I do like films. I’m currently ploughing through a 21-disc set of Hammer films from the mid to late 1960s that all seem to have been filmed in the same village in Cornwall, but are fun nonetheless. So it should come as little surprise that I’m also a fan of film soundtracks.
Movie soundtracks are a strange affair when removed from the film they were created for. Many struggle to hold my attention, as most are written to be accentuate whatever’s going on up on the big screen, and even being utterly iconic doesn’t always help – Bernard Hermann’s Psycho theme is one of the most famous pieces of modern music, but it doesn’t lend itself too well to a relaxed evening in with the headphones on its own. Not compared to Lalo Schifrin’s funky approach to, well, everything, anyway. But this doesn’t mean that the expolitationfest that is the theme to Magnum Force is culturally superior to the screechy strains that accompanied Hitchcocks’ finest hour and a half, it’s just a bit easier to dance to.
Then you have the utter greats, where the composer and his work becomes this whole other entity and sit alongside – Ennio Morricone’s work on Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, John Barry and Harry Nilssen’s amazing score and song for Midnight Cowboy make great films even better, and stand up as great music in it’s own right.
And there’s also the soundtrack that does away with scores for the most part, and assembles contemporary artists and songs in order to make some cash back when it turns out that the film is a bit crap. The confusing oddness of Less Than Zero has a musical background that is far more famous than the film itself, as it gave the world The Bangles doing Hazy Shade of Winter, Slayer offering their cover of In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida (a song also covered by Boney M, so there’s probably a musical first in there somewhere) and Glenn Danzig’s finest work in the film’s title track – which, if memory serves me right, was relegated in the film itself to about five seconds on a tinny radio in the background. And this album fits firmly into this category.
I don’t remember Judgement Night being an especially bad film, although I have my suspicions that my subconscious might be trying to hide the awful truth from me. Dennis Leary was in it, and a posh camper van seemed to feature prominently, but that’s as far as I can recall. The soundtrack album is a corker though.
As a snapshot of a time and place (Ice-T kindly reminding us that it’s LA ’92 a few times), it’s spot-on. Alternative Rock was well and truly off college radio and on MTV, and Rap was finding its own way into the mainstream, shorn of a lot of its previous politicism. That someone came up with the wizard scheme of cherrypicking from both camps and putting them together is a work of genius. That someone else with a lot of money greenlit it was miraculous, given that the mainstream still wasn’t sure what to do with either genre. Thankfully the guy with the money gave the job back to the one with the ideas, and each collaboration here works incredibly well.
In fairness, time hasn’t been too kind to some of the tunes here (although this is just as much an issue with certain bands sticking to their groove with monotonous determination that they dated themselves), but there’s plenty for people of a certain era (me!) to enjoy, as well as giving new fans of certain acts a quirky glimpse into a time when everything seemed to be fun and mad.
The two jewels in Judgement Night’s crown come from the back-to-back pairing of Slayer and Ice-T’s Disorder and Faith No More/Boo-Ya T.R.I.B.E.’s still-incredible Another Body Murdered, even if the Slayer one sounds a bit Fleet Foxes (no, honestly – this has a point!) where the track seems to have had a whole different song parked on the end of it but is welcome anyway. Mudhoney do a fine turn with Sir Mix-a-Lot in Freak Momma where both sides seem to be having a right laugh, and Cypress Hill manage to keep it together long enough to pop up twice, with Sonic Youth on I Love You Mary Jane and Pearl Jam on Real Thing. My personal favourite is De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub grooving gently through Fallin’, which has a cheery edge to it that other artists here are doing all in their power to purge.
Attempts to duplicate this haven’t been so good, with bigger names and a crapper film – the Spawn soundtrack made a decent fist of it (Slayer/ATR is brilliant), but it all feels a bit forced and self-consciously “alternative”. Judgement Night’s soundtrack works because it’s fun.
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