It’s that time of the week again: Four For Friday. Four random soundtracks and one song chosen from each (with exceptions of course).
First up was Marvin Gaye’s foray into the world of blaxploitation scoring for the 1972 film, “Troubleman.” Everyone was doing it (Issac Hayes for “Shaft,” Curtis Mayfield for “Superfly,” a then-unknown Earth Wind & Fire performing the director-written music for “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” ) so why not get in on the then in-vogue trend (he beat James Brown’s “Black Caesar” score by a year). The title theme is pretty typical of what was happening at the time and the wah-wah guitar pedal abuse that was extremely prevalent at the time.
And while Hal Hartley’s 1994 indie-film “Amateur” had what some could easily consider the very first indie-rock soundtrack (songs by My Bloody Valentine, Pavement, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo), years before it was cool to have an “indie-rock soundtrack” (OK, “Pump Up The Volume” doesn’t quite count cause that was an alternative rock soundtrack, slight distinction) we’ve always had an amazing soft spot for the original music that Ned Rifle (aka Hal Hartley) and Jeffrey Taylor composed for all of Hartley’s early films. They always seemed to have this romantic immediacy to them that we always identified with. Still to this day, we like them better than the indie tracks in the film (though Pavement’s “Here” and MBV’s “Only Shallow” are amazing songs on their own). We included a lesser known Red House Painters track to fulfill the indie quota.
Everyone should remember Harry Nilsson’s classic theme song for “Midnight Cowboy,” “Everyone’s Talking” – a song now ubiquitous with any scene where an out-of-towner discovers the big city (see it’s winking use in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” when Baron-Cohen first arrives in New York), but the song is always fun to revisit.
While, we’ll totally admit to never having seen a Rob Zombie film (and in some cases purposely stayed away), the man always has some admirable and tasty choices on his soundtracks. The Robert Plant-sounding Terry Reid (in fact, Jimmy Page wanted him for the group that would become Led Zeppelin, but Reid suggested Robert Plant instead!) is a fave of Zombie’s and his dark, trouble on the horizon, near-country dirge, “Seed of Memory,” must had worked like a charm in the film (though we bet the funky ‘up’ part was omitted).
Listen: Marvin Gaye – “Main Theme From Trouble Man” (from “Troubleman”)
Listen: Red House Painters – “Japanese to English” (from “Amateur”)Download: Ned Rifle – “Original Score – Cue 24” (from “Amateur”)
Listen: Harry Nilsson – “Everybody’s Talkin’ ” (from “Midnight Cowboy”)
Listen: Terry Reid – “Seed of Memory” (from “The Devil’s Rejects”)