April 6th, 2009
Psychoderelict: Part 2
Here is the second part of my adaptation of Pete Townshend’s 1993 album. It was also his last solo album. (As I recall, the biggest rock album of 1993 was Nirvana’s In Utero. What else was popular at the time? What were you listening to?)
April 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
This scene is played during the first track on Psychoderelict, ‘English Boy.’ Click here to watch Townshend performing the song live at a concert in 1993, along with an actress reading Ruth Streeting’s dialogue. It’s an interesting rendition, quiet and acoustic, just Pete and his guitar. On the album it’s heavier and rockier, played with electric guitar, bass, drums, and an unusual syncopated piano, and sung with more anger. The actress reading for Ruth Streeting may be Jan Ravens, who played that character on the CD, but I’m not sure. It sounds like her.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:22 am
The first album I ever bought for myself was the soundtrack to ‘The Crow’, which came out in 1994 and contains a lot of the kind of music and bands you mentioned! It was released a week before Kurt Cobain killed himself… The Cure’s opening track, ‘Burn,’ was my favourite, though it really didn’t mesh with the style of the other songs on the album. The movie of the Crow, though, is both gothic and grungy in tone and story.
The self-loathing, angry lyrics to the song ‘English Boy’ are similar to the lyrics of many grunge songs of the time, though the music is anything but. I think Pete probably would have enjoyed doing a grunge song — his songwriting has taken note of and is often inspired by the different musical trends of the day. But he was too old for grunge and I don’t think he would have been able to pull it off. (Spielberg probably ended up not doing the Dogme film he had wanted to do for the same reason!)
April 13th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Ah, only just saw this…
I have that soundtrack as well, and I still listen to it… although some of the songs on there are not good examples of the musicians they represent (the Pantera song and the Rollins Band song stand out in this regard). My favourite track is probably the Helmet song, “Milquetoast”.
Also worth getting, from around the same time, is the soundstrack for NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Curated by Trent Reznor, it has a lot of contemporary songs (contemporary fromt he early 90s, I mean) as well as a smattering of good stuff from previous decades. Who else was gonna put L7 next to Leonard Cohen?