{"id":20895,"date":"2014-01-15T08:36:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T13:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=20895"},"modified":"2014-01-15T08:37:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T13:37:43","slug":"this-is-the-soundtrack-of-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-the-soundtrack-of-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is The Soundtrack of Your Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ra1aQ0htzGg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>So the other week, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought a copy of the <em>Saturday Night Fever<\/em> soundtrack. This movie and it&#8217;s accompanying 2-record set made a big impact on me, my brother, and my sister. My younger sister was the coolest one: she convinced my parents to take her to see it (underage, she had to convince my parents to go; years later, she admitted to me that she didn&#8217;t understand the movie). But my younger brother and I made do by listening to the soundtrack. I loved that record, and even my parents put up with our playing it (Dad, son of a musicologist, even liked Walter Murphy&#8217;s &#8220;A Fifth of Beethoven&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Listening to it again, years later and with a more jaded ear, I was pleased how well the Bee-Gees tunes have stood the test of time. I was never a huge Brothers Gibb fan, but the production and arrangements on their songs are pretty nice. Contrast that to the obvious filler in the album: several David Shire tracks that seem to be a white guy&#8217;s approximation of ethnic dance music. And then there&#8217;s the stuff in between: second rate but fun KC and the Sunshine Band, Tavares, The Trammps, and Kool and the Gang&#8217;s &#8220;Open Sesame,&#8221; which regardless of it&#8217;s B-level status gets a thumbs up in my book due to the repetition of the lyrics &#8220;Get down with the Genie!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Which got me thinking about soundtracks.,,<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Saturday Night Fever<\/em>\u00a0soundtrack was a hybrid of pre-recorded songs (several Bee-Gees tracks had been previously released) and music written for the film (that awful Shire shite). But there are other types of soundtracks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The compilation of previously recorded songs. Consider prime &#8220;oldies&#8221; movies, such as <em>The Big Chill<\/em>\u00a0and <em>American Graffiti<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>The album of all original music, often by one musician\/group. For example, music from <em>The Virgin Suicides<\/em>, by Air, or <em>Obscured By Clouds<\/em>, from Pink Floyd.<\/li>\n<li>The Broadway Cast Album of a musical, such as\u00a0<em>Hair<\/em>\u00a0or (gasp, gag) <em>Phantom of the Opera<\/em>\u00a0or some other Andrew Lloyd Webber nonsense.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;let&#8217;s make this cooler by adding snippets of movie dialogue but end up making it irritating&#8221; soundtracks, such as <em>Pulp Fiction<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>An album that makes you think it&#8217;s a soundtrack but it&#8217;s really a concept album of thematically-related music, such as Barry Adamson&#8217;s <em>Moss Side Story<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure there are other examples of soundtrack albums. But what I really want to know about is your relation to soundtracks: <em>Do you own them? Buy them? Do you prefer one type over another? Are soundtracks just a lame attempt to re-package music? Are they boring? Could they be, like Trix, for kids, and a way to get children, tweens, or musically-adverse buyers interested in music (Ah, the <\/em>Grease<em> soundtrack!)?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m interested in your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So the other week, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought a copy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. This movie and it&#8217;s accompanying 2-record set made a big impact on me, my brother, and my sister. My younger sister was the coolest one: she convinced my parents to take her to see it (underage, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/this-is-the-soundtrack-of-your-life\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1838,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[379,893,892],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1838"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}