Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Film Frenzy!

Today's offering presents two approaches to Youth Movie soundtrack albums. Goodbye Columbus was a mainstream movie from '69 featuring edgy counterculture activists Richard Benjamin (of whom it can fairly be asked whatever happened to) and Ali MacGraw. The soundtrack featured mainstream act The Association phoning in four tracks (actually three), and mainstream composer Charles Fox padding everything out with instrymentals of the type you'd expect to hear. There's some sound collage stuff to add a street-level political dimension, pretty themes, and a few FX. In short, a mainstream album. Product. It's swell!
WTF were you thinking, Neil?
Our other offering, however, is Art. "A Film By Neil Young", yet. I haven't seen it, and I'm guessing a few of th' Four Or Five Guys© haven't either. In fact, I'll 'fess up, I haven't even heard the soundtrack. All I know is, it's a direct transfer of the movie audio to vinyl. Like watching the movie while blind. You could say this was a revolutionary approach to the form, an artistic statement in itself. Or you could say it's just Neil being his lazy-assed self. You listen, and tell me if its reputation is warranted. I'm prepared to adopt any opinion that's persuasively expressed.

The titanic struggle between Art and Commerce! Which wins? You decide!

(thanks to jcc for the Neil!)
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9 comments:

  1. FiveGunsWestFebruary 25, 2020 at 8:38 AM

    Neil just picked up Ms. Nussbaum's undies on E-bay for next to nothing. I recognized a couple of the other guys bidding, especially that Pence guy from Twitter. May we have the link please, dear boy?

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  2. rickFebruary 25, 2020 at 9:00 AM

    actually the Neil film was a pretty good midnight movie, back when they had them every weekend, alot of surreal scenes, the soundtrack was the usual Neil stuff which folk either love or hate

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  3. PsychfanFebruary 25, 2020 at 10:34 AM

    The Neil soundtrack is actually quite good. Richard Benjamin became a successful director not long after this.

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    Replies
    1. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIFebruary 25, 2020 at 12:21 PM

      I trust your judgement, Rick and Psychfan. From now on, my critical stance will be that the movie is "pretty good", and the album is "quite good."

      However, the Goodbye Columbus soundtrack is swell.

      Delete
  4. ThéoFebruary 25, 2020 at 4:08 PM

    Neil's Dead Man soundtrack is great

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  5. pmacFebruary 25, 2020 at 9:38 PM

    LOL - I also saw the Journey flick at a midnight movie, but I'll be damn if I remember anything about it, other than Neil hating the South.

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  6. sambgodotFebruary 26, 2020 at 12:48 AM

    An interesting(?) link between the two is Richard Benjamin starred in Diary of a Mad Housewife alongside Carrie Snodgress which is where Neil claims to have met her. "Watching a movie with a friend, I fell in love with the actress" (or some such). JTTP, never seen the film, best thing that could be said for the record was the packaging was magnificent, but in the words of the man himself, what it contained was a "piece of crap", but then that was probably his intention.

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