School - Je T'aime (A Quoi Bon)/Debt Forever
Lambrini Girls - Nothing Tastes as Good as It Feels/Who Let the Dogs Out
Sharon Van Etten - Trouble/Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
English Teacher - I'm Not Crying You're Crying/This Could Be Texas
Twin Foxes - Crossed/Green, It's All Around You
Squid - Building 650/Cowards
Hour 2: Soundtrack to an imaginary movie
Gang of Four - To Hell with Poverty!/ Another Day/Another Dollar EP
Peter Gabriel - Modern Love/Peter Gabriel (1977)
Stiv Bators - Make Up Your Mind/Disconnected
Ween - It's Gonna Be a Long Night/Quebec
Fu Manchu - Boogie Van/King of the Road
Neil Young - Cocaine Eyes/Eldorado EP
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Mistakes and Regrets/Madonna
Orbit - Medicine/Libido Speedway
Jawbreaker - I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both/Dear You
Parliament - Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)/Mothership Connection
Speedy Ortiz - Puffer feat. Lizzo (Lazerbeak remix)/Foiled Again EP
Yves Tumor - Echolalia/Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
XTC - Helicopter/Drums and Wires
Robert Palmer - Looking for Clues/Clues
The Police - Truth Hits Everybody/Outlandos d'Amour
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the soundtrack for the 1970 film Performance.
Movies and music have gone together well since the earliest days of film. There's the score, which is typically instrumental music written for the film that sets the tone for the individual scenes. And then there's the soundtrack, which can consist of specific songs chosen for inclusion in the movie. These can be originals, previously recorded songs or big hits that reflect the time period portrayed in the film.
Some songs have become indelibly tied to certain films. One of those is "Memo from Turner," which Mick Jagger recorded for the soundtrack of the 1970 movie Performance, in which he co-starred as a reclusive rock star.
The movie had a crazy back story. Co-director Donald Cammell originally planned it as a lighthearted '60s romp, with Marlon Brando in the role of the gangster Chas. Later, British actor James Fox took over the gangster role and the story turned into a darker tale filled with graphic violence, sex and drug use. Fox's character is an ambitious London gangster who goes into hiding at the home of Turner (Jagger).
Warner Bros., which was bankrolling the film, assumed it was going to be the Rolling Stones' version of A Hard Day's Night; they were in for a big surprise. Although it was filmed in 1968, the movie wasn't released until 1970 because of the studio's concerns over the sex and violence. Reportedly the wife of a Warners exec vomited in shock at a test screening. When the movie was released in the U.S., the voices of several key actors were dubbed because the studio thought Americans wouldn't be able to understand their Cockney accents. Critics gave the film mixed reviews upon its release; noted critic Richard Schickel of Life called it "the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing." Tell us how you really feel, Dick.
The Stones were originally supposed to write the soundtrack, but there were issues that arose. Jagger's character was involved with one played by Anita Pallenberg, an actress and model who just happened to be the real-life girlfriend of Keith Richards (who stole her away from fellow Stone Brian Jones). Richards was concerned that about rumors that Jagger and Pallenberg had real sex during filming, which was apparently confirmed by Stones pianist Ian Stewart, who was on set during the sex scene. After that, Richards did not want to be involved in the soundtrack, so other musicians were recruited.
The soundtrack was produced by Jack Nitzsche, who was well known for his work with the Stones and Neil Young, among many others. Other major contributors were a young Randy Newman, who sang a rocking version of the song "Gone Dead Train" and slide guitarist extraordinaire Ry Cooder, who contributed some instrumentals as well as the ripping slide on "Memo from Turner."
The song itself has an interesting history. Jagger and Richards wrote the song and the Stones recorded a version in September 1968, featuring Brian Jones on guitar; it was eventually released on the 1975 odds and sods compilation Metamorphosis. After their falling out over Pallenberg, Richards stopped working on the soundtrack and Jagger brought in Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi of Traffic to help out with "Memo." Winwood played bass and Capaldi drums, and then Winwood added guitar, piano and organ. That slower version is below. A few months later, Nitzsche replaced Winwood's guitar with Cooder on slide and Russ Titelman on additional guitar; the organ was removed and the piano parts redone by Randy Newman. This was the version that ended up on the soundtrack and is the best, in my opinion, thanks to Cooder's wicked slide work.
The song was released as a solo single by Jagger in 1970, hitting #32 on the U.K. singles chart. It's a dark, gritty song that fit in well with the "Sympathy for the Devil" era of the Stones.
"Didn't I see you down in San Antone/On a hot and dusty night?/You were eating eggs in Sammy's/When the black man there drew his knife/Oh, you drowned that Jew in Rampton/As he washed his sleeveless shirt/You know, that Spanish-speaking gentleman/The one we all called Kurt?/Come now, gentlemen/I know there's some mistake/How forgetful I'm becoming/Now you've fixed your business straight."
Two decades later, the song re-emerged after Martin Scorsese used it in 1990's Goodfellas in the scene where a coked-out Ray Liotta thinks helicopters are following him. Although it was miscredited as the Stones' version, it's actually the solo Jagger one. A year later, it was covered by the alt-rock band Dramarama, who did a nice version with Mick Taylor on lead guitar, and then in 1993, Debbie Harry of Blondie covered the song on her Debravation tour.
I was in DC over the weekend and picked up a used copy of the Performance soundtrack from a cool little record shop called Art Sound Language. It had been a long time since I'd heard "Memo from Turner," but it's still great.
As for the movie, I haven't actually seen it, other than a few clips, but it developed a cult following in the '70s and '80s and is now considered a classic British gangster film. Quentin Tarantino called Performance "one of the best rock movies of all time." It's available to rent online at a number of different streaming outlets including Amazon Prime and Apple+.
So much is happening right now that 40 years ago might as well be 400, but here we are. As one of the elders who was actually around then, I played songs from 1985 in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage this week. It was a heady time, full of emerging powerhouses, poppy confections and pure genius.
All MacGyver needs is a paper clip to turn this playlist into a pipe bomb:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Mclusky - Way of the Exploding Dickhead/The World is Still Here and So Are We
Hunger Anthem - Ways/Lift
FACS - A Room/Wish Defense
Dax Riggs - Sunshine Felt the Darkness Smile/7 Smiles for Spiders
Horsegirl - Rock City/Phonetics On and On
Squid - Cro-Magnon Man/Cowards
Black Country, New Road - Besties/Forever Howlong
Bully - Atom Bomb (Electric Version)/Single
Guided By Voices - The Great Man/Universe Room
Kestrels - Dream of You in Black/Better Wonder
Ex-Void - Swansea/In Love Again
The Laughing Chimes - High Beams/Whispers in the Speech Machine
Charm School - Cherry Red/Debt Forever
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man in My Head/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
Ben Lee - Like This or Like That (Demo version)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
Charles Moothart - The Truth (Will Do That)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
Hour 2: 1985
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Just Like Honey/Psychocandy
R.E.M. - Life and How to Live It/Fables of the Reconstruction
The Replacements - Swingin' Party (Ed Stasium mix)/Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)
Black Flag - Out of This World/In My Head
Husker Du - I Apologize/New Day Rising
Husker Du - Hate Paper Doll/Flip Your Wig
The Cure - In Between Days/The Head on the Door
The Cult - Rain/Love
Sonic Youth - Brave Men Run (In My Family)/Bad Moon Rising
Prince and the Revolution - Tamborine/Around the World in a Day
The Power Station - Get It On (Bang a Gong)/The Power Station
Y&T - Summertime Girls/Down for the Count
Ratt - Lay It Down/Invasion of Your Privacy
David Lee Roth - Easy Street/Crazy from the Heat EP
Jason and the Scorchers - White Lies/Lost & Found
Pete Townshend - Secondhand Love/White City: A Novel
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at the Columbia House Record Club, which mass-produced records, tapes and CDs for generations with bait-and-switch offers.
If you're of a certain age (40+), you've likely heard of the Columbia House Record Club. In the early '80s, when I joined, it advertised in magazines like Parade with offers of 12 records for a penny. Of course, the catch was you had to buy several more at a marked-up price.
I signed up at age 14 in 1982 after we had moved to Washington state. You would receive a monthly mailing with a catalog and card featuring a record of the month, which the club would mail you if you didn't return the card within 10 days saying you didn't want it (or you wanted something else). Many kids would sign up under fake names, pocketing the records (or cassettes or later, CDs) and then signing up under a different name. I wasn't savvy enough to think of these tactics, so I just kept sending the card back.
There was a competing club run by RCA (which later became BMG) that I also joined. I used the clubs to build my music collection with older releases by bands like Led Zeppelin, the Who and Van Halen. Later, I got some decent deals on box sets by the Velvet Underground, the Clash and Robert Johnson. But basically the whole thing was a scam that lasted for decades.
The club used negative option billing, a practice in which services are automatically supplied to consumers until a specific cancellation order is issued. The practice was outlawed in Canada in 2005 and is still legal in 35 states (as of a few years ago).
Also, as it turned out, underage customers weren't legally bound to the agreement; sadly, I didn't realize this until much later.
Columbia House got its start in 1955 as the Columbia Record Club, formed by CBS/Columbia Records as a foray into mail-order sales. It grew so fast that the company moved its operations from New York City to Terre Haute, Indiana, where the company had opened a record pressing facility. Soon RCA Victor and Capitol Records also launched record clubs; each club sold only their label's releases at first.
In the 1960s, Columbia began clubs for reel-to-reel, 8-track and cassette tapes, with Columbia House becoming the overarching brand for the mail-order divisions. By 1975, there were more than 3 million members. In 1982, the CBS Video Club became part of Columbia House. In 1988, Sony acquired the CBS Records Group, which included Columbia House, which had 6 million members at the time. The corporate shuffling continued in 1991, when the CBS Records Group was renamed Sony Music Entertainment and half of Columbia House was sold to Time Warner, which added Time Life's video and music clubs, pushing the membership of Columbia House to 10 million.
After college, I started buying CDs like everybody else and realized they were a lot cheaper to buy used from record stores. I fulfilled my record club agreements and ditched them both in the early '90s, but Columbia House grew even bigger in the CD era. In 1994, Columbia House and other clubs accounted for 15% of all CD sales; two years later, Columbia House hit its peak at 16 million members. The clubs targeted customers in rural areas who didn't have access to record stores.
In 1999, Columbia House announced a merger with online retailer CDNow, which was struggling and had partnerships with Columbia House and its owners Sony and Time Warner. The merger was abandoned the following year as Columbia House's finances were having trouble and there was increased competition from a new retailer called Amazon.com. CDNow was then bought by Bertelsmann, which partially merged it with BMG Direct in a new venture called BeMusic. Amazon then took over CDNow in 2001; that year, music clubs accounted for less than 8% of all CD sales, which was attributed to competition from online outlets and big box retailers like Wal-Mart.
In 2001, a security breach in the Columbia House website exposed thousands of customer names, addresses and portions of credit card numbers. The following year, Sony and AOL Time Warner sold 85% of Columbia House to an investment firm called The Blackstone Group. There were rumors of a merger of Columbia House and Blockbuster, but that never happened. In 2005, longtime rival BMG bought Columbia House and merged it with the BMG Music Service, calling the new venture BMG Columbia House.
Of course, by this time, CD sales were plummeting thanks to the proliferation of digital music and file-sharing sites like Napster that allowed people to download terabytes of free music. Nobody was buying physical media anymore, let alone from a scammy record club.
Another investment firm, JMCK Corp. (the 2000s were the era of the investment firm; the company I worked was bought and sold by a few of them during that time) bought BMG Columbia House and changed its name to the uber-catchy Direct Brands. The music mail-order part of the club was shut down on June 30, 2009. Direct Brands continued to run a DVD and Blu-Ray Disc club under the name Columbia House; the club's owners filed for bankruptcy in 2015. There's a still a Columbia House website up, although it doesn't seem like it has been updated in a while.
Since the decline of the big mail-order music clubs, vinyl (and cassettes to a lesser degree) have made a slight return to popularity courtesy of hipsters. Artists like Taylor Swift and Adele have created a huge demand for their vinyl releases, so much so that pressing plants are overwhelmed by them and lower-profile artists have to wait to get their albums pressed. Rabid young fans often buy the records without having anything to play them on.
And there are even newer clubs springing up like Vinyl Me, Please that send a record of the month to members. Another popular option for many indie artists is to reissue albums on vinyl, especially 20th or 30th anniversary editions with bonus tracks.
In a music world dominated by streaming, it's nice to have physical media to turn to on occasion. I still have most of the records I bought from Columbia House and RCA/BMG (and even the cassette of Eddie Murphy's Comedian album; I only listened to that on my Walkman so my mom wouldn't freak out at all the swearing), so I guess I got my money's worth. Sort of.
Oh hey, it's Valentine's Day. A big deal for some, not so much for others. Whatever the case, this week on Stuck In Thee Garage I played anti-Valentine's songs in hour 2 because why the hell not? There are many occasions when love does indeed stink.
This playlist says whoop de doo:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
FACS - Desire Path/Wish Defense
Rocket - Take Aim/Versions of You
Charm School - Crime Time/Debt Forever
Algernon Cadwallader - Springing Leaks (live)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
The War on Drugs - Arms Like Boulders (live)/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
Ty Segall - The Hallway/Super Bloom: A Benefit for Fire Relief in Los Angeles
Destroyer - Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World/Dan's Boogie
Pigeon Pit - Apple/Crazy Arms
Chemtrails - Sycophant's Paradise/The Joy of Sects
Shawn Smith - Turn On the Water/Single
Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke) 9/28/03 SOMA-Chicago version/A Ghost is Born expanded edition
Hallelujah the Hills - I Wanna Destroy You/Puritan Garage Howlers Vol. II
Lambrini Girls - Filthy Rich Nepo Baby/Who Let the Dogs Out
Twin Foxes - Pinnacle/Green, It's All Around You
Wild Pink - Eating the Egg Whole/Dulling the Horns
Hour 2: Anti-Valentine's
Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)/Singles Going Steady
Grinderman - No Pussy Blues/Grinderman
The Godfathers - Love is Dead/Birth, School, Work, Death
PJ Harvey - Dry/Rid of Me
The Raveonettes - Expelled from Love/Lust Lust Lust
The Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing/Pretenders
Betty Davis - Anti Love Song/Betty Davis
PUP - Robot Writes a Love Song/The Unraveling of PUPtheBand
Matthew Sweet - Love is Gone/Kimi Ga Suki Raifu
Band of Horses - No One is Gonna Love You/Cease to Begin
The Pursuit of Happiness - Killed by Love/Love Junk
Van Halen - You're No Good/II
Judas Priest - (Take These) Chains/Screaming for Vengeance
Sasami - Not a Love Song/Squeeze
Crystal Castles - Not in Love (feat. Robert Smith)/Single
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at V66, the short-lived Boston-based music video channel from the mid-1980s.
In this age of on-demand streaming of pretty much anything you want, it's interesting to look back on how different things were for entertainment options when I was a kid. You were pretty much at the whim of radio and TV programmers in terms of when and what you could see; if you missed the episode of Happy Days that featured Robin Williams as Mork from Ork (which originally aired in February 1978), you had to wait for summer reruns to see it again. There were no DVRs or on-demand options, or even VCRs (at least nobody I knew had one then) to record the episode.
Artists had been making music videos since the 1960s, but I didn't really become aware of them until 1979, when a Toronto station called CITY-TV began airing a show called The New Music. In addition to running interviews with the hottest musicians of the day and concert footage, the show would air music videos. I remember seeing "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie, "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police, "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads and "One Step Beyond" by Madness, among many others. This coincided with the beginning of my lifelong obsession with music, so seeing videos was a cool new way to enjoy it.
I remember hearing about the launch of MTV in the U.S. in August 1981; a few months later, we would move to Richland, Washington, where my dad had taken a job. The cable system there, like many in the country, hadn't picked up MTV yet, so it was just a concept at that point. But there were other ways to see videos: USA Network's Night Flight was a four-hour show that featured full-length and short films, concerts and rock videos, and HBO had a show called Video Jukebox.
A few years later, we moved to Kingston, New Hampshire, where the cable system again didn't have MTV available. NBC launched Friday Night Videos at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning (right after Late Night with David Letterman); I would try and stay up and watch it up but would often fall asleep part way through because it was so late. One time, I was fading in and out while watching Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance," which led to some really strange dreams. And the Boston CBS affiliate had a show called Hot Hit Video that would air in the afternoons after school. Sometimes I would go with my friend Jeremy to his girlfriend's house in a neighboring town where they got MTV and watch videos for hours.
During my senior year of high school (1984-85), I discovered a new video channel called V66. It wasn't on our cable system, but you could pick it up with an antenna on the UHF band (if you cut the cord from cable now, you can still pick up UHF stations with a digital antenna). We had one TV that wasn't on cable and one day I was watching and flipping stations and came across channel 66, which was playing "How Soon is Now?" by the Smiths; I was blown away by the song, but also the fact that this station existed.
WVJV-TV (aka V66) went on the air almost exactly 40 years ago, on February 12. Launched by Boston-area radio veterans John Garabedian and Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg, V66 followed the same format as MTV, with video jockeys introducing music videos and concerts and hosting events in the Boston area. The station played a wide variety of music, from rock to pop to hip hop, mixing in local unknown acts with major artists. Local artists featured included Til Tuesday, Del Fuegos, Extreme and the Fools. With the New England Patriots getting ready to take on the Chicago Bears in the 1986 Super Bowl, V66 even produced an answer video to the Bears' popular "Super Bowl Shuffle" called "New England, the Patriots and We." It's as hilariously cringy as it sounds (see below), and the Pats ended up getting demolished by the Bears.
In July 1985, V66 aired the big Live Aid benefit concerts (in addition to ABC). Eventually in an attempt to increase ratings, the station added news shows, sports highlights, comedies and syndicated programs. Ratings were measured by 30- and 60-minute blocks; it was difficult to maintain steady ratings when a viewer might change the channel if they didn't like a particular song that was airing. (Interestingly enough, MTV came to the same realization a few years later and began airing non-music-based programming like the game show Remote Control and later reality shows like The Real World and Road Rules. MTV still exists, but you won't find music videos anymore, just endless viewings of tedious "reality" shows.)
I didn't watch V66 a whole lot because the signal was so fuzzy; I lived in the boonies so V66 would kind of come and go. I would check in every so often and watch it for a while before it got too staticky. When I went to college in the fall of 1985, I didn't have a TV in my room anymore (we just had a bit TV in the dorm lounge; it was a different time, kids), so I wasn't able to watch V66 anymore. And then when I came home for the holidays that December, the local cable system had finally added MTV, so I watched that whenever I could.
V66 didn't stick around for very long. Garabedian was hoping it would become a national network, but by the summer of 1986, the station was sold to the Home Shopping Network; it went off the air on my 19th birthday, September 21, 1986. The station now broadcasts the Spanish-language network Univision to the Boston area.
Although it wasn't around very long, V66 made a strong impression on music fans in the Boston area. Local filmmaker Eric Green watched the channel as a young child and in 2008, began working on a documentary about V66, interviewing former staff and viewers. The documentary, Life on the V: The Story of V66, came out in 2014. It's been out on DVD since 2015 and is screening at the Somerville Theatre on February 27 as part of the theatre's February offerings. It's a fun look at an interesting blip in the Boston media landscape. I interviewed Green about Life on the V for my podcast in 2012 while he was making the film (listen to parts 1 and 2) and again in 2015 after it was released (listen here).
Fast forward 40 years and music videos are still made, but they're nowhere near as influential as they were in the '80s and '90s. You can find them on YouTube whenever you want, but you're hard-pressed to find then on TV anymore. Certainly not on MTV. But for a short time in the mid-80s in Boston, you could get your video fix on V66. And that wasn't a bad thing at all.
War is never a good solution to a problem, but mankind sure gets into a lot of them. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about war in hour 2. It's enough to get your drill sergeant all fired up.
This playlist will make you drop and give it 20:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
PUP - Paranoid/Single
Lambrini Girls - Bad Apple/Who Let the Dogs Out
Charm School - Boycott Everything Everywhere/Debt Forever
Swervedriver - Volume Control/The World's Fair EP
Momma - I Want You (Fever)/Welcome to My Blue Sky
Chemtrails - Join Our Death Cult/The Joy of Sects
Snapped Ankles - Raoul/Hard Times Furious Dancing
J Mascis - Breathe/Single
Runnner - Coinstar/Single
Benjamin Booker - Slow Dance in a Gay Bar/Lower
Tunde Adebimpe - Drop/Thee Black Boltz
Peel Dream Magazine - Callers/Modern Meta Physic reissue
The Gits - Kings and Queens/Frenching the Bully 2024 remaster
Hallelujah the Hills - That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate/Puritan Garage Howlers Vol. II
Ex-Void - Pinhead/In Love Again
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Kurt Cobain's Cardigan/Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010
The Laughing Chimes - Fluorescent Minds/Whispers in the Speech Machine
Hour 2: War
IDLES - War/Ultra Mono
The Police - Bombs Away/Zenyatta Mondatta
XTC - Generals and Majors/Black Sea
Frank Black - Dance War/The Cult of Ray
The Dils - Class War/Dils Dils Dils
Oxford Collapse - The Birthday Wars/Bits
Waxahatchee - War/Saint Cloud
Sufjan Stevens - "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'"/Come On Feel the Illinoise
The Besnard Lakes - Cedric's War/The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
Ladyhawk - War/Fight for Anarchy
The New Pornographers - Centre for Holy Wars/Mass Romantic
Cat Power - He War/You Are Free
Tiny Magnetic Pets - Cold War Neon/Deluxe Debris
Golden Gurls - End of the War/Typo Magic
Iron Maiden - Die With Your Boots On/Piece of Mind
Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey about bad songs from good artists. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
Songs we hate by artists we love
Phil's #6: U2 makes a misstep
Bono's talking tough
Jay's #6: A #1 hit from Cheap Trick featuring outside songwriters
The power ballad became huge for hard rock bands
Phil's #5: AC/DC hits it big after losing their singer
Jay's #5: When the biggest band tries to get weird
Phil's #4: When GNR decided to cover Dylan
They had lots of bad covers
Jay's #4: When Aerosmith hit #1 with a soundtrack ballad
Late-period Aerosmith is tough to take
Phil's #3: The Smiths get preachy about animal rights
Let's hear it for Bovine University
Morrissey with ham-fisted lyrics about vegetarianism
Jay's #3: R.E.M. had a couple of stinkers
A version of the song ended up on Sesame Street
Phil's #2: Punk rock upstarts go acoustic
Green Day ended up becoming very mainstream
Jay's #2: Bowie and Jagger with a very '80s abomination of a cover
Video premiered during Live Aid
Phil's #1: A definitive low for the Police at their most successful time
Andy Summers wrote some bad songs every so often
Jay's #1: Genesis with an all-timer of an offensive song
The video alone is brutal
Blame it on Mike Rutherford
Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Unsung is a feature in which I take a look at a pop culture phenomenon (be it music, TV, literary, whatever) that has been forgotten or underappreciated. In this installment, I look at Pump Up the Volume, the 1990 Christian Slater movie about a pirate radio DJ.
As the 1980s were ending, there was a definite shift happening in the music world and pop culture in general. Alternative or college rock was starting to gain some traction in the mainstream music world, with bands like U2 and R.E.M. emerging as superstars by the decade's end. There was still plenty of lame stuff on the charts, but the fact that a band like Love and Rockets could have the #3 song on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989 was a sign that things were indeed changing.
On the silver screen, John Hughes made a big impression in the '80s for his bittersweet comedies, there was also a glut of dumb teen party movies. But things were changing there as well, with Cameron Crowe's great 1989 dramedy Say Anything being a leading example. Canadian director Allan Moyle, who had made the iconic 1980 new wave comedy Times Square, wrote a script about a teenager who runs his own pirate radio station, based on a high school classmate of his who would distribute anonymous pamphlets with commentaries on life and school issues. The classmate later killed himself; his struggles informed the script, which a producer convinced him to direct.
Originally called Lean On Me, the film was picked up by New Line Cinema, which was notable for making independent movies at the time, including the Nightmare on Elm Street series but also John Waters' controversial films and Alex Cox's Sid & Nancy. While the studio supported Moyle's vision, there were still some moves to make it more mainstream, like changing the title to Pump Up the Volume, the name of a dance song that was a big hit for M/A/R/R/S in 1987.
Moyle initially wanted John Cusack to star as Mark Hunter, the meek high school student who revealed another side of his personality as DJ Hard Harry, but Cusack refused because he was finished playing high school kids. They ended up going with Christian Slater, who was a hot commodity after starring in 1989's Heathers as a fairly twisted character that was sort of a high school version of Jack Nicholson. He was also having some issues offscreen, with two drunk driving arrests in 1988 and 1989, the second of which saw him crash his car into some telephone poles after leading police on a car chase; he spent 10 days in jail. Samantha Mathis played Nora, who becomes obsessed with figuring out the identity of the mysterious DJ.
Set in a suburb of Phoenix, the movie finds Slater playing a shy loner in school during the day who then unleashes his angst at night when he broadcasts a radio show from his parents' basement. He plays punk rock and hip hop, goes on animated rants about corruption and how corporations and adults suck, and adds to the shock factor by pretending to masturbate. Eventually, he builds a following among his classmates, who don't know his identity but are picking up what he's putting down. Harry struggles with the fact that a student who called into his show later killed himself and he encourages his listeners to deal with their problems. As students start circulating bootleg tapes of Harry's show, parents and faculty become convinced it's causing the school's problems and call the police. The movie's third act gets a little ridiculous, with seemingly every student in the school gathering to follow Harry's every word and the FCC sending a small army of vehicles out to trace the show's location.
While pirate radio never became a huge thing in the U.S., eventually podcasts, YouTube and social media became similar ways for people to create their own content and get their thoughts out to a wider audience. The movie was also ahead of its time with its eclectic soundtrack, which featured Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" as the station's theme song but also provided a pre-Lollapalooza vibe with songs from Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Pixies, Bad Brains and Henry Rollins, Peter Murphy, Above the Law, Cowboy Junkies, Ivan Neville and Concrete Blonde (covering "Everybody Knows"). Included in the film are Beastie Boys, Ice-T, Stan Ridgway, Was (Not Was), Descendents, Richard Hell and Urban Dance Squad.
The film was a dud at the box office when it was released in August 1990, grossing only $1.6 million on its opening weekend and a total of $11.5 million in North America. Part of the problem may have been its R rating, which kept its target audience from seeing it in the theater. The studio also didn't a good job distributing and marketing the movie.
It garnered a cult following when it was released to home video. Thanks to rights issues primarily to do with the music licensing, Pump Up the Volume's soundtrack isn't available for streaming. The movie is currently not available for streaming, either, although it has popped up on Max from time to time (I watched it a few years ago). It's available on Blu-ray, though. It's also up on YouTube in a series of clips if you want to watch it that way.
Indie movies also began to have more success in the years that followed Pump Up the Volume's release, with auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson making their mark, among many others.
After Pump Up the Volume, Moyle went on to direct The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag and Empire Records in the '90s, but nothing since. A musical theater adaptation of Pump Up the Volume was supposed to premiere in April 2020, but didn't happen because of the COVID pandemic. Slater had box office success in the '90s, including appearances in True Romance, Interview with the Vampire and Broken Arrow, but since 2000, he has had more work on TV, most notably in Mr. Robot. Mathis similarly became a popular '90s movie actress and continues to work on TV and in movies.
I remember when Pump Up the Volume came out but never saw it in the theater. My interest in it was piqued a few years later when my brother made me a cassette of the soundtrack album. Eventually, I saw it on cable. It's not perfect, but I appreciate the spirit and the effort.
