Some directors have a real knack for picking great music to accompany their films. Wes Anderson is one of them. Anderson, like Quentin Terrantino, not only chooses good music, his choices are typically not the obvious choice, always slightly obscure or, at least, popular songs that haven’t been heard in a long time. In Terrantino’s case, I had forgotten just how much I use to love “Jungle Boogie” until Pulp Fiction reminded me. Of course after seeing Reservoir Dogs I’ll never be able to listen to Stealers Wheel do “Stuck in the Middle” without squirming a little bit…
Wes Anderson’s 1998 film Rushmore kicks off with a brilliant song by a somewhat obscure British band called The Creation, whose ranks included bass player John Dalton (The Kinks), and Ronnie Wood (formerly of The Birds (UK) and of course later The Faces and The Rolling Stones). A little research about the band revealed an interesting musical tidbit that I had never heard before. Apparently The Creation along with The Who and The Kinks (in their early days) and The Troggs and The Move, were retroactively dubbed “freakbeat” bands by music journalist Phil Smee. According to Smee, these bands were known for experimenting with studio production techniques and supposedly provided the “missing link” between early to mid ’60’s mod R&B and the psychedelic and progressive rock like Pink Floyd that emerged in the late 1960’s. The freakbeat sound included “strong direct drum beats, loud and frenzied guitar riffs, and extreme effects such as fuzztone, flanging, distortion and compression or phasing on the vocal or drum tracks.” Freakbeat. I like it.
I also really like The Creation’s first single from 1966 called “Making Time” — which is why it’s the Happy Medium Song of the Day.
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