Bright Lights Big City (soundtrack)

Welcome to another edition of Soundtrack Sunday.

In 1988, Michael J. Fox took the lead role in the adaptation of a Jay McInerney novel Bright Lights, Big City. Fox played a New York City magazine fact-checker with a cocaine habit that was slowly ruining his life. This very engaging drama also starred Phoebe Cates as the ex-wife and Kiefer Sutherland as the enabling best friend. The film is pretty good and the novel is a great read.

The soundtrack album that accompanied the film has a rather interesting mix to it. The contributions range from big name acts to some much lesser known ones. I think the end result is a good one.

Pale Kings and Princes

Jumping back to 1987 to fill-in on the 14th novel in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series, Pale Kings and Princes starts out with our private detective being hired by a newspaper who wants him to investigate the apparent murder of one of their reporters. The report was undercover in a small town, trying to find out about a connection between local business and cocaine. The local police seem to imply that the reporter was murdered by a jealous husband who believed the reporter was having an affair with his wife.

The book very much has that late 80's feel to it, with the drug business and the infidelity intrigue that was prominent in late 80's television dramas. Parker, however, writes his novels in such a way where they aren't truly dated. The clothes and make of cars is about all that can nail the period down. I felt the events could happen just as easily today as they might have twenty years ago.

As I've mentioned before, I had to skip this book at the library because someone else had it out. The nice thing was going back didn't feel that jarring or out of order. While Susan and Hawk continue to support Spenser in his case, it didn't matter that I had read two other books past this one in the series before getting to this one. I liked that.

The book also had a few twists and turns in the story to keep me guessing where it would end up. The ending did not feel rushed at all, nor did the book feel like it dragged in many parts. It was a good read. I'd recommend it.

Reign of the Rain

The editors of Vanity Fair magazine created a list of the top 50 movie soundtracks of all time. Looking at the Top 10 from bottom to top, they had The Big Chill, American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Trainspotting, Superfly, The Graduate, Pulp Fiction, The Harder They Come, A Hard Day's Night and in number one position: Purple Rain. The editors describe Prince's masterpiece as "a flawless combination of funk, R&B, pop, metal and even psychedelia into a sound that defined the '80s".

Now, I'm certainly not going to disagree with that choice for number one. I'm a huge fan of Purple Rain. I owned it on vinyl and then again on CD. I had the movie poster adorning my walls for much of my college years. I owned the movie on VHS and again on DVD. I've easily seen it a couple dozen times. Sure, the acting in it is a little poor at times. But there are some shining moments. There is no denying the chemistry between Prince and Apollonia, and the comedy stylings of Morris Day and Jerome Benton were also key. I would have liked for the rest of the Revolution (Wendy, Lisa, Dr. Fink, etc.) to have a bit more meat in the film besides a few lines here and there, but that's okay.

What really worked for the film was the slick, music-video stylings of the various performance numbers. In fact, the whole album is properly showcased in the film with full numbers along with a couple killer performances from the Time, Apollonia 6 and other Minneapolis bands from the early 80's era. That's really when the movie rocks literally.

And, back to the soundtrack which is all tunes by Prince and the Revolution, the songs are a very solid combination when put together. The music has some variety - a little experimenting here and there by Prince to keep the audience totally interested. From the opening bounces of "Let's Go Crazy" through the final lighter-waving "Purple Rain", this is an album that delivers the goods through and through. Sure, it was one of the records that set Tipper Gore and her PMRC group a flutter about ratings being needed for music (nothing more amusing than hearing Tipper recite the lyrics to "Darling Nikki"), but that's just a total other angle of why this album has a place in musical history.