Wild Things... Not what I remember

I've got next to no recollections of Wild Things outside of the mid-story twist Matt Dillon is in on it. But this is a nutty presentation. The way Denise Richards is interrogated by the female detective (who gets hit on by Matt Dillon later on, and she's also incredibly dumb and trusting of him, she doesn't even think he might be a rapist) with an inappropriately sultry voice asking what happened in a more pornographic way. This did okay critically, I feel like it's slightly above the trashiness of Show Girls. And I totally forgot Bill Murray is in this. I think things get kinda weird and wacky. It's not shot terribly, it's competently made, and campishly acted, Matt Dillon's kind of a himbo and I can't even tell if he's that good, he's got that dude-bro voice that makes Keanu less credible as an actor, but he's not the worst either. I kinda like Denise Richards and how she can talk through her teeth. Neve Campbelle was still trying to come out of her squeaky clean Party of Five era (I don't think she was that girl next door, Scream had done really well  but she was a bit sameish, she had these very distinct mannerisms and that classic little staccato laugh.). Kevin Bacon has a penis and we get to see it. I can't even remember how it ends. The score is actually very Twin Peaksy minor chord, Blues scale jazz, very Badalamenti. The main soundtrack is very late 90s too. It's got that kind of sharp, fast-paced editing. Once you know where it's going it's kinda predictable. I remembered the Bacon/Dillon connection but not the ending. It's just trash enough to be appreciated. It's campy but I feel like Dillon taking a boat arm thingy to the face and ending on a black screen works. Some reason we need a bunch of midcredit scenes piecing everything together kinda pointlessly, it really looks like a lot of outtakes, and this is after it's explained Neve's like a supervillain with an IQ of 200 somethin' who can put her mind to anything. I blanked all of the Bill Murray stuff at the end. It was more fun than I recalled. I just didn't commit much to memory at all. Sadly, we all missed out on the Bacon/Dillon kiss which I vaguely remember. We just get a mild gay/not gay penis on display moment that is clearly trimmed down. Of course there were the useless sequels we never asked for. But it wasn't the pile of insubstantial trash I thought it was.

Counting Crows... and Me.

I was lucky to have albums of songs I only wanted the singles from and ended up loving the whole thing. August... And Everything After was a mainstay on my stereo. I'm trying to chill to a podcast about Counting Crows, another band I never had anyone to share with. Lyrically, it was a little odd, mostly depressed but still uplifting in parts. Years later, I went up to a busker and gave him some money for singing Rain King. 'Round Here was in a book about songs that were needlessly depressing, and I disagreed with the statements, it's still a song I go back to and feel struck by it. (This podcast is annoying me because they can only play five second clips for copyright I assume, maybe it was longer on Spotify). There were so many other amazing songs but I went to school with the kids who only heard the singles, didn't listen to much outside Nirvana and Metallica, and here was me listening the closest thing I had to a country music album.

Recovering the Satellites hit harder and heavier, I stayed up listening to this through grade ten, while I was still in my home alone on a Saturday night where I was the most comfortable. My brother had moved out, I kinda just had the one end of the house to myself. It was ten pm and my parents knew where I was. Later I tried to make a list of the references of names and other repetitive themes, when I was in my list era. Another Horse Dreamer's Blues was something I belted out to get out of my skin. But that was all I had of them for a while. It was something that faded into the background but it was criminal to me Angels of the Silences wasn't massive.

I knew about This Desert Life and heard Hangin' Around but didn't pick it up until I was halfway through college. I played Colour Blind and the Buffy fan recognised it from Cruel Intentions. It brings up a lot of harder memories even with the lighter songs. I had it on when I was on the bus to Bristol, I got a laugh out of someone with the hidden track, Kid Things is such a bop. Mrs Potter's Lullaby is kind of a magnum opus song that's fun to listen to but seems to go on too long without overstaying its welcome, you can just see the whole song play out as a montage in a movie.. Wish I was a Girl is fun to sing (in the way How Can I Sing Like a Girl? by the Giants is fun - and I just remembered the cancelled show is this Wednesday). I wasn't enough into weed culture to listen to their shit stoned but I still loved it. They talked about Speedway and I totally forgot I knew it, there are a couple later songs I don't remember the titles of.

By the time Hard Candy came out, I was over the band but dying to see them live. I managed to catch them before they cancelled their tour in 2004. And the podcasters admitted to not being with the band for this either, it's another I didn't rip onto my laptop. I wasn't a big fan of Big Yellow Taxi. But I remember seeing some teens in the barely full audience having so much fun to the new album but just not vibing with the older shit, and I was kinda smugly dancing along to the classics. I was in a crowd of Green Day fans who didn't recognise Longview or the famous line I belted out obnoxiously on my own. 

I'm disliking this podcast, however. I found a live album for ten bucks so I got it, I think I saw it years ago and just decided not to buy it. I had to get by with my CDs and my Discman for many years, getting a job meant I could afford an iPod. That changed my life. But these guys completely glossed over Hard Candy, which is kind of hilarious, they just trashed Big Yellow Taxi and moved on, and I kinda was curious what their opinion might be but they were like, yeah, first two albums awesome, third okay, crap they're on the Shrek soundtrack. Oh they did a Joni Mitchell cover. The End. But they're right, not a lot of people talk about the Crows. I guess they're my Phish. You just don't get it.

Listening to the live album now, it's totally jarring hearing Round Here stripped down to a guitar and read out more like a beat poet performance, but it's growing on me. I just don't remember them doing this when I saw them. This is basically their answer to Unplugged but it's so stripped back, it's all folksy and maybe I could've previewed these first but this isn't bad. I stopped to check out Round Here's original version from Adam's previous band, and holy fuck this is an amazing song. Like how in the fuck did this not become an actual hit? Like I'm already spinning it again. Fuck me this is just the Crows if they were the Cure, but it's so fucking good. Fuck. Like, had I heard this in high school I would've been so fucking obnoxious about it not being on the radio. People would play the Crows version and I'd be like, nah man, this is the shit. Luckily it ended up on iTunes and I could actually buy it. Fucking hell. But I went to Catapult from the live CD and it's fucking amazing. I used sing this a lot, it was another thing I had to belt out in the quietest voice possible. I think I would've loved this whole thing had I bought it back in the day but I was kinda frugal with pocket money at times and must've assumed it was just a live rendition of what I already knew.

And now I've hit Mr Jones and you would've even recognise it. I can't stay up all night doing a blow by blow but shit, it's tempting to. Fuck I wish I had bought this in high school, I would've been obnoxiously trying to force it on everyone and they would've hated it. And they slip in the lyrics from Perfect Blue Buildings which isn't played (I love when Tori mashes up her songs like this). This is all just putting me in a bar in the Midwest right now. Rain King is just so languid and it's only hitting me now I would drive to this and just not come home again. (and they sneak in lyrics from Good Night Elizabeth, which isn't on here either). Mercury's about as close to the original as it can be. Ghost Train's heavier and darker than before. Anna Begins is also giving me the feel of how Tori really restructures her songs live and to be honest, more bands should fucking do this. Make new arrangements for the live shows, make something of a unique experience that you may not capture again. Anna Begins has more beat poet moments but it's still beautifully slow and romantic for how fucking miserable the song is. (Hearing James Van Der Beek sing this in Rules of Attraction is so funny). They tap out after that (so it's the end of disc one besides one song I don't know since it was part of this CD.)

I went through the second CD and it was less folksy and more rock, but the arrangements were still unusual. It has some cool moments, I'd have to give it a few spins to see if I really like it. Otherwise I don't know if I would be that interested in any current day material. I didn't go to their cover album tour, I liked I got to see them once and have them on my list of bands I wanted to see live.

Soundtracks and sound - my only access to movies growing up.

A guy reviewing a 4K restoration of Natural Born Killers reminded me how obsessed I was with the soundtrack, and how it followed me up until my thirties. I was standing on a station platform after a bad day at work waiting for a train, listening to Shit List by L7. (But Rock and Roll N-word just feels so uncomfortable to listen to now.) I've glossed over how I had to "watch" and access films as a kid. My brother stayed up one night to tape Batman off TV. No, we didn't have a VCR, he had a cassette player, and he'd sussed out that the two local TV shows were also simulcast on the radio on specific bands. This was how we got our music too, by the way. Saturday mornings, tuned into the ABC, watching Rage, trying to remember the chart order of songs so we could tape them. (This wasn't new either, tape recorders were responsible for recording music off the TV when it was a big reel to reel with a handheld microphone). So my access to songs I like was already hindered by time and not being by a radio when you needed to hear a song. It was hard enough missing episodes of shows, or not being able to stay up watching movies. The only way we could experience this shit sometimes was via a fucking cassette player. Logically, you only get sound. Also, you would've gotten the censored for TV version.

I rented videos, hoped for a day I could get the place to myself or I wouldn't be bothered, and played the movie while I recorded it onto a 90 minute cassette tape, my cassette player's tiny microphone sitting on a footstool up against the single speaker on our wood laminate Rank-ARena TV. And yes, I had to pause the movie and line it up with side B as seamlessly as possible. I also did this with one episode of the X Files, purely because David Duchovny was kinda hot he had a hot voice, and since it was only 40 minutes I used a tape that had recorded songs already on it, so it was sandwiched between songs. Blank tapes were something we were gifted often. (That was also how I ruined my science teacher's day by knowing how many chromosomes people have. I think about that a lot but I wonder if she remembers it and just hates me to this day). I would then listen to these tapes on the way to the big city on vacations, or I'd listen to my mix tapes or the tapes I got as presents. But with those movies, I also cut certain scenes, like the basement scenes in The Breakfast Club. I think I taped Grosse Pointe Blank off the radio and I was either about to leave school or had left. I did have our old TV in my bedroom at one point. I think by then I also had access to a VCR so I borrowed the Last Unicorn then made a cassette tape of it. Because of that, I also knew a lot of movies purely by heart, and by sound. The images wouldn't be accessible until I had money and could buy DVDs. I have fewer VHS tapes as these were about to be phased out, but sadly there's some shit I wish got released on DVD and never did.

Anyway, I also liked the Crow but could only watch the movie when we rented it out once. I loved most of the songs, particularly the closing credits song which everyone hated. But I new it well by the time I saw the film. Otherwise, I really liked the soundtrack and listened to it a lot in high school. Natural Born Killers came out in 1994, I'm pretty sure I had a copy of the soundtrack before the end of high school. And all the tracks were very artfully interlaced with audio clips from the film, which I know fucking backwards, however I don't know the film in its entirety nearly as well. And, I kinda prefer the soundtrack over the movie. It falls off a little towards the end, but I found the CD when I was in uni for about ten bucks from the market stalls that showed up on weekends. I've few and far between good memories of uni and that was one of them. I was on my own and I'd buy singles and listen to them off my Performa in my room while I studied. I also kept the same tape player I had since I was 9, and this went through some fucking shit. I miss it, I really do. The antenna snapped off it, the handle broke off it, but I could still tune into the radio and I'd wake early in the morning and put it on to wake up to and get ready for school. I didn't even want a clock radio. I fell asleep beside it waiting for Tori songs to play, I still tried to record songs off it, sometimes I did top 40 nights on the commercial network. I also had it on stupid late at night before we had access to Triple J the local commercial station played easy listening hits so I got to learn the words to the Pina Colada song. I had a weird fondness for that tape player, and I even tried to record my Storybook stories from it onto my iPad. I tossed it out eventually but I loved it to death.

It recorded all the shit I liked, I still have tapes I wanted to transfer, and even though I found all the songs off all the mixed tapes I made (and remade) through painless waiting and searching the internet, I cannot bring myself to throw these things out.

I was also the tool that bought soundtracks for that one song. When one of my tapes got twisted, I had a warbling version of Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes (mislabeled as the song Say Anything from Say Anything... it was a cheap knockoff compilation tape that used huge hit movies on the covers so you'd buy it only to realise they were covers basically, and I couldn't prove that, but I knew). And my only reference to this movie was this tape, and a reference in Leonard Maltin's compendium of movie reviews. You'd only get a star rating and a brief opinion and these books were fat. I didn't get to see the movie until my senior year. I didn't tape it from memory, but I also didn't know it was THE song Lloyd plays on the stereo. You hear it in the love scene, but it's iconic from that scene. According to Crowe, it was off some wedding tape he heard, it wasn't entirely vital or significant to him. The song actually playing is by Phish, from memory. But from that stupid compilation tape, I found my way to that film and wound up loving it. Many, many years later, I found the CD soundtrack at a market then stupidly never copied it to my harddrive, so, insanely, the actual main song of the movie isn't even possible to find on iTunes. I had to download a bunch of songs I liked from it and this one is like nowhere. And it was supposed to be the "hit" of the movie. It's perfect for the closing credits. But that fucking song is also the reason I own the Benny and Joon soundtrack, because my 12 year old brain thought the song was sung by Sting and HAD to be on the soundtrack from it being on the trailer. No internet existed for me to verify this and save forty odd bucks. It only had 500 Miles by the Proclaimers, which is fine, I liked it enough, and the rest was the score. Which has some pretty songs. But it also inspired my dance teacher to make a whole crazy future clowns in a playground routine for our end of year performance. So, In Your Eyes plays such a big role in my music history. I even remember finding So... in a university library, discovering the song was on there, then having to negotiate buying it off my mother from somewhere because we had a deal she could purchase something we couldn't afford then we save up to pay with our birthday money or pocket money. (Which, now I think of it, the pocket money was technically her money so we were just paying her back.) I loved So... but again, that one song and me go way back. My only experience of Say Anything for a long time was a bad cover of In Your Eyes. (It didn't go on my wedding soundtrack by the way).

Another soundtrack I stupidly owned was for Encino Man, I liked a remix of PM Dawn's Set Adrift on the movie, not on the soundtrack of course. But we were allowed to listen to CDs in art class and some guys liked to put it on for some reason. It had some okay songs. When I was broke, I ripped off three tracks, including Why'd you Want Me? by the Jesus and Mary Chain. The Clueless Soundtrack was just a good one to own but I don't have all the songs ripped. I think I sold it... (I might be lying, I stashed some CDs in a box in the cupboard). Singles was another good soundtrack but I remember liking the Hendrix song more from the movie, and this was one I saw a lot in high school so I loved Chloe Dancer to fucking death. (My theoretical future daughter would've been named Chloe after the song). Labyrinth was also my only access to that film until the end of high school when I taped it off TV. My nostalgia for that movie is overblown but some of the orchestral songs and Bowie's love songs are infectiously good.

What was amazing recently (as in the last five years or so) was finding Henry Fool and Amateur, both of which I adore on their own as well. Owning legitimate copies is important to me. I coped hard off Henry Fool. Also, for some weird reason, I was obsessed with the cartoon adaptation of Soul Music, it got me through my first exams, and there was a beautiful song in the last episode which just became another tiny snipped I kept on a tape from the TV to hear whenever. My ridiculous love of Caribbean Blue (which led to me owning other Enya CDs because I didn't know the name of the song and bought the wrong ones) led to me taping a snippet off an episode of Northern Exposure. I have a dumb love of LA Story only because her songs are in it.

Music makes a film, so if a soundtrack can kind of exist on its own and be heard and enjoyed separately from the film, it's special. They weren't just compilation albums. Finding the Heather's score off iTunes was interesting, they don't sound exact but having a polished version of the small fragments I stole off the TV and listened to endlessly, these became part of my collection. It's a HUGE reason I just don't believe in Spotify or any streaming. It doesn't have what I crave. I can't make a playlist that includes all my weird, eclectic songs from soundtracks and radio. I can play my random bootlegs. I'm very precious about how it's been stored, I panic if I can't find a copy of some songs. It was just too important to me. Those soundtracks and audio movies kept me afloat, my only misery was not having them all encased in a single box I can carry everywhere like I do now.