Soundtracks

     I'm not really a movie person and I detest musicals, so there aren't many soundtracks in my music collection. And movie scores...forget it. The only movie score I have is from Yellow Submarine and I never listen to the actual score, just the Beatles' songs. I have a couple co-workers who are all about movie scores. They love Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, John Williams, Ennio what's his face and zzzzzzz...sorry, I nodded off just then.
     When we were kids, the only records my sister bought were either by heartthrobs (Shaun Cassidy and Andy Gibb) or soundtracks, such as Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance. Even my wife has a bunch of soundtrack albums. She has The Spy Who Shagged Me, because she loves Mike Myers and it has a Madonna song. She has the soundtrack to The Saint, because she loved Val Kilmer and it has some good songs. She has Grease and Xanadu because she was a girl during the height of Olivia Newton-John mania. She also has The Sound of Music and O Brother, Where Art Thou? for reasons I don't even want to know. When I inherited the record collections that inspired this blog, they were full of Broadway musical soundtrack albums, like The Music Man and My Fair Lady. We even sell a considerable amount of them at work, so apparently I'm the one with the problem.
     The number of soundtracks I have depends on your definition of a soundtrack. For example, I have the "soundtracks" for The Life Of Brian and Monty Python And The Holy Grail, but they're really just collections of the best bits from the movies. I also have Ziggy Stardust, but I consider that more of a live album than a movie soundtrack. So, not counting those, I have five soundtracks. Here they are in no particular order, along with the reasons I have them. Peace.

1) BackBeat- I bought this, because I enjoyed the movie about the early days of The Beatles. There really aren't any good recordings of this period, so this was a decent substitute. Even though it doesn't sound much like The Beatles, it was an all-star band of indie rockers: Dave Grohl. Mike Mills. Greg Dulli. Thurston Moore. Dave Pirner.

2) Wedding Crashers- I only bought this because it had the yet unreleased song "Mr. Ambulance Driver" by The Flaming Lips, which wasn't that great. I do love the song "Sister jack" by Spoon, though. I've probably only listened to the whole CD twice.

3) Christmas On Mars- This is the soundtrack to the long rumored Flaming Lips movie that was filmed in Wayne Coyne's backyard. I have never managed to watch the whole movie and have only listened to the soundtrack once. Maybe I'll take another crack at it one of these days.

4) The Kids Are Alright- It's The Who! And the photo on the cover is awesome.

5) FM- This is the only inherited soundtrack album that I kept. I've never seen the whole movie, but it's classic 70's and reminds me of WKRP in Cincinnati. The album featured the title track by Steely Dan and "Breakdown" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It's a great soundtrack, other than The Eagles and James Taylor.