In the course of my adolescence, there were maybe five movies that I could not get enough. One was Taxi Driver. Another was Roadside Prophets. Two of them were Alex Cox's Repo Man (original and edited for TV "melon farmer" edition). The fifth was another Alex Cox flick, Straight to Hell, probably the greatest terrible spaghetti western ever.Multiple internet places are now reporting that the long-fabled Repo Man sequel is on its way. Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday hits next month, but it won't be coming to yr local multiplex. Just yr local comic shop.
To be honest, I'm not really getting my hopes up for this. I mean, Otto (now mysteriously renamed Waldo) is not really what made Repo Man so awesome. It was all about the supporting cast, Harry Dean Stanton especially, but also Sy Richardson, Dick Rude, and Tracey Walter. Plus, the whole point was that it was a totally kick-ass punk rock cheapo movie.
Another movie I watched as a teenager that had less of an effect on me was Permanent Record, a grim teensploitation feature starring Keanu Reeves and Lou Reed. I remember picking up the soundtrack to that on cassette for, like, 99 cents in the mall. The soundtrack, compared to the movie, was pretty freaking fantastic. Side A was entirely Joe Strummer & the Latino Rockabilly War. Side B was mostly melodramatic college rock snooze tunes, and pretty wicked Lou number called "Something Happened", that was at least as good, if not better, than Mistrial.
But the Strummer stuff was wild and fantastic. Noisy rock better times eight than latter-years Clash. "Trash City" (featured below) was easily the best track, but the instrumental "Theme From Permanent Record" was also exactly the kind of song that was everything great about Strummer. I was quite surprised how few mentions Strummer's output with the Latino Rockabilly War got when Strummer was duly eulogized. For that matter, Strummer's killer performance in Straight to Hell was barely mentioned either. I remember feeling like this integral part of my coming-of-age had been Stalinized.
mp3: "Trash City" by Joe Strummer & the Latino Rockabilly War
mp3: "Straight to Hell" by Steve Ketchen & the Kensington Hillbillies
1 comment:
You read my mind. About 4 months ago, I was looking for Trash City to throw on my iPod because I only have the 12" and I didn't really want to plug in the record player, record it onto the computer and then convert it to mp3 since, well, I'm lazy. Totally awesome.
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