Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to wallow in nostalgia. Yes, I love the old tunes of my youth, but I need to keep up with the new in music while not loosing my roots. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Ting Tings, Airbourn Toxic Event, Cœur de pirate, Metric, The Dead Weather, The Dandy Warhols, Gogol Bordello, Pink Mountaintops … the list goes on and on and you can never catch up with all the great music being produced these days.
That being said — when the music of my youth is combined with great film making — the combination of nostalgic tunes and images is a heady brew indeed!
Two movies that create that "heady brew" for me are:
Almost Famous
Writer/director Cameron Crow's semi-autobiographical movie about becoming a rock journalist in his teens in the early '70s. This is a must see coming-of-age-rock-and-roll movie. The soundtrack is awesome and evocative. The picture here is of the band (fictional band Stillwater) hung over, traveling to the next gig, singing along with Elton John to Tiny Dancer. It was a tear jerker for me.
Pirate Radio
The story of one of the ships that anchored off the coast of Briton during the 1960's to broadcast the then banned rock & roll music. It starts out with a scene of a boy going to bed in his pjs, tucking in, and waiting to be sure that his parents are busy with their evening routine (he hears the classic music swell) then he quietly sneaks his transistor radio out of its bedside drawer, puts it under his pillow and tunes in the all night pirate rock station. The scene expands to show kids all over the country covertly rocking out after lights out. Rock music wasn't banned in America, but I was that kid, pretending to be asleep while listening to Rock and MoTown on late night Detroit radio. I could soo relate to it!
