Soundtrack Talk

Soundtracks to make you happy...or sad

I absolutely abhor when I am in a coffeeshop (i.e. the freelancers' office) trying to get some work done and the staff keeps insisting on playing sad songs. I don't need to hear Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald ever ever ever again. I bet even Gordon Lightfoot wishes he had never written that song. It's not just depressing on the face of it, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is also existentially depressing.

So when a movie inserts super sad music into a super sad movie, I want to stab someone. It's just not needed. For example, the new Muppet movie has lots of super happy songs, and it actually needs it; it's a nostalgic grown-up child movie with its own share of existential and real sadness. Bring on the happy songs.

Stepmom, possibly one of the biggest cry movies of all time (despite the fact that the previews tried to make it seem like it was a comedy) doesn't trot out a bunch of cancer or dead mother songs. In fact, most of the time during the most intense times, it's completely silent except for the dialogue and sound effects. If you put really good actors in a movie and give them something decent to say, you don't need to over manipulate with music.

Another great example of this is Chicago (both the stage play and the movie); they have rather gruesome themes and show some parts (albeit somewhat satirically) of human nature that the rest of us would rather forget. However, the juxtaposition of jaunty music with the sad and sometimes terrible nature of what's going on in the plot makes it a very watchable piece of art.

4077 Ways To Be Depressed

The TV series MASH was amazing in a lot of ways, groundbreaking in many ways and in some cases more than a little weird. Weird, of course, in all the best ways because it revolutionized the juxtaposition of laughter and intense political and emotion content.

That's why the theme song of MASH was so very perfect. The theme song would sound very jaunty at the end of the more comic-focused episodes, and be much slower when it ended a episode about, let's say, a massacre or a solider that the surgeons were unable to save. It's no secret the creators of the MASH series especially, framed the series in such a way as to make the parallels between the Vietnam War and the Korean War quite obvious to even the least astute teevee watcher. Freed in this way from the volatile nature of any discussion of the Vietnam War (which had not been over very long when MASH started) they were free to make emotional statements without being accused of making political ones. Although, of course, they were.

The theme song “Suicide is Painless” makes both a political point and an emotional point, and it's interesting to note that even many casual fans of MASH don't know the name of the song, let alone are aware of some of its more poignant lyrics. I can remember when I first heard the title, vageuly thinking “Is that a good idea to tell people?” as well as “Wait? Is it? It must depend on the method.” And that was before I knew that the song included the words “The only way to win is cheat/and lay it down before I'm beat/and to another give my seat/for that's the only painless feat.”

Yentyl Soundtrack: Good For What Ails Ya

You don't have to love the 80s to love the movie Yentyl. My sister and I watched the movie itself compulsively, back in the day when you actually had to go to the movie theater to watch a movie. We even paid the five bucks it cost to get in, or at least most of the time we did. Or at least most of the time when a friend wasn't working at the ticket tearing tub. We complained a little about the five dollar ticket cost a tiny bit although what seemed like a fortune back then is a dollar less than the super bargain matinee costs now!Once we saved up our pennies we bought the Soundtrack to Yentyle. The sound track was, of course, on a vinyl record, or as we called them then, LPs to differentiate between that and the one song single 45s that you needed a special attachment on your record player to listen to.

We played this soundtrack into the ground, perhaps because it's easily the best part of the movie; there's no question that a movie directed by Miss Streisand is going to make really excellent use of her vocal skills and (as rumor has it) only show her good side. The movie itself is imminently quotable (how many times has my sister said to me “it must be the cinnamon,in the baked apples”) and the Soundtrack is even more so. For example, the anthem “A Piece of Sky” was the pick me up for every late 80s, early 90s female who felt stifled by her life.

“With all there is, why settle for a piece of sky” Streisand sings, and we agree.

Muppet Movie Soundtrack: Nostalgia At Its Best

Like most American kids coming of age in the 1970s, I loved the Muppet Show. When I want to get my sister (and now my oldest nephew) to laugh, all I have to is start the opening notes to the Manamah song. I'm clearly not the only one. I went looking for the original video from online just now, and a clip that is labeled Manamanah 1976 has gotten a million and a half hits. I was really afraid of the Phantom of the Opera muppet and loved Fozzie the Bear and was strangely scared of Miss Piggy as well, perhaps because my sister was the master of the Miss Piggy “hay-yuck.”So even though I was skeptical, I went to see the new Muppet Movie in the theater. I would have paid full price and everything, although I went on a Friday morning so it was only six bucks. But that''s not the point. I would have paid full price

I was not disappointed at all. There were a few strange things about the movie, mostly sad things, like the fact that it was clearly not Jim Henson's voice doing Kermit, and Fozzie's voice sounded off as well and the fact that you didn't meet any familiar muppets until more than fifteen minutes into the movie. All this strange sadness though, was more than made up for the soundtrack which was warm, funny, singable, sincere and also ironically self referential. Hard to do all at once, but that's what the magic was in the Muppets. They always seemed to be winking at us, even when they weren't.

And if you can listen to “Life's A Happy Song” without being a little teeny tiny bit more cheerful, you should maybe your Prozac adjusted. It's just that, um, happy.

Footloose: An Original That Can't Be Redone

I finally broke down and watched the 2011 remake of Footloose using my cable company's handy “on demand” function. I'd seen the previews in the theater (remember, the theater, where people used to go to watch movies? Oh never mind) and it looked so awful I couldn't bare to watch it on a big screen or worse yet, contribute money to such a travesty of remaking. I tried to like it, I really did. Well, I tried a little to like it. Having grown up in a small town and having gone to a Christian high school (I graduated the year the original, real, Footloose was released) Footloose was a movie that defined my experience for my generation. It would have been hard to do it justice in my eyes with a remake. But here's what I didn't like about it, including the soundtrack.First, I didn't like the move to the South, it just added a totally unnecessary level of cliché to the whole thing. There was just no reason to add the whole “sarcastic yankee” verbal subplot. It's been done a thousand times before and done much better. The whole point is the Ren was an outsider, he didn't grow up in the town. You don't have to add that, or New Ren's heavy Boston accent that no young Boston kid would have, at least not in 2012.

Second, what kind of random dancing did they have going on? It's like they couldn't quite decide what songs to play so they played them all together at once. Pick a genre and stick with it folks.

Third, get some folks that know how to act. The original Ariel and the original Ren were not as conventionally attractive as New Ren and New Ariel but they knew how to act. Heck, when Ren says “let's dance” at the end you don't even believe that! If you can't believe the “let's dance” in Footloose, what can you believe?

Avenue Q

I saw Avenue Q with friends from out of town which seems mostly to be the only way I go to Broadway Shows. I'd been wanting to see it, and was looking forward to it, but even after I saw it I wasn't sure how I felt.I'm perplexed by people who call it Sesame Street Meets South Park and I can see the comparisons but it feels to me much more like Sesame Street Meets Rent If AIDS Hadn't Happened. Even though puppets are mostly associated with children, none of the puppets in Avenue Q actually are children; they're adults. Which makes the parody that much more sketchy as far as I'm concerned.

One of the most troubling things about South Park was going to see the South Park Movie on opening night and listening to the twelve year old boys laugh at some of the opening lines of the first song “you can see your breath hanging in the air/you see homeless people (Kyle jumps over a homeless man on the sidewalk) but you just don't care” I had to peer at the faces in the audience, thinking “wait, we're all laughing because we think it's terrible that they've been taught to say that, right? That's why it's funny” I was never quite sure we were all on the same page with that.

In the same way, when the puppets sing “Everyone's a Little Racist” which of course, is something that is true, and bad, you want to peer at the laughing faces in the audience and inquire “we're all laughing because this is true...and terrible, right?” The same thing, for example, with the “It Sucks To Be Me” song. It might not be so fun to be underemployed and living on Avenue Q, but on the scale of grander human misery it's not even on the scale. It's hard to enjoy the light-hearted bouncy soundtrack if you're not sure how much is being recognized for the parody that I hope it was meant to be.

Sister Act: The London Cast Stage Version

This past summer I saw Sister Act on Broadway. It was barely out of previews and so I was prepared for a slightly less polished performance. I'm not exactly an expert on musical theater but it seemed it tip top shape to me. Sister Act worked pretty well with as a stage play and had all the excess you seem to need to make it on Broadway, crazy costuming, at least a little gunplay, complicated dancing combos and glitter of course. Lots of glitter. The play ended of course, with, an a huge mega song that involved every member of the cast and I'm pretty sure most of the crew and perhaps even the audience too. Also, there was a full ceiling high rotated, mirror balled statue of Mary and when everyone joined in on “Sunday Morning Fever” the entire house did too. It was a little weird for me, really, having never been to an old white person's spontaneous dance party, but on the other hand it was plenty charming as well.Ilooked for the soundtrack on the way home (thanks so much Steve Jobs for the insta-access to all music) and could only find the London Cast recording for obvious reasons. I bought it as I rode the M-15 bus down Second Avenue and was delighted by how close the sound was to the Broadway Version. I did notice one interesting and slightly strange difference; the song “It's Great To Be a Nun” was replced with an exact musical replica called “How I Got the Calling to the Church” a not very flattering depiction of convent life. I wondered if the Catholic Church is more sensitive in the United States or if if there was another, less political reason for the change.