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When you’re a young adult and trying to find your way in the world, it can be a very liberating period. It’s a time when your tastes aren’t solidified, and your mind is open to musical forms that people older or younger than you may find utterly abhorrent. The science of this phenomenon is detailed in the book This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, but I’m fairly certain we’ve all experienced what Levitin writes about: the music of our teen years (and early 20s) is just so much better than the crap that’s produced today.
I was going through my LPs the other day and found an inordinate number of soundtracks. Yeah, the Footloose soundtrack was in there, but I started to find others that reminded me how intently I listened to the music used in films. If I heard something I liked, I would usually drive down to Tower or Rasputin Records to see if I could get a copy after seeing the movie. That was back in the days when, despite making just a little more than minimum wage, I had a disposable income for things like records. Nowadays, while I still have a disposable income for music, there’s a kind of “download and forget” mentality that’s crept into my listening habits. Sure, it’s more convenient to buy music as a digital download, but I would argue that it comes at a price. And that price is the loss of anticipation and excitement about a record you bought at a brick and mortar store.
Dropping the needle on a new LP meant that you had to do more than just click a button. It meant tearing off the cellophane wrapping, taking out the inner sleeve of the record (pausing to eye the cover art, if there was any), gingerly extracting the LP from the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, and carefully putting the needle on the vinyl. For me, it was a ritual that reinforced the importance I placed on really listening to music.
While the music was playing, I would pore over the credits, liner notes, album art, and lyrics (if any). I would file away nuggets of information gleaned from those notes, which would enhance the experience of listening to the music. I can’t quite explain why, but knowing that composer X scored a film for director Y was important to me. Somehow I think it made me feel more connected to the movies I was watching because I was able to enjoy the film on multiple levels. It is that total devotion to the music experience I find myself missing these days. You know, getting completely lost in the music as you either cranked it up on the stereo speakers, or cranked it up on your headphones.
Alas, I find myself doing that less and less these days. Rediscovering the soundtracks presented here, however, has rekindled those memories of listening to music back in the day. And the lesson learned is that I have to slow down and really start to listen again.
Because it’s Vinyl Record Day today, here we go with six selections from soundtracks that have all the snap, crackle, and pops that you may remember from those days of LPs and 45s. Oh, and this time I’m offering this mix in the usual “full mix” format and as individual mp3s. (more…)
