SITCOM · CARRY ON · GLASGOW · CHRISTMAS · CARTOONS · SATIRES · BANDS · BONDS · TREK · WWII · POSSESSED · HOME
Films with Bands in
"Station to Station!"
There is of course a good great tradition of the use of popular recording artists of the day in films. Any director worth his personalised collapsible chair will tell you that the right choice of music enhances a scene or builds tension or atmosphere or whatever it is he's planning on building at that particular moment. If he gets it right, then a mighty pyramidical edifice of entertainment rears up from within, if not the shed door of apathy will merely squeak for eternity no matter how much he oils it. But crappy metaphors aside, any fool - Tangerine Dream down - knows that music matters in a film. But what about when it doesn't matter? What then?
At this point we should lay out a few criteria to try and explain what we're bobbing on about here. Not films about bands, since they were covered admirably under G in the A-Z of Creamguide (films), nor theme music (under T) nor even soundtracks. And especially not terrible supposedly ironic segments where musicians are introduced totally incongruously in a 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Burt Bacharach and Mr Elvis Costello' sort of way, just to take one completely random example. No, obscurantism is the watchword, 'cos what we've asked you here to talk about is films where bands just hitch up for some extremely spurious reason, mostly involving their management slipping a monkey and a few free concert tickets to the producer.
To begin, easily the most bizarre of these is the appearance of a foetal Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Kirk 'snails' Douglas and Burt 'ulcer' Lancaster comeback special and major war heralding TOUGH GUYS. Even less plausible than the fact that the Chillies are playing at the fictional club visited by Kirk and his young, lithe female companion Sky - which pairing is decidedly implausible on its own - is the club itself, begging the question why all clubs and discos in films always look wrong. Anyway, as Kirk dances away in his huge fire-engine red '80s cotton blazer in a suitably grandad-at-a-wedding style it takes a moment to recognise the chaps although, truth be told, they are in fact totally unrecognisable with only Anthony Kiedis' voice giving the game away. That and the fact that Kirk asks Sky who they are allowing her to name check them on screen gaining for them some early exposure and for the producer a bin bag full of albums and possible t-shirt rights. So a prefect illustration then of a band shoehorned into the action for no discernible purpose.
Other contenders for the top spot include crap mid-90s angry noisy dirty wannabes My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult who put in an appearance in another completely unlikely looking venue halfway through not-bad Brandon Lee vehicle THE CROW. All they really do is growl into their microphones for a few (overlong) minutes after the same fashion that shit comedians do to impersonate the devil during some unfunny observational shtick but they are, yet again, mentioned albeit briefly, and in a slightly more sideways manner, when their name is revealed on a wall written in the same way as 'Shatterproof' used to be on plastic rulers. Somebody gave us a tape of theirs once and we wondered if they would be any better given the chance to demonstrate more of their material. And they didn't disappoint; they were shit.
Similar to the above comes the pointless appearance of equally-crap lesbo Word botherers L7 who put in an appearance in John Waters' otherwise quite good SERIAL MOM playing in a made up club called Hammerjack's (what is it with these things?) when Kathleen Turner is picked up by the fuzz, as Benny Hill would say. At least the girls had the decency to camouflage themselves - badly - by going under a different name, that being Camel Lips. Nice. Less homicidal surroundings are laid on for an on-screen popping up of one hit wonders (we hope) The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones in CLUELESS where the lads mime, and dance unconvincingly, to their own sounds at a party seemingly held in a half-finished television studio with a bar built into an old gameshow prop. Least said. More up to date and we still remember how strange we found it at the pictures when in the middle of SPIDERMAN someone at a street festival just appeared from nowhere and said "Ladies and Gentlemen, Macey Gray!" Eh?
The very worst comes however with the extraordinary appearance of James Brown in bloody awful diminishing return ROCKY IV. The song used, Living In America, isn't bad but it's so far from what you want from James 'sex machine' Brown that he might as well be dueting with Roger Whittaker in a whistling classic. And then, in the credits, they bill him as 'The Godfather Of Soul'! Why not, 'Hard Up Turn Will Drop Pants For Food'? It's a performance with about as much soul as Pat Boone, for heaven's sake. Pchaw! Furthermore it is introduced for absolutely no reason whatsoever. At least even The Thrill Kill Kult were there for the extras to dance badly to. Worst Ever.
On a more credible note, the surprise was pleasant for a change when, in the middle of the otherwise low grade ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, blues loony Albert Collins suddenly appeared in a not at all contrived situation that compelled the team to sing 'Babysitting Blues', which was nice. Lastly here comes the best bit of THE BLUES BROTHERS where, for far too short a time, John Lee Hooker is sitting in the street busking with an entire band all plugged in and everything when Jake and Ellwood ride into Calumet City to sign up Matt 'Guitar' Murphy and Blue Lou for the gig. Criminally this lasts all of about ninety seconds as if he wasn't supposed to be in the film at all but just happened to busking there when John Landis wandered by with his camera. As it is it's the best musical bit of the film, which are the only good bits. So the best bit in the film then.
So we've had the worst, the not too bad and the middling, so that's the best? Well, for our money this has to be the appearance of shoulder- padded, feather cut, tanned, dentally perfect, multi-coloured shirt wearing Oingo Boingo in Rodney Dangerfield classic BACK TO SCHOOL. When they make the first of their two plot-integral (sort of) appearances in the film they sing an oh-so-eighties reworking of Twist and Shout in a bar where the main characters are at the time under, brilliantly, a neon sign with their name on it which means that they either a) carry it about with them wherever they play, or b) they're the house band in a student pub. We hope the former. And the pub even looks like a real pub, which is another plus point. Oingo Boingo (they don't make band names like that anymore) was Danny 'Burton milking' Elfman's band so you also get to see what the dweeb who wrote, and got fantastically rich off of, The Simpson's theme tune looks like. The band makes another appearance later in a party at Dangerfield's luxury dorm but this time with another lead singer and a tune called 'Dead Man's Party' - "It's a dead man's party/Who could ask for more?/Come into our party leave your body at the door" - with the new singer making suitably spooky faces. Which is great. So it's a winner all round then. Of course it doesn't hurt that we love BACK TO SCHOOL as well.
Best Oingo Boingo? Worst James Brown? Has the world gone mad? No, that's Movie! Movie!
SITCOM · CARRY ON · GLASGOW · CHRISTMAS · CARTOONS · SATIRES · BANDS · BONDS · TREK · WWII · POSSESSED · HOME
