Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

2025's year long Saturday series Soundtrack Saturday has reached the final reel but before the credits roll it seemed that a Sunday mix of various songs and scores from the various film soundtracks I've written about would make a good Sunday mix. This is the result, seventeen tracks from sixteen films, sequenced with something approaching a narrative arc- it starts out in the desert with Harry Dean Stanton tramping round the dust, stays out west for while and then shifts to Tokyo, sleeplessness and jet lag. We jump around some other locations- Long Island, France, Memphis- and have visions of a post- apocalyptic USA before the climax, a death, some levity and then Rutger Hauer in the rain. 

The photo at the top is of Stretford Essoldo, a former cinema just up the road from me, a beautiful 1930s building that has been sadly empty and unused for decades. 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

• Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca
• Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes
• Bob Dylan: Billy 7
• Joe Strummer: Tennessee Rain
• Tom Waits: Jockey Full Of Bourbon
• Kevin Shields: Intro- Tokyo
• Kevin Shields: City Girl
• Mick Jones: Long Island
• David Holmes: I Think You Flooded It
• John Lurie: Tuesday Night In Memphis
• Gabriel Yared: 37 Degrees 2 Le Matin
• Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Road
• John Barry: Theme From Midnight Cowboy
• Brian Eno: Deep Blue Day
• Son House: Death Letter Blues
• B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
• Vangelis: Tears In Rain

Cancion Mixteca is from Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders' 1984 film, a Ry Cooder soundtrack with some dialogue from the film that stands up as an album in its own right.  

Watch Chimes is from Sergio Leone's For A Few Dollars More, the second installment of the Dollars trilogy, released in 1967. 

Billy is from Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Western, Bob Dylan contributing the soundtrack and appearing in the film. 

Joe Strummer did the soundtrack for Walker, Alex Cox's 1987 Western- one of Joe's best 'wilderness years' songs. 

A Jockey Full Of Bourbon appears in Down By Law, Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film- Tom Waits is one of the three stars of the film as well as being a key part of the soundtrack. 

Intro- Tokyo and City Girl are from Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola's 2003 film, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson lost in Tokyo. 

Mick Jones provided three tracks for the 1993 film Amongst Friends- Long Island is the most complete, a Jones solo song. 

I Think You Flooded It is from Out Of Sight, the first of many David Holmes- Steven Soderbergh soundtrack collaborations, released in 1998. 

John Lurie's score for Mystery Train had to compete with some big hitters- Elvis' Mystery Train for one, Roy Orbison's Domino for another. A second Jim Jarmusch film in this mix- the use of music is central to Jarmusch's films. 

Gabriel Yared's guitar playing is from the soundtrack to Betty Blue, another late 80s film that made a deep impression on me- Beatrice Dalle made quite an impression too. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' soundtrack work spans all sorts of movies and documentaries. They began with the soundtrack to 2009 film The Road, a harrowing version of Cormac McCarthy's equally harrowing novel. 

Theme From Midnight Cowboy is gorgeous, a John Barry highpoint from a composer who recorded dozens of soundtracks. That harmonica. Stunning. 

Brian Eno's soundtrack work is wide and varied and an Eno only soundtrack mix would definitely work- Deep Blue Day is from the 1996 film Trainspotting but originally on Another Green World, Eno's 1975 album. 

Son House's Death Letter Blues is from 1965, just Son and a metal bodied resonator guitar. It's a stunning song and performance, Son's lyrics and performance can chill to the bone. It appeared on the soundtrack to On The Road, the  2012 version of Jack Kerouac's novel. 

B.J. Thomas' Raindrops Keep falling On My Head was a worldwide smash following its appearance in the 1969 film Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid. The song is probably what the film is best known for, along with the two stars- Robert Redford and Paul Newman- and the famous shoot out ending. 

At the end of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 sci fi/ film noir version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Rutger Hauer sits on top of a crumbling building in the rain, holding a dove and improvises a farewell speech as Harrison Ford slumps in front of him, his life saved. 'All these moments will be lost in time', Hauer says as Vangelis' synth score plays. But they're not are they- they replay endlessly, equally moving each time. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Jack Kerouac's On The Road was finally turned into a film in 2012 by Walter Salles (who had previously made The Motorcycle Diaries, an account of a youthful Che Guevara based on Che's book about travelling round South America). Other people had shown an interest in making a film out of On The Road- Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights back in 1979 and attempted to start shooting in 1995 but abandoned it. Before that Kerouac himself wrote to Marlon Brando to do it. Brando never replied. There was interest from Gus van Sant with Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt lined up to play the main roles but nothing got off the ground. 

Coppola eventually hired Salles and Salles started shooting in 2010 with Sam Riley as Sal Paradise/ Jack Kerouac and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty/ Neal Cassady. Riley had played Ian Curtis in Control, the Joy Division film. Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Steve Buscemi, Kirsten Dunst and Elizabeth Moss were all singed up, so it's an all star 2010s cast. The film looks good, the cinematography is good, the world of late 1940s USA and Mexico looks authentic, the attention to period detail is spot on. It feels like the 1940s, you can almost smell the cigarettes and the sweat, the grease of the engines, the tarmac, the streets of Denver, Jack's boots...

Much of filming was down on the run, on location, Salles in a car with a handheld camera alongside the car with Sal/ Sam and Dean/ Garrett inside. Hedlund described it as 'guerrilla filming' which sounds like it should be exactly what On The Road needs on the big screen. Despite this, there's something at the heart of the film that never quite connects, it never catches fire in the way it should. Hedlund is great as Dean as is Kristen Stewart as Marylou. Sam Riley's Sal/ Jack is decent if too much on the sidelines at times, not involved enough. As a film it looks good and some of the scenes work but overall it's too polite and doesn't capture the energy of the novel. Still, I liked it enough when it came out- I went on my own to a daytime screening at the Cornerhouse and have seen it at least once since then on DVD. 

On The Road is probably unfilmable really- the narrative, such as it is, doesn't really fit the standard three act arc and a version of On The Road that was entirely Kerouacian would be an impressionistic arthouse blur of road, poetry and jazz. 

The soundtrack though is very enjoyable, nineteen tracks that work really well as a whole piece- which is the sign of a good soundtrack. There are some period pieces (Slim Gaillard, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Son House), some instrumentals by soundtrack composer Gustavo Santaolalla and two minutes of Kerouac reading, mumbling, from the novel. 

Sweet Sixteen is fifty seconds that opens the soundtrack, the cast singing in a car, the sound of rubber tyres on tarmac and engine noise, a scene setter for the album. 

Sweet Sixteen

Roman Candles is  one minute twenty two seconds of rattling percussion and jazz piano from Gustavo Santaolalla, named for Kerouac's famous description in the novel- 

'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles'

Roman Candles

Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker made Salt Peanuts in 1941, a bebop tune written by Gillespie with the vocal interjection of the title surrounded by trumpet, piano, double bass and Parker's alto sax. Charlie Parker was one of the key inspirations for Kerouac's writing, the reason he got the legendary roll of paper to feed into the typewriter so he could type without having to stop. 

Salt Peanuts

Son House's Death Letter Blues is a postcard from the distant past, Delta blues sung and played by one who lived it. Heavy. 

Death Letter Blues

'I don't think anyone can hear me, can you hear me now?', Kerouac mutters at the start of this, before finding his rhythm, 'New York, 1949...' and starts narrating the road trip and the search for Dean's father which is what Dean/ Neal is looking for all the time- an absent alcoholic father- and the perpetual motion that is at the heart of the novel. As a result the two minutes of Kerouac reading from On The Road on the soundtrack are an affecting and effective way to end it. 

Jack Kerouac Reads On The Road

The film and the novel both end with the unfinished search and Jack's reflection, back in New Jersey...

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

Seven Nation Noise Revelator

Found this, I think via Twitter. The charmingly named Bastard Brothers have taken this pair's best known song...

...and this man's biblical acapella John The Revelator...

... and this band's Bring The Noise...

... and stuck 'em all together- good fun. Some blues purists seem a little upset about Son House being used in this way but I reckon he wouldn't have minded. Due to 'copyright restrictions' I'm not allowed to embed it. Youtube link here.

Death Letter, Hot Water

We are into day 5 of enforced Victorian living- come and film us Channel 4. Our boiler stopped working on Sunday- no central heating or hot water all day. It is not easy to fill a bath with the kettle and a few pans. The boilerman came on Monday and said our expander unit had popped causing the system to trip out. He's ordered a new one but no sign of it yet. We have two portable radiators and an electric fan heater Mrs Swiss had when I first met her (and it wasn't new then). On Sunday night we bathed at friends. Boilerman did a temporary fix for us, emptying the kitchen radiator to act as an expander unit. This has, since Monday evening, provided intermittent heat and some hot water. Some as in not enough. I got those faulty boiler blues.

Son House's blues song Death Letter plays in the film of On The Road and hearing it on the big screen last week reminded me of its power and beauty. Two clips for you...

This one, undated, but I'm guessing 1950s (?)



And this one from 1970...



And without wanting to come across as one of those authenticity blues bores, they just go to show that lights, staging, films and projections, heck, even having a guitar that's in tune, are all a little superfluous at times.

Son House Music

This floored me when I first heard it, many years ago now- Son House, Mississippi bluesman, singing John the Revelator, just his hollering voice and handclaps. A track where you can hear the spit against the microphone and he could be in the room with you. Since then I've seen Wild Billy Childish perform this song live, his estuary English vowels shifting the song from the Mississipppi Delta to the Thames Delta. I've sometimes wondered whether a machine version could work- electronic handclaps and robotic voice- but never tried it. My idea that incidentally, if a version goes top 40 this summer.

Son House began recording in the 1920s and when The Great Depression scuppered his career he drifted into obscurity, only to be rediscovered decades later. In between he spent two years in prison after killing a man who had gone on a shooting spree in a juke joint. Son had been wounded in the leg, and shot the gunman. He was sentenced to fifteen years and served two. In 1941 he was recorded by John and Alan Lomax during their field recordings for the Library of Congress road trip, but he went undiscovered until the mid 60s when he became part of the blues boom sparked off by the British Invasion bands (he was working as a railroad porter in New York State at the time). Married five times, he died in 1988.

14 John the Revelator.wma