I was coming up with ideas for the follow-up to Elvis Costello Weekends and it occurred to me that if my CD collection and musical knowledge were sufficient, The Rolling Stones would be perfect candidates.
Here’s a band that often comes up in the same breath as The Beatles, who have written as many classic songs, and who have released three times as many albums. I’ve always fallen on The Beatles side of the old “Beatles or Stones” question, but there is no doubt that it’s a legitimate contest.
Every so often, the entertainment industry seizes on an anniversary as an excuse to roll out a new version of some classic album or movie, prompting all of the entertainment magazines and websites to launch their own retrospectives. No doubt it is all in the interest of making a lot of money off of a gullible public’s nostalgia.
And I’m here to say that it’s a wonderful thing.
Last year it was The Beatles CD reissues, which weren’t even tied to an anniversary but rather to the release of the Rock Band video game featuring the Fab Four’s music. I, like millions of other fans, plopped down lots of money to buy up new versions of albums I already owned because these sounded a whole lot better.
I love highlighting songs featured in movies because it’s a marriage of my two great artistic passions — the peanut butter and chocolate of the entertainment world.
In some cases, a great song is made greater by its association with a movie. In other cases, a great song brings something fresh to a movie in need of the injection. And then there are cases like today’s example, where a song that never made an impression on me is suddenly revealed as great through its use in a film.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m thrilled by the use of a good pop or rock song on the big screen. And as a lover of both film and music, I have often listened to a song and imagined exactly how I would use it in a movie.
I’m sure this is something a lot of us do, matching images to the music we hear. Is it more prevalent for the generation that grew up on MTV and was conditioned to see music accompanied by videos? Or did my parents listen to Frank Sinatra and invent movies in their minds?
