Thanks to the High Fidelity scene in which Jack Black disses the sappy and overplayed Woman in Red theme "I Just Called to Say I Love You," Stevie Wonder's Woman in Red soundtrack has become a punchline, much like Prince's Batman song soundtrack, which was the subject of a similar gag in Shaun of the Dead. Another thing that both those '80s song soundtracks have in common is that though those albums aren't exactly career highlights for either artist, they aren't exactly awful either. They're redeemed by two or three underappreciated tracks.
"Love Light in Flight" is one of those tracks, and it's a song I hadn't heard since 1984 or 1985--until I recently stumbled into it during DJ Jazzy Jeff and Mick Boogie's Summertime 2 mixtape and instantly smiled, which is why I just added "Love Light in Flight" to A Fistful of Soundtracks' '80s block "Soda and Pie" (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at noon).
"Drums, please!"
"Oh man," I thought to myself while bumping Summertime 2, "I remember 'Love Light in Flight.' It so takes me back to when I was a Ghostbusters-loving kid in '84!" It's such a damn smooth track--plus it's full of aviation imagery, which would have made it perfect for the flight-themed "Up, Up and Away" episode of the terrestrial radio incarnation of A Fistful of Soundtracks that I aired on July 22, 2001.
Suddenly, Gene Wilder is faced with a crippling decision: Kelly LeBrock or the sheep that's waiting for him at home?
"Love Light in Flight" is the one hit song from The Woman in Red that's neither overplayed nor preachy (that would be the well-meaning but clunkily written "Don't Drive Drunk"). Camille Paglia may be a pretentious, SarahPalin-loving weirdo (her Salon Oscar telecast recaps were always worthy of an Onion parody), but she's right that "Love Light in Flight" is a sublime tune.
1. The cinematic-sounding French horn lines during Kanye West's "All of the Lights" Ye is a modern-day Mozart--as in batshitcrazy, but a total musical genius.
9. Dres' flow during the Black Sheep track "Elevation"
10. Bambu's delivery of "I used to sit in church and look at the stained glass and wonder why none of them look like me" during "Misused"
11. The electronic bass line of Daft Punk's Tron: Legacy end credits cue "Solar Sailer"
12. Ernie Isley's smokin' guitar solo at the end of The Isley Brothers' "Summer Breeze" I only listen to that cover of sappy Seals and Crofts just to get to that guitar solo.
13. Teena Marie (R.I.P.) leading the female half of the Long Beach audience in a playful battle of the sexes with Rick James over which gender is louder during the live 1981 version of "I'm a Sucker for Love" that's on the deluxe edition CD of Street Songs
To promote the upcoming self-titled album by legendary and frequently sampled Motown guitarist Dennis Coffey, Strut Records recently dropped a fantastic 45-minute mix of old Coffey tunes, hip-hop tracks that sampled Coffey's work and new material from the April 26 release. The instrumental jam "7th Galaxy," a new joint from Coffey's Strut album, starts at 04:55 in the "Constellations" mix, which was assembled by DJ House Shoes. "7th Galaxy" needs to turn up as chase music in a TV show or movie pronto.
The mix includes one of my all-time favorite movie themes, Coffey's Black Belt Jones theme, and another blaxploitation soundtrack tune that features Coffey's guitar work, Edwin Starr's "Easin' In" from Hell Up in Harlem. I was first exposed to "Easin' In" via "Nickel Bags" by Digable Planets, while LL Cool J's "Jingling Baby" introduced me to the Black Belt Jones theme.
I once saw a TCM featurette that pointed out that the Magnificent Seven montage of Yul Brynner and his crew journeying on horseback to the Mexican villagers looked really lethargic and unexciting without Elmer Bernstein's energetic main theme. The Black Belt Jones opening title sequence takes place in the dullest of settings, an L.A. parking lot--not exactly the most dynamic location to showcase the martial arts skills of Bushido Brown Jim Kelly. I guess director Robert Clouse had much less dough to work with than he did on his previous movie with Kelly, the Hong Kong-based Enter the Dragon. Like Bernstein's theme during the Magnificent Seven montage, Coffey's funky theme helps distract you from how shabby the opening title sequence looks despite the fisticuffs (ComicsAlliance editor Chris Sims noted on his Invincible Super-Blog that even the fisticuffs look compromised too: "It may SEEM like Black Belt Jones is moving slow, and that the guys he's fighting are drunk, but I assure you that's not the case. In order to get an 'R' rating they actually had to slow the film down because audiences in the Seventies could not handle that much brutal action.").
YouTube comments sections are too often full of inane or racist junk, but there was one comment below the video of the Black Belt Jones opening credits that amused me and caused me to do something I've never done before in a YouTube comments section, and that's click on "thumbs up":
"Obama should enter Congress with this theme and kick some Republican butt."
Word.
There are so many hot beats in Strut's Coffey mix, which concludes with "All Your Goodies Are Gone," a terrific blue-eyed soul collabo with Mayer Hawthorne from the new album, a release that Strut hopes will introduce Coffey to a new generation of beatheads. I particularly enjoyed the mix's juxtapositions of "Jingling Baby" with the Black Belt Jones breakbeat and "Easin' In" with "Nickel Bags."
Song: "Never Can Say Goodbye" by The Jackson 5 Released: 1971 Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It was featured in 1994's Crooklyn, one of my favorite Spike Lee Joints. In an A.V. Club "Random Roles" piece that was posted last week, Crooklyn star Delroy Lindo said his film, which flopped at the box office, found its fans on video:
One of the things that's been interesting about the legacy of the film is that I can't tell you how often I'm walking down the street and somebody will come up to me and say something like, "My daughter loves that film," "My daughter knows every scene in that film," "My daughter went through a period where she would come home from school and put in the VHS of Crooklyn." I mean, I hear that a lot, or people saying, "Oh my God, that was my family." And not just African-Americans. I've had white people say "You know what, I'm from Brooklyn, that was my film; that's so evocative for me of my family, of my past."
Which moment in Crooklyn does "Never Can Say Goodbye" appear?: The sequence where Troy (Zelda Harris) heads back to Brooklyn and says goodbye to both her Virginia-based cousin and compressed anamorphic widescreen (to the relief of viewers who were annoyed by the way Spike intentionally distorted the film's images to convey Troy's discomfort in Virginia).
Crooklyn is where I first heard "Never Can Say Goodbye," which was written by actor/minister Clifton Davis of That's My Mama and Amen fame. Thank you, Spike, for introducing me to so many fantastic pieces of music like the original version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" and "Chaiyya Chaiyya."
You know those Kidz Bop cover versions of pop hits? I'm looking forward to hearing the Kidz Bop crew take a stab at Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You."
Kidz Bop covers of songs like "Since U Been Gone" make no sense because they have kids sing about relationship baggage they haven't experienced yet. You don't have to be Lorne from Angel to be able to detect that in their soulless delivery. I can't take seriously a tune about relationship woes if it's sung by someone who still eats paste.
"Never Can Say Goodbye" should have been just as nonsensical because little Michael Jackson was also singing about adult heartache, but his voice in that tune is the opposite of soulless (it's also devoid of the showboating that a whole future generation of American Idol contestants is so fond of). I have no idea which moment from his effed-up childhood Jackson was recalling in order to embody the angsty character in "Never Can Say Goodbye"--Alex, I'm gonna go with "What is heartache over a rat he lost?"--but whatever it was, it fueled one hell of a performance during "Never Can Say Goodbye." That's what separates young Michael Jackson from whatever Village of the Damned they pluck those Kidz Bop studio singers from.
Song: "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" by Stevie Wonder Released: 1972 Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in High Fidelity, which was where I first heard this overlooked Wonder tune. Which moment in High Fidelity does it appear?: The closing credits, which are a special treat for fontophiles like myself. Mmm, Stencil...
Mmm, Eurostile...
The characters' hatred of Wonder's '80s and '90s output was the subject of one of Jack Black's key scenes ("Rob, 'Top Five Musical Crimes Perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the '80s and '90s.' Go."), so it's no surprise that Rob (John Cusack) opted for 1972's "I Believe" while making a mixtape for Laura (Iben Hjejle). "I Believe" is the closing track on Wonder's Talking Book album. In 2005's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Stevie Chick wrote that "'I Believe' finds Stevie's heart broken, but his belief in love still intact"--much like Rob at the end of the film.
Hear Stevie pick himself up, dust himself off and start all over again while the High Fidelity closing credits display many different kinds of awesome band flyer-inspired typography at The Art of the Title Sequence.
