CD Odyssey Disc 479: Soundtrack

This next review represents the last of the soundtracks in my collection. As the sidebar rules indicate, I don’t review musical scores.  I’ve got another thirteen of those, but there’s no way I’m sitting through three full albums of Lord of the Rings mood music.  I’m not even sure why I bought three albums of the stuff.

With the end of the journey, I can now definitively count 26 non-score soundtracks in my collection, although I remain on the lookout to add a 27^th (the “Bad Channels” soundtrack, because it has a couple of Blue Oyster Cult songs).  When I get that, I’ll insert it in the list, but for now let’s call this part of the journey over.

Soundtracks are a weird thing, and the more music I buy, the less they interest me, but that’s a fairly hollow claim when I have twenty-six of the frickin’ things.  Anyway, here we go.

Disc 479 is…The Warriors

Artist: Various Artists

Year of Release: 1979

What’s up with the Cover?  The usual approach of putting the movie poster on the soundtrack applies again.  The various gangs are all depicted, and if you’re a fan of the film you could probably spend a delightful time identifying each group.  I am not a sufficiently large fan of the film, and so don’t care who any of these folks are.

How I Came To Know It:  I remember the movie well from my childhood, including remembering liking it, but the soundtrack was a recent gift from Sheila, who has a soft spot for these tunes and the movie.

How It Stacks Up:  A-ha!  I know this, having just gone through all the soundtracks in preparation for the wrap-up review.  I’ve slotted “The Warriors” in the bottom third, 19 out of a total of 26.  Also, it is tradition here to make the definitive list of how they all stack up against each other.  There’s been some minor adjustments along the way (most notably on further review “The Harder They Come” knocks off “Saturday Night Fever” for top spot) but for the most part I’ve honoured my initial take on the albums.

This is a pretty long list, so unlike previous summaries, I won’t link to every review.  If you want to see them, just click the “soundtracks” tab under “Links by Artist” to the right, and you’ll see them all in one spot.

1.  The Harder They Come: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 371)
2. Saturday Night Fever: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 392)
3. Hedwig and the Angry Inch: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 225).
4. The Matrix:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 291)
5. Magnolia:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 181)
6. Crooklyn:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 75)
7. Swingers:  4 stars (reviewed at Disc 12)
8. Into the Wild:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 260)
9. Pulp Fiction:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 102)
10. Elizabethtown:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 33)
11. Highway 61:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 230)
12. O Brother Where Art Thou:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 386)
13. Buffy The Vampire Slayer:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 216)
14. Reservoir Dogs:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 116)
15. Jackie Brown:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 30)
16. Transamerica:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 402)
17. Les Miserables:  3 stars (reviewed at Disc 111)
18. Big Night:  2 stars (reviewed at Disc 215)
19. The Warriors:  2 stars (reviewed right here)
20. James Bond:  2 stars (reviewed at Disc 103)
21. About a Boy:  2 stars (reviewed at Disc 252)
22. Chess:  2 stars (reviewed at Disc 156)
23. Honeymoon in Vegas:  2 stars (reviewed at Disc 17 and then sold)
24. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat:  1 star (reviewed at Disc 284)
25. Moulin Rouge:  1 star (reviewed at Disc 151)
26. Natural Born Killers:  0 stars (reviewed at Disc 302)

Rating:  2 stars

“Can You Dig It?”  Such are the memorable one-liners from the movie, “The Warriors,” a cult classic for many impressionable youths of my generation.  This was a movie about rebellion, living life dangerously and daring to wear a vest without a shirt.

The movie has not aged well for me.  I liked it when I first saw it, but each time I see it again, I like it less.  The whole, “they killed Cyrus!” thing just seems too contrived to generate the various chase and fight scenes that follow and the Warriors themselves are less a gang than a young man’s social club.  They just aren’t edgy and dangerous like they were when I was nine.  Give me Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” instead.

But what about the music?  Can you dig that?  The answer is an unequivocal…kind of.

The soundtrack is an interesting mix of contemporary (for 1979) pop, rock and disco, with a lot more disco than I remember on my last listen.

The album begins with a synthesizer driven instrumental unimaginatively titled “Theme From ‘The Warriors’” and there are two more similar tracks later on the album, “The Fight” and “Baseball Furies Chase” (everyone loves the Baseball Furies – the one thing I still look forward to when watching the movie).  The songs are reminiscent of later Alan Parson’s Project (think “Sirius” but not as good).   They aren’t terribly memorable, but they are carefully sprinkled throughout the soundtrack to add a good energy.

There are two standouts on the record.  The first is the soul-infused “Nowhere to Run” which is a brilliant vocal performance by Arnold McCuller who – when I looked him up – turns out to still be touring!  In fact, we saw him live earlier in the year touring with Lyle Lovett as one of his singers – I even gave him a shout out in my review of the concert back at Disc 418.  It’s a small world after all, musically speaking.

The other standout is Joe Walsh’s “In the City.” This is a true song of 1979 in that it is infused with stadium rock and guitar riff, and enriched with a little piano, background cooing and fuzzy production.  These added touches would drown future tracks a few years later when lathered on too thick, but here it is just the right touch of that stuff – OK, maybe just a bit too much piano near the end, Joe.

My guilty pleasure on this album is the six minute plus disco groove, “Echoes in the Mind” by Mandrill.  It is a little bit Floaters in “Float On” and a lot Kool & the Gang in “Open Sesame.”  It is schlocky, but damn if that funky guitar riff doesn’t make me want to put on a pair of white loafers and go show off my best Travolta moves for the local kids!

…

OK, that would be a bad idea, but you get the point; it is a fun song.

Unfortunately, the album also has a lot of novelty-type songs.  Genya Ravan comes off as a poor imitation of Donna Summer on “Love is a Fire” and John Vastano’s “You’re Movin’ Too Slow” felt out of place; a hot mess where in places the harmonica, the piano and the guitar seemed to each be playing different songs.

This record was better than I expected it to be, but the synth tracks are simply OK, and the strong tracks aren’t strong enough to elevate it on their own.  That said, it is better than the movie.  It will definitely come out to play-ee-ay on my CD player from time to time over the years to come.

Best tracks:  Nowhere to Hide, Echoes in My Mind, In the City