SOUNDTRACK: ‘Times Square’ with Patrik Sandberg

Yasi is joined by returning guest Patrik Sandberg to revisit the soundtrack to 1980 cult film ‘Times Square.’ They cover the scrapped love story between its two leads, the producer’s efforts to turn the project into the next ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ and the decision to market its sprawling punk and new wave soundtrack ahead of the movie itself. Plus: Patrik’s mini deep dive on legendary producer Robert Stigwood and why the greatest influence 'Times Square’ had might be on the generation that followed it. CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Patrik Sandberg @patriksandberg Producer: Rob Sundermann Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 1:46Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist, but today, we are still, somehow, against all odds, in the midst of our ongoing Best 80s Soundtrack series. And today's episode is a special one. It is about Times Square. My guest today is the beloved, the wonderful Patrick Sandberg.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  The recurring.

• 2:13Yasi Salek?

  The recurring.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  The annoying neighbor, the nosy neighbor of Bandplain.

• 2:17Yasi Salek?

  You're, what's the, what's?

• 2:18Speaker 04

  I'm the Cosmo Kramer.

• 2:20Yasi Salek?

  What's the home improvement guy who you only see from?

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:23Yasi Salek?

  That's you.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Him.

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  Times Square is my oyster, babe, and I hope I find a pearl, is how I feel about that. Before we get into it, though, I just need to do a quick programming note. I am doing my first-ever solo mailbag episode, just me, a brave girl, in the woods, with your questions. So if you're listening to this before August 10th, send your questions, babe. Send them on in. Send questions about new music, old music, love, life, philosophy, religion, maybe none about religion.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  Wow. War.

• 2:59Yasi Salek?

  None of that. You know, open your heart and ask what's inside, and perhaps I'll answer. Send those questions to [email protected], again, before August 10th. Patrick.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 3:16Yasi Salek?

  Hi, welcome back.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  I can't stay away.

• 3:19Yasi Salek?

  You love it here.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  I do.

• 3:21Yasi Salek?

  You love it here on Bandplain.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  I'm moving in.

• 3:24Yasi Salek?

  I think, I was a little hesitant at first to do this one, even though I'm very passionate about this soundtrack, but I know it's sort of a undersung film, but definitely soundtrack. I mean, this is not Footloose, you know, this is not Dirty Dancing. This is like, sort of a niche proposition. But, as I always do, I needed to go with my heart, and like, you know, logic be damned. But then, as I was, you know, preparing for this, I got some feedback from some Cher Gen X advisors.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:04Yasi Salek?

  About how major this soundtrack was for their personal musical development and their understanding of what was out there. And that's kind of what was subconsciously in my mind, I think, when I was thinking about this, like, that this was such a snapshot of a moment in time with, for lack of a better term, like, underground or like, post-punk, import, new wave music, that probably gave a lot of people insight into this world they didn't know about, because none of this was mainstream.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:40Yasi Salek?

  And I think for that alone, it's definitely worth discussing.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  I think some of it was verging on mainstream, and I think a lot of that is Robert Stigwood, which we'll get into, like, the kind of, the Machiavellian.

• 4:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the Australian Svengalia of it all.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  The way that this was packaged, likely, if you can use such a grotesque contemporary term, for something that feels like a little precious jewel that exists in its own historic context, but, like, you know, trolling around the internet, like, on all of the various forums and YouTube, I was getting really into YouTube comment sections.

• 5:20Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I love that. The purest and best YouTube.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Heaven.

• 5:24Yasi Salek?

  Section is, for me, especially music videos, have like, the most beautiful comments, where it'll be like, "My boyfriend's been dead for 12 years, and I listen to this song every day and think of him and shed a tear." And it's like, all these like, beautiful, like, expressions of like, love and pain.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  A lot of elders.

• 5:40Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  But it's also like, because with this soundtrack in particular, it's, the soundtrack as an album is not on streaming. There's, there are playlists that are available.

• 5:52Yasi Salek?

  Right, that have been.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  That fans have made, but also, a lot of songs, or maybe not a lot, but a significant number of songs on the soundtrack are not on streaming.

• 6:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  But they are on YouTube, you know, bootleg style.

• 6:04Yasi Salek?

  That's where I want to listen to them.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  And you look at the comments on YouTube, and it's everyone talking about how important this soundtrack is.

• 6:12Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Like, it's, it's a niche soundtrack, but if you know, you know.

• 6:15Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  And like, for a lot of people, it's like, it's definitely like a cult soundtrack from the 80s.

• 6:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  And when we were talking about which 80s movies to do for soundtracks, and you did that whole draft episode about it.

• 6:29Yasi Salek?

  With Sean and Chris, yeah, the Hall of Fame. Which they, I bring this up just to be like, not to be like, I'm right, but like, I'm glad I stuck to my guns, because they sort of pushed back against it, like Sean, I think, was like, "This is a 70s, this is 70s music," or whatever. And I was like, "Yes, but it's, but it's not," because that, some of that music, while released in the 70s, didn't get a life and, and love from people. The discovery was a trickle, it was UK-only imports, like.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  I don't think that matters at all.

• 6:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  But I do think you need to set rules and parameters and stick to them, or else you venture into like Hippocrates Land, you know what I mean?

• 7:05Yasi Salek?

  I live in Hippocrates Land. I'm the mayor of Hippocrates Land.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  Hippocrates Land, which is also.

• 7:11Yasi Salek?

  Population one.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Better known as America.

• 7:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, I think for me, the metric that.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  But it came out in 1980, it counts as an 80s soundtrack.

• 7:19Yasi Salek?

  And what's most important.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  I wanted to do The Big Chill.

• 7:21Yasi Salek?

  Which is also great, but The Big Chill, it's just a different value proposition. What I look for in soundtracks when I want to talk about them is, and I don't always succeed, because A, I have a schedule to stick to and I have to find guests, but I want exactly what this is. Like, I think soundtracks had this incredible ability to open people's minds to new things. Like, it would deliver you this world that you didn't know about. Like, I think The Big Chill does something very different, it's very cool, but it's not exactly like, people were like, "Oh, I didn't know about that song."

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Well, I was looking at The Big Chill more anthropologically.

• 7:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  And what it meant for the soundtrack as a product.

• 8:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the soundtrack economy.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  It, it felt like a very big turning point for soundtracks as, like, something that you sell that becomes a hit on its own.

• 8:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Separate from the movie.

• 8:11Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  Even though it's definitely part of the movie. And what was so fascinating, because I watched The Big Chill recently, not to make this about The Big Chill, but.

• 8:20Yasi Salek?

  Everything about The Big Chill.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  You know, I went on Letterboxd, and The Big Chill is like a very hated and despised film for like, very revisionist kind of bullshit political reasons.

• 8:31Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  But a lot of complaining from younger people that are on Letterboxd was like, "Oh, these needle drops are so obvious, every movie uses these." And it's like, well, they didn't, until The Big Chill did it.

• 8:45Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  This movie came out a long time ago.

• 8:48Yasi Salek?

  This is, this is an argument I often have with people, where I'm like, it's impossible for you to understand seeing this in its context, so don't judge it against, you know, like, try to imagine what it was like in 1980, what was The Big Chill 4, I don't remember what it came out as.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Love it or hate it, The Big Chill, everyone hates it, started, everyone also loves it. It was a huge, successful thing that a lot of movies did for a long time, which was to have these characters, usually white characters.

• 9:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, but not, not totally white characters, but characters in movies like, jumping around dancing on the bed to Motown songs.

• 9:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Or throwing the Motown song into the trailer, because it evokes this like, kind of like, glorious Americana feeling of like, togetherness and emotion, and it, like, Hollywood took that model that The Big Chill basically started and ran with it for like, 40 years. Like, we were talking about it, how like.

• 9:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Forrest Gump is like, a spiritual descendant of The Big Chill, for sure. It wasn't, it's not Motown, but it's putting together the, all of these like, very iconic songs from different eras and, and using them for their emotional impact, and it really

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Manipulation.

• 9:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and also, and also in a great way, like, for me, as a kid, getting the Forrest Gump soundtrack, I did learn a lot about things like, I didn't know about, like Lynyrd Skynyrd or whatever, was it Lynyrd Skynyrd on?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm sure, everyone was on the force. It was a double CD.

• 10:12Yasi Salek?

  It was a double CD, yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  But like, you know, like, movies like Stepmom, where it's like, Susan Sarandon's dying of cancer, and they're singing Ain't No Mountain High Enough, or whatever, or like, I brought up the Family Stone, like, trailer, like, that whole thing.

• 10:26Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  And then that ended up, I don't know what lived in the gulf between these two things, but we went from like, an epidemic of like, mining Motown.

• 10:34Yasi Salek?

  Boys on the side.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Boys on the side.

• 10:36Yasi Salek?

  When the big old person, when they sing, "You got it."

• 10:44Yasi Salek?

  Are we okay? Are we gonna cry too much this episode?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  No, I know.

• 10:49Yasi Salek?

  She's dying.

• 10:50Speaker 04

  And now we just get like

• 10:51Yasi Salek?

  The raspy voice.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  We are

• 10:54Yasi Salek?

  Slow cover.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  We raged out against this.

• 10:57Yasi Salek?

  Nirvana song.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:59Yasi Salek?

  In a previous episode.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  I didn't hear, but so.

• 11:01Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's so fine. They

• 11:03Speaker 04

  So soundtrack trends.

• 11:04Yasi Salek?

  Music supervisors need to go to prison. It's enough. Stop it. No more covers with breathy female vocals.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Enough.

• 11:11Yasi Salek?

  Of like eighties and nineties hard rock songs. I'm done. We're all done. You did a thing. I'm proud of you.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  But they're like, that was, they think that was the last time there was monoculture around like, you know, melodic pop music or something. So they're like, well, everyone remembers that song.

• 11:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  What if Billie Eilish did it?

• 11:32Yasi Salek?

  Wouldn't that be crazy? This is Alice in Chains, but a girl is singing.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  But I think that Times Square, you know, we've brought up so many other movies as well, like Times Square wasn't, wouldn't have been my first choice, but I'm really glad that that's what it ended up being. Because you get to, cause you've, you've had guests on the sort of picked movies and this is like really your movie choice. Like you've been writing for Times Square.

• 11:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it's, it's not that it's my favorite eighties soundtrack, cause it's not. It's just, I find it to be super fascinating as a soundtrack and as, I think the story around it is interesting. I think it's just like, for me, one of the more interesting ones to talk about, you know?

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Totally. And when I was bringing up my favorites, a lot of them are like, oh, there's only one or two songs actually on that soundtrack. They're just impactful. I was like, American Gigolo.

• 12:21Yasi Salek?

  Right, which is just Call Me and then a bunch of George Miroda instrumentals.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Or like Blue Velvet or like, you know, these movies where the songs are older, which you kind of did already with, um,

• 12:34Yasi Salek?

  Dirty Dancing.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Dirty Dancing.

• 12:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, there's less than zeros. There's a couple we haven't done yet that Valley Girl is another really good example that has like a lot of like contemporary new wave.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  Valley Girl has psychedelic furs, right?

• 12:46Yasi Salek?

  It's so major. Let's get into this one. First, also I wanna give a shout out and a big thank you to Paradise Found Records in Petaluma, your hometown.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  I had nothing to do with it.

• 12:57Yasi Salek?

  You had nothing to do with it, but God bless them because they sent me the Times Square, uh, double vinyl, which was so kind of, I think it's an original.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:05Yasi Salek?

  Take a look, you guys.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  I think they are also still putting the soundtrack out.

• 13:09Yasi Salek?

  I hope so.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  I was looking, I looked online quickly and I was like, oh, there's so many of them.

• 13:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  They didn't have it at Amoeba, but.

• 13:16Yasi Salek?

  I really wanted to have it here because, um, I was speaking to also former guest of the pod, Paul Hammond. My second, my, my two best gays and I can't even pronounce his last name right. Cause like he wanted to make it.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  You just had a stroke. It's okay.

• 13:30Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to make him European. I'm like, come on. He's like, it's Hammond. Um, Paul Hammond also said a similar thing, which was, he was like, oh, I don't know how I found that, but I, I was so struck by the artwork when I bought it. And I, I was like, oh, it's these two cool, you know, punk-ish looking girls with like, and so I, I did wanna have the actual vinyl here to look at.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  It kind of evokes like a vintage interview magazine.

• 13:58Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  The sort of vibe, you know?

• 14:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Should we talk a little bit first about just like the film before we go? Cause I, I think it's kind of inextricable, like maybe the like, the top line of the plot.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  Is the soundtrack. It's like, it's like, this is a movie to me.

• 14:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  And I mean, I first watched this movie in high school.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  I was punk in high school.

• 14:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  My punk Petaluma history.

• 14:29Yasi Salek?

  Full, uh, hawk. You were beating up egg whites and you were.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  I had like a turquoise mohawk.

• 14:35Yasi Salek?

  Hell yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Um, I drove a 1987 Chrysler New Yorker. I worked at a store called Videodroid. That was like the punk rock video store in my town where all of the like.

• 14:47Yasi Salek?

  Patrick Laura is dropping left and right.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Where all of the really intimidating, like, uh, kind of riot girls who went to Sonoma State worked. So it was like all college kids working there. And I was, I started working there when I was like 14, cause I was, I was sort of the, um, Warren and Empire Records, like.

• 15:07Yasi Salek?

  My name isn't fucking Warren.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  I was Brendan Sexton III, hanging around at the video store, refusing to leave until they gave me a job.

• 15:14Yasi Salek?

  That's how I got my job at my first record store too.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 15:18Yasi Salek?

  I just came in every day and I was like, is there a job yet? Is there a job yet? And the guy was like, oh my God, fine. You can fucking work here.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  Alan Moyle needs to make a movie about us. But it was, I had like a very Empire Records. I was really lucky that I had that job.

• 15:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  It's still the best job I ever had, but I saw Times Square because I had older punk friends. And they were very much like, oh, you're gonna love this movie. Cause I already loved all the bands that are on the soundtrack or like a lot of them. And so maybe I'm projecting my own experience onto this movie, but now seeing it even, you know, five years later.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  I, it feels to me, and this is very, it's the first thing you see when the film opens is a Robert Stigwood production and these like incredible disco lights.

• 16:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  And it's like, it feels like the soundtrack was primary and the film was secondary.

• 16:14Yasi Salek?

  And.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Like the film was the supplemental marketing tool to sell soundtracks.

• 16:19Yasi Salek?

  And it's in a way correct. That's not how it was intended. And if you ask my, my man Alan Moyle, this was a gross miscarriage of justice. What happened?

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Well, it was sort of taken from him.

• 16:33Yasi Salek?

  It was taken from him.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  It became that, you know?

• 16:36Yasi Salek?

  It's funny, cause I, you know.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  It makes sense because who would ever make this movie about this topic?

• 16:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  Like unknown stars. Like you're, you're sort of looking at it being like, it's a money pit. Like this is just a money loser.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  So if you guys haven't seen it, basically the film is about two quite young teenage girls. One who is, uh, you know, a sort of like wayward youth, um, has had a broken, you know, broken homes and is kind of on the streets and is like of questionable mental health. Played, uh, her name is Nikki Marata, played by Roman Johnson, who's phenomenal. Is it the first thing she ever did? And then this other girl who is the daughter of like a very wealthy and powerful, I think he's a politician, maybe in New York.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  He's trying to clean up Times Square.

• 17:23Yasi Salek?

  He's trying to clean up Times Square. The smut. And this is, this is, again, I was not there. I was not even born and neither were you, but you know, this is a time where Times Square was known for pornographic movie theaters and sex workers and drug, like that's where you went to score. And it was like, it was quite, it wasn't the M and M store in the Sour Patch Kids warehouse or whatever. It was there right now, you know?

• 17:44Speaker 04

  What I wouldn't give.

• 17:45Yasi Salek?

  For this Sour Patch Kids warehouse?

• 17:49Speaker 04

  To go back.

• 17:50Yasi Salek?

  To go back in time. And they meet when they're both placed in the same room at a neurological hospital. Nikki Marata fakes seizures to get away from the cops and Pamela is just like a very disaffected youth who's having struggles with mental health. And her fault, they get, they come there to be examined. What's really sad about this movie, which I, you know, now rewatching, I watched it also a long time ago. So I was not, my brain was not formed enough to even catch this, but I was like, now having read about it and watching it through the lens, you see that there's a complete plot line of these girls being in love with each other and having a lesbian relationship that is

• 18:31Speaker 04

  Fully.

• 18:32Yasi Salek?

  Fully cut out of the film, except in the parts that it can't. So like, you see it hinted at a bunch, but it's never realized. And I think that was Alan Moyle's intention with the original script.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think there were scenes cut.

• 18:46Yasi Salek?

  I think there was a lot of scenes cut. Yeah. Which is why this, the film, to be quite frank, is a bit uneven and choppy and like, isn't a great feat of cinema, but.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:57Yasi Salek?

  It is.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 18:58Yasi Salek?

  It is like visually and like.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  It's tonally a bit odd as well.

• 19:02Yasi Salek?

  Because the plot doesn't make sense.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  There are, it is like well-directed.

• 19:07Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  It's.

• 19:08Yasi Salek?

  It's beautiful.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  It's beautifully shot. We have a lot of, there's a lot going on in the movie that just frankly wouldn't happen in a movie of that scale these days. Car chases, like things like that. Where you're sort of like, oh, this was like a whole production, like that van flipped over the thing on the freeway.

• 19:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  A different movie making, uh, time. It was shot by James A. Conner.

• 19:31Yasi Salek?

  The cinematographer.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  Cinematographer who also shot, um, William Friedkin's Cruising.

• 19:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  Another great dirty New York.

• 19:38Yasi Salek?

  Incredible. Also, sorry, I should mention Alan Moyle. I owe him several bouquets of flowers because he also wrote and directed Pump of the Volume, one of the greatest films and soundtracks of all time. That's 1990, so it doesn't fall in the eighties, but, um, and he directed Empire Records.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Records, which is a flawless masterpiece.

• 19:58Yasi Salek?

  And one of the most perfect films of all time.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  And those movies are, I saw, I saw it referred to, couldn't tell you where, we don't have internet.

• 20:07Yasi Salek?

  We're cut off from the world in here.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  We've been cut off.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Those three films were referred to as his quote unquote pop rebellion trilogy.

• 20:17Yasi Salek?

  Times Square.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Times Square Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records.

• 20:20Yasi Salek?

  It is interesting, because Alan Moy also wrote this film. He co-wrote it with a woman named Leanne Ungar, who, by the way, is fascinating. I tried to find more information about her because I'm deeply fascinated by her and there's not that much. I'm like reading a tape op interview with her because she was, she was an engineer, she was a recording engineer. And she did all of, like, not all, but like six of Leonard Cohen's records, like in the seventies and eighties, after this film came out. And she also worked with Laurie Anderson. Like, she's fucking cool as hell. I think they might have been a couple. I couldn't get any information on this, but they lived in a loft on Forty Second Street, so close by. And they, they found a diary in a secondhand couch that they bought. And it was written by a young, seemingly mentally disturbed woman.

• 21:05Yasi Salek?

  And they were like, oh, we're gonna base a film on this, which is so cool.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  Ghosts.

• 21:10Yasi Salek?

  But then you can see, obviously, he was into music or into the idea, at the very least, of a, of a DJ.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  And that young woman was Courtney Love.

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  Was Courtney, yeah. It was her diary. Because the DJ in this, who, by the way, I don't know why I didn't remember how hot Tim Curry was. He was so hot. He plays.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  Well, we need to get into a whole discussion of Tim Curry.

• 21:33Yasi Salek?

  He plays Johnny LaGuardia, who is a radio DJ in a station based in Times Square, who's kind of like the antagonist of the rich politician, whereas he's like the, like, defender of the, the vibe of the current Times Square, you know?

• 21:50Speaker 04

  He was the Angie Martinez of nineteen eighty New York. He was the voice of New York.

• 21:54Yasi Salek?

  The voice of New York. I mean, it's so cool. And he is involved in their story in, in the coolest way where you're like, wow, this is, this, this is such a sweet way to tell a story. Where like Pamela, portrayed by Trini Alvarado, who did have a bit of a movie career. She was in Little Women, I think, most famously. Marlon's the first, but whatever, before Greta Gerwig, Little Women. But she writes a letter to him because they would sit around and listen to his show and he reads it on the air. And then, then throughout the story, he's communicating with them over the radio.

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Shot of her too, where when he's on the radio and she has these, those headphones on, those like great, like big analog headphones and.

• 22:35Yasi Salek?

  The cans.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  And he's, and he's talking to her and it's like pushing in on through the glass of like the penthouse that she lives in with her dad.

• 22:43Yasi Salek?

  And she's talking, she's like so sad. Talking about being a zombie and feeling like, you know, so disaffected and disconnected. Anyways, that's, that's the.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  It's just like bands, my listeners, how they feel.

• 22:52Yasi Salek?

  That's when they listen to me. I'm Johnny LaGuardia coming into their penthouses. Are you guys rich? Send me money. I'm just kidding. But, but if you want to, you can. And then the rest of the film is basically like a, you know, a girl's gone wild kind of, like rebellious young girls, like finding themselves by, you know, chasing their dreams, living in this loft. You know, Pamela, there's like these sweet parts where, where Nikki kind of takes Pamela under her wing and is like, if you ever need me, like scream my name. That part made me cry. Scream my name as loud as you can. And she's like, scream, they're screaming each other's names. That's like so beautiful.

• 23:32Yasi Salek?

  And there's this other part where like Pamela is like, explain, reading poetry to her. She's reading, I think she was reading the love song of J. Alfred Proffrock, which is one of my favorites. Is it Tennyson? Lord Alfred Tennyson? Yeah, I'm educated.

• 23:47Yasi Salek?

  And then she explains to her like, that everything is poetry, like everything you do is poetry. The way you speak is poetry. And she kind of encourages her to start writing poems, just how she like gets into being like, that sounds like a song. You should make a song. And that's part of the soundtrack, right? That's endemic to the movie.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  The original title of the movie was She's Got the Shakes.

• 24:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Which I'm not sure, she's not really portrayed as an alcoholic, although maybe that was part of the thing. The screenplay was written by a third person, though. Like, the story was written by Alan Moy and Leanne Ungar.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Jacob Brackman.

• 24:23Yasi Salek?

  Jacob Brackman, who, I'm sorry, just a sidebar, because this person is fascinating.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  Carly Simon's lyricist.

• 24:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, went to Harvard, worked at Newsweek, was a journalist and the New Yorker and Esquire, but then met Carly Simon at summer camp in the Berkshires and became like one of the co-writer of her lyrics. And he's written lyrics of like multiple songs that were like hits for her. Okay, amazing.

• 24:48Speaker 04

  Okay, I want to be a lyricist. Why, why am I not doing this?

• 24:51Yasi Salek?

  You could.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  I would be the best.

• 24:53Yasi Salek?

  I, I agree.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Hit me up.

• 24:56Yasi Salek?

  Get in touch.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, get in touch. I could write a hit song. Easy.

• 25:00Yasi Salek?

  I think this movie probably would not have happened, though, back to the Australian Svengali, Robert Stigwood. Because he comes in to produce it. And I'm presuming that means he funded it.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  Honey, the big pussy is here. Bob Stigwood, bitch.

• 25:16Yasi Salek?

  The thing about Bob Stigwood is he.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Let's talk about mother.

• 25:20Yasi Salek?

  I think he was maybe a horrible person. I don't know. He's, he's passed away now, but.

• 25:26Speaker 04

  My idol. Let's go.

• 25:28Yasi Salek?

  He, but he was the, what do I know, what kind of person he was, but he was the impresario.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  The devil.

• 25:34Yasi Salek?

  He did do some things that are like.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  What did Courtney call him?

• 25:38Yasi Salek?

  The evil Australian Kim Fauley.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  Evil Australian gay Kim Fauley, I think is important.

• 25:45Yasi Salek?

  Was himself probably a little bit gay.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  He was sure.

• 25:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Yasi Salek?

  He had made.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  He wished he was.

• 25:52Yasi Salek?

  He had made Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Flop.

• 25:59Yasi Salek?

  Which was a flop, yeah. But the other two, massive successes. And he was like, coming off, I guess, the flop, but maybe the flop hadn't happened. I'm not totally sure.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  But also like, for people who don't know what Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the film is.

• 26:13Yasi Salek?

  We should have a quick.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  It's important to just point out, it is not The Beatles.

• 26:17Yasi Salek?

  It's not The Beatles. So it is.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Is The Bee Gees covering The Beatles.

• 26:21Yasi Salek?

  The Bee Gees and others, Aerosmith, it's multiple random artists. And, and also, I believe The Bee Gees star in it. This is, I've never seen this.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  And Steve Martin.

• 26:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Peter Frampton is also in it and he's on the, hard to believe that this was a flop. Hard to believe that people had.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  It sounds like a must see.

• 26:40Yasi Salek?

  They had the actual Beatles version and then they didn't want Peter Frampton doing it. It's hard to believe.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Why do I have the feeling this is like Quentin Tarantino's favorite movie for some reason? It's like something like that. It's a, it's an odd curio.

• 26:54Yasi Salek?

  Grift that was then upended because the, it was a double album soundtrack that like went platinum, but then like, the platinum was taken back because so many copies were returned.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Just like Lizzo.

• 27:10Yasi Salek?

  I have, I think that's no comment, no comment on that.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Okay, but there's something that I think is really funny about Robert Stigwood, having come from like musical theater also, because he also.

• 27:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he was a theater producer.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ Superstar, like, like was involved with those musicals from the ground up.

• 27:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  And like, he was a showman, you know? He realized like dramatic productions with music make a lot of money. Like, he kind of, this became his hustle.

• 27:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  And it's like, he turned, he's, he managed The Bee Gees as well.

• 27:40Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  And Alan Gibb.

• 27:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  And he also was involved with Evita, starring Madonna. He was a producer on that.

• 27:50Yasi Salek?

  Because he's at the scene of every crime.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:53Yasi Salek?

  His hands dripping with blood.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  You can, you can trace through like, because he was also behind the, the Tom, the Who's Tommy, the movie, the Ken Russell movie, Saturday Night Fever, Grease. He was sort of like, okay, this is what we do. We package a movie and a soundtrack. Like, people buy the record.

• 28:11Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 28:11Speaker 04

  But the songs charted. They were like number one songs.

• 28:14Yasi Salek?

  And Saturday Night Fever, actually, I don't know a lot about it, was, was that, that was written with the music in mind, right? I think what happened here was a bit more unfortunate, where he just saw an opportunity to be like, oh, my God, I'm gonna have the new wave.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  He like threw a dart at the wall and was like punk.

• 28:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, probably didn't use the word punk, probably new wave, because it was more called new wave back then, but like, I'm gonna have the new wave Saturday Night Fever. This is gonna be a huge hit. We're gonna make the music, all about it. And Alan Moy, for his part, was like, this movie wasn't about the music. Like, there was all, like, kind of part a little bit in the backdrop. This movie was about mentally unfit teenagers.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Lesbians.

• 28:53Yasi Salek?

  Lesbians finding each other in Times Square. And not only did, did Stigwood sort of force him to cut a lot of those lesbian scenes that bolstered that part of the plot, he also like kept being like, you have to put shoehorn music in all over it, right? And actually, Alan Moy quit the movie before it was done. And I believe his, all his hair fell out. He was so stressed out.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't hear about the cosmetic issues.

• 29:24Yasi Salek?

  He had an alopecia, babe, from this, this nervous breakdown of Robert Stigwood. Imagine Robert Stigwood being like, no, take that out. You know what I mean? Like, every day in your ear and you're just trying to make a beautiful cinematic work of art? No.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Well, that, what's so. That's one of the things that's so strange about the movie to me is because, playing devil's advocate, as I love to do, putting myself in Robert Stigwood's shoes only.

• 29:52Yasi Salek?

  Only identifying with the villain in the story.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Only identifying with the one gay guy in the story. He thought this was gonna be the next Saturday Night Fever, right? And there was an element of like, he signed Robin Johnson to his, his management company to manage her and said he was gonna turn her into the female John Travolta.

• 30:08Yasi Salek?

  Right. And instead imprisoned her and ruined her career. We don't talk about it.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  But like, so when I look at this story, kind of divorced from like what it ended up becoming, and by the way, this movie is a flop. Like, it did not happen. So he didn't succeed. I'm like, what about this screenplay, this story, did you think would like catch on like wildfire in this way?

• 30:30Yasi Salek?

  Why not just hire, if you wanted to do this, you could have hired a screenwriter to write the story of a girl band. You know, some, there's a such a, there was such a way.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Stains vibe.

• 30:40Yasi Salek?

  Which Fabulous Stains also fucking dropped the ball because that soundtrack sucks too, but.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  Sorry, it didn't need to be a woman at the center of the movie. I mean, that was like a choice, like. Like, if you wanted another Saturday Night Fever for this kind of music, I just think there were obviously more commercial paths he could have taken.

• 30:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  So it's so interesting to me that he went with this.

• 30:59Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I'm glad he did for our purposes. Um, but yeah, the, if you go home after this.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  It was doomed.

• 31:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. If you go home after this and watch the film and you're like, are you guys stupid? This movie sucks. We're just trying to explain, which I don't think it sucks. I find it, I think it has a ton of redeemable.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  But.

• 31:20Yasi Salek?

  But I'm still, I'm so glad it exists. I think there's such, there's really beautiful moments. To your point, the cinematography is gorgeous. It's so cool that it's all shot in New York. You don't really see that much anymore, you know? I think the characters are in, Robin Johnson is a fucking star. And it's actually very sad that nothing came of that because she, she is, she was a 15 year old girl who was like scouted out while she was ditching school to come be in this movie. And a very funny story where, um, apparently the person that scouted her, no one knew who he was or what he had to do with the movie.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:53Yasi Salek?

  That's how she ended up at the audition. Disappeared.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  It's like, there's magic everywhere.

• 31:57Yasi Salek?

  It was an angel. Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  It's like the same angel that put the diary in the sofa.

• 32:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Somehow brought Robin Johnson to this movie.

• 32:03Yasi Salek?

  But she is so mesmerizing.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  She's dropped a gorgeous.

• 32:07Yasi Salek?

  She's dropped a gorgeous. She's.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  So cool.

• 32:09Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Has the, the deepest, raspiest Aunt Patty and Aunt Selma voice.

• 32:14Yasi Salek?

  Is literally 15 years old.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  She, that's what's so crazy is that she was 15 and Trini was 12.

• 32:20Yasi Salek?

  12. She doesn't look 12. She looks a bit older than 12.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  And they're shooting scenes in strip clubs with topless women.

• 32:25Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Um, which, which it was a different time.

• 32:29Yasi Salek?

  It was a different time, but they're, they're phenomenal. It's, it's a, I think it's a really cool movie. I think it's worth watching. Yes. Is it like, you know, The Godfather Part Two? No, but it's a great movie.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  It was interesting to revisit because I remember when I was a teenager, I loved it.

• 32:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  And.

• 32:46Yasi Salek?

  Now that you understand.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  I haven't revisited it much.

• 32:50Yasi Salek?

  Right. You have a different idea about it.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  I also find that the two leads have limited chemistry with each other. I don't feel the kind of, and part of that is probably because of the scenes that were cut.

• 33:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  You do get this like intense friendship and you know, I love movies that are like two person cult. It's like kind of a thing for me.

• 33:11Yasi Salek?

  I do think it still works on that level because it's, it is such a thing of young girls to like fall in love with another young girl. When what it really is, is that you want to be them, you know? And like, I did get that energy a lot, at least from the Pamela character towards the Nikki character, because she's so cool and free, you know?

• 33:29Speaker 04

  I think this is controversial. I think Trini Alvarado's performance is bad.

• 33:35Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  I think she's an uncompelling star.

• 33:39Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  She's cute in the movie.

• 33:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  She's very, quite stoic. She also was 12 years old, so she was a literal child, but I feel like it could have, we could have had, there are films that you can actually, you can like definitely see the influence of this movie in that came later, like Foxfire.

• 33:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I totally agree. I love Foxfire.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  By the way, Robert Johnson, Robert, Robin Johnson walked so Angelina Jolie could run, period.

• 34:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  She was very the Angelina of back then. And that's what they, that's what they saw in her.

• 34:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  And when Angelina Jolie went on to do Foxfire, I bet this was a big reference for her because she got the same haircut.

• 34:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that kind of mullet.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, this like moppish bangs mullet.

• 34:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Kind of messy. But in Foxfire, I think her chemistry with Jenny Lewis is like so much more, like you, you're so much more invested in that relationship for whatever reason.

• 34:35Yasi Salek?

  Jenny Shimizu?

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Is it not Jenny Lewis?

• 34:37Yasi Salek?

  Oh, and Jenny Lewis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, of course.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  And Jenny Shimizu is also in the movie.

• 34:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  Jenny Shimizu is who she was dating in real life, but the kind of romance in the, in Foxfire or the like intense friendship is between Jenny Lewis and Angelina Jolie. Like, you know, you know, in the movie Heavenly Creatures, I love to bring up Heavenly Creatures. That movie is so sensational because the actresses are really portraying like the histrionic emotions of a teenage girl.

• 35:04Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? It's like, they're so obsessed with each other that they're smiling so much that like their face is hurt. You know what I mean? It's like, you get this sort of like feverish thing between them. I think this movie can, is, can be a little aloof.

• 35:17Yasi Salek?

  I don't mean to be pink pussy hat so early on.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Do it.

• 35:22Yasi Salek?

  But Foxfire was written by a woman and directed by a woman. And I think if you want.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  And there was no Robert Stigwood in the mix.

• 35:30Yasi Salek?

  I think if you want a realistic portrayal and understanding of a teenage girl, it's probably not going to come from like a 35 year old man and then a gay Australian Svengali, you know?

• 35:40Speaker 04

  I mean, but Peter Jackson, honey, did it with Heavenly Creatures. So.

• 35:44Yasi Salek?

  That's true.

• 35:44Speaker 04

  So there you go. But that was like, Peter Jackson was reading teenage girls with that movie.

• 35:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Like he, they were, he was, it was not like a flattering portrayal, but it was to me screamingly accurate.

• 35:57Yasi Salek?

  Okay, but not to be a bitch, but guess who co-wrote the screenplay? A woman with a vagina.

• 36:05Yasi Salek?

  Fran Walsh.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course.

• 36:06Yasi Salek?

  I just, I do just kind of feel like, I don't think it's so cut and dry, but I think like, usually when you get a portrayal, especially of a teenage girl, because it's so specific, that's knocks you out. It's going to be written or, or informed by another woman because just, men can't understand what it's like to be a teenage girl. It's a specific mental illness that only women have experienced.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  It is also like, I was thinking about Robin Johnson and the story about what happened to her.

• 36:37Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Which is essentially that Stigwood signed her to his management. He was going to turn her into the next Travolta. She was not allowed to do any,

• 36:46Speaker 04

  to work with competing studios.

• 36:48Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  So she wasn't able to go up for other movies.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Her contract with RSO, Stigwood's company ran out and by that point she was sort of like old news. You know, like the buzz had sort of left her.

• 37:02Yasi Salek?

  She was in that, she was in a couple of other things.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  She had a memorable moment in After Hours.

• 37:08Yasi Salek?

  One of my favorites. She's like the punk chick in After Hours. She looks so cool. She's in that movie Splits that I, I've not seen, but people kind of like it. It's also kind of a new wavy movie about a girl band.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  She had a TV series.

• 37:20Yasi Salek?

  She was on Guiding Light.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Well, hello.

• 37:23Yasi Salek?

  For, I think, a, a year, maybe two years.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  Good for her.

• 37:28Yasi Salek?

  She was also on the season one of Miami Vice.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  Yes, I think just one episode.

• 37:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, one episode. So yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  She has such an incredible face and presence and like, she's sort of, uh, a naturalism because she's sort of being herself, you know? She's from New York.

• 37:45Yasi Salek?

  Totally. She's from Brooklyn. She has that accent. And then she, I think she ended up becoming a traffic reporter, I believe.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. In Los Angeles. Towards the end of the eighties, it seems like she sort of gave up on acting on screen.

• 37:58Yasi Salek?

  Honestly?

• 37:58Speaker 04

  Became a broadcaster.

• 37:59Yasi Salek?

  Maybe it worked out for her. Maybe she's happier.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Maybe she's happier. Maybe it would have ruined her life, you know? She could be the queen of Scientology by now, had things gone differently. But I think when we're talking about, oh, it's sad that she didn't have a bigger career, it's because she's so talented.

• 38:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Like, she's phenomenal in the movie. She's a star.

• 38:16Yasi Salek?

  Singing voice is awesome. And we'll get into that because that does play into the, um, the soundtrack.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  So you look at someone like that and you're like, oh, you could have had it all.

• 38:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  But it's like, would she have wanted it all? It's a different conversation. But worth watching just to see her performance, which you cannot unsee.

• 38:35Yasi Salek?

  The woman that plays the like, sort of like Nikki's handler.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  What, at the beginning of the movie?

• 38:41Yasi Salek?

  She's kind of throughout the movie, like, okay, yeah. Her name is Anna Maria Horford.

• 38:47Yasi Salek?

  She's like, maybe only if you're like really into movies like Friday, Next Friday, How High and the Wayans Brothers Television Program. You would recognize her, but she's like, an actress that's been in all those movies, but she's quite young in this. And I was like, the whole time I was like, where do I know her from?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  That's so funny.

• 39:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She's, she's sort of like the court appointed, like she's with her in the ambulance in the beginning, like put, takes her, like no smoking in here. Then she's like with, you know, anyways, I just thought that was, that was like a cool piece of casting.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Okay. Can we just like, and leading back into the music?

• 39:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  A little bit of more, a little more lore about Robert Stigwood.

• 39:24Yasi Salek?

  You're obsessed with Robert.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  I know I am, but this is a rock and roll podcast, okay?

• 39:28Yasi Salek?

  It sure is.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  And we need to like firmly place ourselves in the period and time of like, who was pulling the strings here?

• 39:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  How, exactly how powerful he was.

• 39:38Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Because also if you go watch the movie, you're like, oh, it's this sort of like dirty grimy little low budget, like punk movie. And it's like, this man also released the soundtracks, had got the rights and released the soundtracks for Fame and the Star Wars movies.

• 39:55Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Which sold a lot because like, young boys and girls who went to see Star Wars.

• 40:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Were obsessed with the Star Wars music and they were running out and buying those records.

• 40:05Yasi Salek?

  I mean, also I don't know if we've been clear enough that Saturday Night Fever was like a smash. It, it hit the number one on the charts in every country. Like it was like the highest selling album, not just soundtrack album of like.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:20Yasi Salek?

  It was huge.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  RSO as like a label has some distinction, if you look it up, that it's the only record label in history to have like the number one albums on the charts. And like six times in a row for like, that took over like an entire year or something. So he was very rich. Like he.

• 40:42Yasi Salek?

  Which is why he was able to fund this, uh, to your point, little punk movie.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  But so he, in addition to being a producer and like a music mogul, he managed Cream, The Bee Gees, Eric Clapton and Andy Gibb. And he was also the booking agent for The Who.

• 41:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  And in 1980, which is the year this movie came out, he was sued by The Bee Gees for $200 million.

• 41:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Over mismanagement. He countersued for $310 million for defamation. It was settled out of court.

• 41:21Yasi Salek?

  So you don't know what the.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  But by all accounts, he lost.

• 41:24Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  And The Bee Gees won. And it's still considered to this day to be the largest legal victory in history by a band against their own label.

• 41:34Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 41:35Speaker 04

  And then afterwards, they made up and they stayed on the label and kept working with him.

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  What?

• 41:43Speaker 04

  That's, I'm sorry, it's so drugs to me. It's so rock and roll. It's just like, oh, it's money.

• 41:49Yasi Salek?

  There's like a big Bee Gees documentary. I didn't see it. Everyone talked about it.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  I need to watch it. But also, another docu- there's all these documentaries around Robert Stigwood. There's, I don't know if there's any about him. His producing partner in film was Alan Carr, who was insane.

• 42:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  Another insane gay guy. There's a great documentary about him that everybody should look up and watch. But Stigwood was part of what would become coined as the Velvet Mafia, which of course, this is like peak interest of mine. Which was a term coined by Steven Gaines. The Velvet Mafia was like a conspiracy theory essentially. That there was like a cabal of evil gay multimillionaires controlling all of culture. And they included like Sandy Galen, David Geffen, Calvin Klein.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Oh my God, who else? What's his name? Dion's husband, Von Furstenberg. Whose name I always forget, who ran Paramount Pictures. Anyway, there was a, there was a whole Velvet Mafia cabal. Giorgio Santangelo, Halston even, Steve Rubell from Studio 54. And Robert Stigwood was part of that.

• 43:01Yasi Salek?

  Barry Diller.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  Barry Diller. That queen.

• 43:06Yasi Salek?

  I just.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  I'm getting sued after this.

• 43:09Yasi Salek?

  Top gay billionaires.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, there you go.

• 43:11Yasi Salek?

  Peter Thiel was around at the time.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  When Robert Stigwood died, his obituary said that for a time, he was the most powerful tycoon in the entertainment industry.

• 43:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  That's big.

• 43:25Yasi Salek?

  And even with all that, couldn't make this work.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  And it's because he owned the record label that distributed his own artist's albums and film soundtracks. And he controlled the publishing rights. So not since Hollywood's golden days had so much power and wealth been concentrated in the hands of one person.

• 43:47Yasi Salek?

  I love that, that, I was like.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  I'm obsessed.

• 43:49Yasi Salek?

  I was like, come talk about the Times Square.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  He's the devil.

• 43:52Yasi Salek?

  Come talk about the Times Square soundtrack. And you're like that meme where it's like the gun and it's like, we're not watching Netflix. We're talking about Robert Stigwood for two hours.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  I got into Robert Stigwood and I was like, now we're cooking with gas. That's why we're doing this soundtrack.

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  I thought you were gonna be most excited about Alan Moyle's made for Canadian television film, Man in the Mirror.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  The Michael Jackson story, which I began watching yesterday and I cannot wait to go back and finish it because it is insane. It also looks nothing like Pump Up the Volume, Empire Records, or this.

• 44:25Yasi Salek?

  What's a documentary?

• 44:27Speaker 04

  No, it isn't.

• 44:27Yasi Salek?

  Excuse me?

• 44:28Speaker 04

  It's a dramatization.

• 44:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:30Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's, it's a Canadian TV movie.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Uh, it just goes to show you, like sometimes.

• 44:39Yasi Salek?

  It's called Range, honey.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  It's called Range. It's called budgetary range.

• 44:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 44:44Speaker 04

  But it's called Range of Budgetary Constraints.

• 44:46Yasi Salek?

  I think you should have 10 Oscars for Pump Up the Volume personally, but the world is not, is not just in the way it should be.

• 44:56Speaker 00

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• 45:57Yasi Salek?

  Let's just paint a quick picture of, well, I think to go back to what I was saying earlier about how this was like a gateway for so many people, our friend Courtney Love being one who was like, told me that she was so thrilled that we're talking about it, but that she had like somehow got her hands on this when she was quite young. And like through her stepfather, and it like changed her life because she didn't know about any of these bands, you know, like. And, and I think that's because it's important to like, think about like, the popular music in 1980 was as such. The number one album of the year was Pink Floyd's The Wall. The rest of the things that were like

• 46:40Yasi Salek?

  in popular culture was Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, Bob Seger, Billy Joel, Jackson Brown, Barbra Streisand, Kenny, you know what I'm saying?

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Like, it wasn't cool.

• 46:53Yasi Salek?

  No. And the only kind of like crossover moment, there was two. One was big.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  And it never is.

• 47:00Yasi Salek?

  One was big, Call Me, to your point about American J- not American Juggalo. Is that the name of it?

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:06Yasi Salek?

  American Juggalo. Call Me My Blondie was a huge radio single in 1980. And so that was like the closest new wave crossover. And also like Cars by Gary Newman hit like number 12 on the charts, which was, didn't hit the number 10, but still pretty big for a Gary Newman song. But past that, it was like Funky Town. You know what I mean? Won't you take me to Funky Town? And 1980 is still like, the dredges of disco are still there. And then you have like Captain Tenille and classic rock, like it wasn't any, like punk and new wave and post punk were not, it's not how you walk into Urban Outfitters and there's Joy Division t-shirts, you know?

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:47Yasi Salek?

  So, but so much had come out. And 1979 is sort of like patient zero of post punk, right? Like, that's when Joy Division's Closer comes out.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  The Cure's debut record.

• 47:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Talking Heads remain in light. The Clash, The Clash had made more of a mark, I think, by then. No, Joy Division Closer was 1980. Sorry. It's the first Joy Division album that comes out, Unknown Pleasures, that comes out in 1979. Excuse me, I misspoke.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  Everyone calm down.

• 48:17Yasi Salek?

  I know. That people were like.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  People were like running.

• 48:18Yasi Salek?

  Running to comment. How dare she?

• 48:21Speaker 04

  I saw someone post yesterday that, that they're like, I tell people who aren't online enough, go and touch keyboards.

• 48:27Yasi Salek?

  Keyboard. I know. Whatever. You guys get what I'm saying. The point being is that there was all this incredible music, but it was very new. And like, as far as the British of it all, or the UK of it all went, it was coming in on import. It didn't, it wasn't even released in America.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  And that makes it so strange, the soundtrack too, because it's like, it was really putting a lot of faith in the fact that this was next.

• 48:49Yasi Salek?

  And it kind of was.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  And it was, but it, you know.

• 48:53Yasi Salek?

  Maybe not massively commercially.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  But even going so far as to like, put Lou Reed on the soundtrack. It was a song that was not new at the time.

• 49:02Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  You know, like that had been around. It was sort of like, there's a lot happening in the soundtrack that I think is really interesting. When we go song by song, you'll, you'll see it.

• 49:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  And there are really strange outliers, which feel kind of nakedly commercial to me, like putting the, the Bee Gees, the Andy Gibb, who is it who's on the soundtrack? There's some fucking Bee Gees song in here. Robin Gibb.

• 49:30Yasi Salek?

  He had to shoehorn a Gibb on here. He was like, you simply must have one Gibb or else I'm not, and you know what? I'm gonna say something. That song is not good.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  Oh, I was gonna say something completely opposite.

• 49:43Yasi Salek?

  You love the Gibb song?

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. I was like, first, I was like, why is this here? I was like, this is so corny. And this was like the single from the soundtrack as well. And they really push it. When Robin Gibb's voice comes in on that song, it is heaven.

• 49:58Yasi Salek?

  This is how I feel about the.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  The Bee Gees did have, they had something.

• 50:01Yasi Salek?

  This is how I feel about the Desmond Child and Rose.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  I love that song too.

• 50:06Yasi Salek?

  I love that song. I was like, what? I love this song.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  It's a very eclectic soundtrack. It's like there's songs that shouldn't work in here and they do.

• 50:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Cause they're so evocative of the time period, I think.

• 50:17Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting. Like, again, Alan Moyle didn't really have that much punk or new wave in mind, you know? But they put it all in and the music within the actual film works so well. Like, I'm thinking.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  It works okay.

• 50:35Yasi Salek?

  Well.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  It's a bit of a mishmash.

• 50:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  It feels like they were like something for everyone, you know?

• 50:40Yasi Salek?

  How great is it?

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Suzy Quatro. It's like you have some straight up rock and roll songs.

• 50:44Yasi Salek?

  So much sense to me though, because given the time period and given like, okay, the runaways have already kind of imploded by now. So you couldn't have probably gotten a runaway song to save your life if you wanted to, because they were in some like litigious hell of like whatever Kim Fowley wove for them. But Suzy Quatro was their hero. You know, like Suzy Quatro was kind of the pre. Punk girl that inspires. So that made total sense to me like.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  But then you have like the ruts and like, that's just like straight up punk.

• 51:13Yasi Salek?

  Straight up punk. By the way, we're broken up by this point.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's like a ska song in there that I had to do a double take.

• 51:19Yasi Salek?

  Really a ska song, but it's Pretty Boys by Joe Jackson. And it does have like a little like, little ska feeling, a little pick it up, pick it up. But, um, but he's the guy that did, is she really going out with him?

• 51:31Speaker 04

  Of course, of course. But this, to me, the song is ska. That ska, ska was made in this.

• 51:39Yasi Salek?

  Don't look me in my eyes and tell me that song doesn't bang.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 51:43Yasi Salek?

  It's really good. Yeah. Some of the music is diegetic in a way that I really love. Like, I love the scene where Nikki is breaking out of the hospital and carrying her boombox around and playing I Want to Be Sedated.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 51:57Yasi Salek?

  I think it's cool.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  That's why that scene is in the movie, because it's cool.

• 52:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, of course.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Why would she be playing a boombox so that everyone knows where she is and can come grab her? She's being chased and she was blasting a boombox, hiding in hallways. And it's like.

• 52:11Yasi Salek?

  But remember she cut, she turns it off when she hides.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  She turns it off when she hides once, but it's like.

• 52:15Yasi Salek?

  She, she blasts it because she's a fucking devil. Don't care babe, because she's a punk.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  Fuck you. Yeah.

• 52:20Yasi Salek?

  It works with the character. She's not a Svengali. She's not like a mysterious criminal.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  Productive for what she was attempting to do in that scene.

• 52:28Yasi Salek?

  A lot of the things that she does are counterproductive to what she's attempting to do throughout this film.

• 52:33Speaker 04

  I would have written her to be a little more sly, I think.

• 52:36Yasi Salek?

  A little more subtle.

• 52:36Speaker 04

  But I think that it was just like a cool punk thing to do in a movie is have the character with a boombox blasting their Ramones, barging into the insane asylum to rescue her future girlfriend.

• 52:46Yasi Salek?

  First of all, it's not insane asylum. It is, it is a hospital for potential neurological disorders.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Do you want to go there? Do you want to go there?

• 52:54Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. Will it start a gorgeous adventure with my new best friend?

• 52:57Speaker 04

  It didn't look very lush to me. I was, yeah.

• 53:00Yasi Salek?

  They use rock hard. I guess we could just go in order. So they use Rock Hard by Suzy Quatro, which you questioned a little bit, but I think it's cool. That's, do you know that's from Suzy Quatro's seventh studio album? Johnny LaGuardia plays it for them. He like dedicates it to them. And like, that's when they're, the Sleaze Sisters and they are rocking hard. I hope that was, that was pretty cute.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Rock Hard Suzy Quatro, also what I thought was really funny and very like, there's a fairy tale quality to this movie a little bit of like, things don't necessarily add up, but he, Johnny LaGuardia dedicates the song to them. And then the song is playing on the radio in the next three scenes as if it's playing over and over and over again, which I thought was funny. You know, it's like, then they're like, they're washing the windshields on the street and the song is still playing.

• 53:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  Like, it's just, and it's not a montage. It's just like always on.

• 53:50Yasi Salek?

  It's just always on. Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Um, and I also love that shot, and this is when Alan Moyle, it's like, really is like, okay, the filmmaker is here. Like, it shows

• 54:01Speaker 04

  someone who appears to be like a security guard or a maintenance guy, like on top of like the Empire State Building, wearing headphones, rocking out to the Suzy Quatro song and like the wee hours of the morning when he's like getting to work and like overlooking the whole city. And you're just like, what? Like, it was very like a moment where it's like all of New York is like listening to this. But it was so beautifully shot.

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  I think they were trying to get that across, right? That like Times Square was this like special place that all its denizens were sort of connected and perhaps the connective tissue was this radio station and this one, you know, shining light of a Tim Curry, Johnny LaGuardia speaking into the night.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  Hello and welcome to Vansplain.

• 54:46Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome. I thought the way that he portrayed Times Square was really cool. Like in the beginning, like when he's, when it's like just filming the people on the street, like it's, I, I read some reviews that said it wasn't gritty enough. And I was like, they show a guy nodding out and his friend like waking him up. I'm like, this was pretty, I thought it was pretty.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  But that's how New York is. Like when it's too gritty, it's not real. It's like people in New York are friendly, you know? It's like, they're like dancing to the music down the street and guys are yelling at them and stuff. And like, some of the guys are creepy and probably do want to rob them, but it's like, oh, whatever. It's like, they're kind of living in this like delirium

• 55:23Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  of Times Square. I thought the movie portrayed it in a way that was like, um, very affectionate, but also real. It did sort of a nice job.

• 55:34Yasi Salek?

  I think the point of it, I mean, given that Alan Moyle and Leanne Ungar were obviously like, lived in that area too. And were like artists or whatever. It's like, that like, if you're part of it, you're part of it, you know? Like, and we've seen that in other films, right? It's like, these girls are, especially Nikki, it's like, she's part of the fabric of this. She is one of these people, you know? So it's, they're not scared because they're just like of this, you know, of these streets at this point.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  But also Pamela is like, kind of like a little rich girl. And so like, there's that, that like, it's like her first experience diving into the side of New York in a way. And she's very like, kind of enchanted with it.

• 56:12Yasi Salek?

  She's waking up from her zombie life.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:15Yasi Salek?

  I think putting Talk of the Town on here is really cool. Again, it's like, kind of unexpected. This, this song had only just come out that year.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  I believe so. There were a lot of like 1980 releases in here, or even some that were like 81. And I was like, was the song first released on this?

• 56:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Cause the Pretenders album came out in January of 1980, the first one. So yeah, it's from then. But they had already hit number one in the UK with Brass and Pocket. So they were like trending.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Again, this is my like galaxy brain connecting red yarn, Angelina Jolie, and Gia, Brass and Pocket, also same hair. Like, I feel like this was.

• 56:59Yasi Salek?

  It all, it all roots back to.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  I'm putting my chips on like, this movie was a huge touchstone for her. Also knowing that she was punk when she was younger. Like, I feel like she brought this into every film being like, hey, like, oh, we're shooting Gia and it takes place in New York in the eighties. Have you ever seen Times Square?

• 57:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  I feel like that's what she was doing.

• 57:16Yasi Salek?

  I think it is one of those films that while it wasn't successful, it, it is like, a lot of people return to it or inspired a lot of things further than maybe what we think. And definitely, this is something I kind of wanted to like, put forth a theory about too. It's like, you mentioned like, it's interesting that he, Robert Stick would bet the farm on like, this is the next disco or whatever. And while it, it really wasn't, you know, like, however, what did end up happening through little things like this was that it reached a generation that did make the next disco, which was grunge. Do you know what I mean?

• 57:54Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 57:55Yasi Salek?

  It did, right? Like it, it introduced.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  New Wave means nothing to you.

• 58:00Yasi Salek?

  I think New Wave is great, but New Wave wasn't like on the cover of Time Magazine. Or maybe it was. Again, I wasn't wrong, but.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  It's just so funny because it.

• 58:08Yasi Salek?

  The way that captured the culture of like, it becoming like a mainstream moment. I, I think it's very interesting that this sort of delivered to a generation that would then create alternative music.

• 58:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:25Yasi Salek?

  Based on the punk into new wave.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  He could have gone pop. He could have gone metal.

• 58:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:30Speaker 04

  And I think either of those things may have been more successful than going in this direction, even though this was cooler, in my opinion.

• 58:38Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if metal was just too far away from his sensibilities. Like it's like, this is at least like, some of this stuff is pretty poppy.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  He was too gay from metal.

• 58:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He was like, I can't do that. Um.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  This song is like, it brings like a very feminine.

• 58:51Yasi Salek?

  Talk of the town.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Romance.

• 58:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:53Speaker 04

  You know, like.

• 58:55Yasi Salek?

  Girl rocker.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  Chrissie Hynde has this like gossamer pop voice. It's just like so dreamy and it's such a beautiful kind of sad song.

• 59:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  Um, that to me really reflects the movie. I understand why it's on the soundtrack. It feels like it's so in line with what the movie's trying to do.

• 59:15Yasi Salek?

  And also like, I do think they did a lot of litter, literalism with these songs. Cause like, the Sleaze Sisters and like Pamela being missing because her father is so wealthy and powerful is literally the talk of the town.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:31Yasi Salek?

  We are shown all these like bus ads and it's like, the whole city is talking about how we need to find this girl. So it is, they are, and then.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  You're probably right. I'm taking a more esoteric approach.

• 59:42Yasi Salek?

  I think they're both right. I think it's, it's both correct.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Them being, it's Nikki being like, we're going to be famous. Like, everyone's going to be talking about us.

• 59:48Yasi Salek?

  I think it is. I think it's both those things.

• 59:50Speaker 04

  Cause Chrissie Hynde said when she wrote that song, it was about a fan. There was a guy who would come to all of their gigs and she never spoke to him, but she would see him all the time. And one time she almost went up to him to say something, but then chickened out and didn't. And she left him standing in the snow. And she said that it like haunted her. So she wrote this song being like, what if we were in love? And like, what if, like, which is so like sad, but beautiful, you know?

• 1:00:21Yasi Salek?

  That's so interesting. I didn't know that about that song.

• 1:00:29Yasi Salek?

  I think on both levels, it works really well. Like it's, again, a bit literal, but also like, like you said, a bit more esoteric. It shows up in the film as played, again, diegetic, but in, it's played by Johnny LaGuardia on the radio, which is why it's so smart to have a radio DJ. Same old scene by Roxy Music. God tier fucking song.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  My favorite song on this soundtrack, maybe.

• 1:00:50Yasi Salek?

  Opens and closes the movie. Technically doesn't close the movie. It's like goes over the end credits, but it's the first song you hear, which is such a great, like, I do feel like it really sets up the energy of the film and nothing lasts forever. You're right. This is a bit of a schizophrenic soundtrack because it's, it's not punk or new wave, or it's kind of a lot of what was going on outside of the mainstream. Right? Like, cause, um, what, what, what would you say about Roxy Music in 1980? Like what place in the culture would you say that they?

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  They're so singular to me.

• 1:01:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. Like they're like the secret third thing of, you know? But, you know, they've been around for a while by 1980. Are they big in America? Not really.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  There's something, and it also, it's a song that really blurs genres. Like it has like, it was, it has like the drum machine and the sort of electronic pulse. But it also has like that saxophone at the end that's, it all, it's very evocative of like alleyways and like the city.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  Well, like in the movie at the beginning, it's playing when Nikki like ducks into that alleyway and starts shredding on the guitar.

• 1:02:09Yasi Salek?

  It plugs in her amp.

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like with what amp? I don't even remember her plugging it to an amp, but she's.

• 1:02:13Yasi Salek?

  She had like a, like a farmer's market car. She was like hauling the amp.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  She busts in the headlights of the like.

• 1:02:22Yasi Salek?

  Oh, this your boss's car?

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Corvette Stingray or whatever it is.

• 1:02:26Yasi Salek?

  So great. Um, yeah, I think this song, this song to me is like absolutely giving, could be on a John Hughes soundtrack.

• 1:02:34Speaker 04

  Fully.

• 1:02:35Yasi Salek?

  Right? You know, it has that sort of like, like pomp and circum, not pomp and circumstance, but that's like emotional, like over the top, like it's, it's cool.

• 1:02:53Yasi Salek?

  I guess the bigger single from that, this comes off the album Flesh and Blood, which, um, had a bigger single in Over You, which was obviously a gorgeous song. This was an inspired choice.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  It's a very inspired choice. It also has some literalism happening with the lyrics where it's like, young love can be so mean. Um, how will we survive the same old scene? You know, it has like these sort of, it works.

• 1:03:18Yasi Salek?

  It works. Another very inspired choice, Down in the Park by Tubeway Army.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:03:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Now it's, it's Patrick's time to shine.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  I love this song.

• 1:03:29Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  Which I always just call Gary Newman.

• 1:03:33Yasi Salek?

  Well.

• 1:03:33Speaker 04

  Cause it is basically.

• 1:03:34Yasi Salek?

  Cause it was credited, I guess they, it was credited to Gary Newman, but when it came out in 1979, it was the band.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  He's just always played the song and have adopted it in all of his solo stuff.

• 1:03:45Yasi Salek?

  And it wasn't a hit when it came out. So I'm not really sure, like the genius of, of, uh, the guy who, who helped with this soundtrack was Bill Oakes, I think was his name. He was like the producer. So maybe he had more of a hand in choosing the actual music. So I can't see Robert Stig would be like, no, we must have Tubway Army.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  But that's why it's such an interesting soundtrack. Cause there's so many sounds from that time that are all converging.

• 1:04:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  In this collection of music. And this one to me is so funny because it's like, this was one of, if not like the first, as far as I know, like completely synthesized keyboard based electronic Gary Newman songs.

• 1:04:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Is that true? I don't know.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Which went on to define his sound.

• 1:04:31Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Ever after, you know? And it's a song that's, that's sort of like in concordance with that. It's about like the machines taking over.

• 1:04:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  You know, it's about cyborgs going down and playing games with like the last living mortal humans and torturing them for entertainment, which is the most punk hilarious kind of like JG Ballard subject matter that you could put into a fucking pop song.

• 1:04:57Yasi Salek?

  And I.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  In this time period.

• 1:04:59Yasi Salek?

  I feel like I could lightly connect it to something that goes on in the film, which, but, which is like kind of subtle and maybe, maybe this is part of what got cut out, or maybe it's not, but like they have this whole vendetta against televisions, which if you think about it at the time, televisions were the social media of the day. Like you would say, oh, that rots your brain. That's making you stupid. And then there's this whole thing where they throw televisions out windows. It's just really fucking cool.

• 1:05:22Speaker 04

  But they're obsessed with terrestrial radio.

• 1:05:24Yasi Salek?

  But they're obsessed with terrestrial radio. Yes, correct.

• 1:05:27Speaker 04

  And it's like, it's almost like, uh, oh, the machines are taking over. They don't want that. They're trying to drive out the humanity. They're trying to clean up Times Square. They're trying to gentrify us.

• 1:05:37Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if we're like really over reading the Tubway Army song, but I think it's an amazing song and it's.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  The technophobic song, if you will. And it plays.

• 1:05:48Yasi Salek?

  And he was right.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  It's really like edgy, cynical, bad attitude. The world is going to shit.

• 1:05:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it plays while Nikki's like alone drinking in the street.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. This is when she's pissed off. Like it's a very, it's like a very beautiful part of the movie.

• 1:06:10Yasi Salek?

  She flees their loft because they get into an argument where she wants to be famous. And Pamela was like, why do you care about being famous? You're being so stupid. Like, and she's like, oh, you think I'm stupid? Like it's like a this huge argument they have.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:06:23Yasi Salek?

  And she's trying to like, like Pamela, I think, I guess the premise is like Pamela, who's kind of always had everything and been like, it doesn't, like, she doesn't need the validation of being famous. And like Nikki, who's like never had anyone or anything is like, I need this one thing, you know, like I can be a person.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  It's just funny to me that in this movie that has all this, like she's shredding on the guitar, has rock music.

• 1:06:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  You know, there's like this sort of punk music throughout. It's like when things get dark.

• 1:06:55Yasi Salek?

  Then the tech.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Then, then like the synthesizer comes in, like the Roland synth starts squealing and you're like, uh-oh, like this is like when things are going to take a bad turn, you know? It's like the Darth Vader shows up. It's part of what makes Robin Johnson's performance so incredible is that one moment where she, she like leaves and then she comes back and she hears Johnny in the crash pad and she's crying.

• 1:07:20Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. The, the music that plays during that part is, um, the Patti Smith song.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  Oh God.

• 1:07:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Like while, while Johnny LaGuardia is leaving and trying to get Pamela to come with him and then, and Nikki like hit, put, paints her face with the black mask and then hits the streets, dives in the river.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  I wondered if we were doing that today.

• 1:07:42Yasi Salek?

  I literally thought about it. I was like, should we paint the bandit mask?

• 1:07:45Speaker 04

  The garbage bag.

• 1:07:47Yasi Salek?

  But like, I mean, talk about a fucking song, man.

• 1:07:52Speaker 04

  I, I forever, I associate that song with this movie when I hear it anywhere.

• 1:07:57Yasi Salek?

  And again, an older song. This song came out in 1976, you know, on radio Ethiopia, but it works so well.

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  It's like she's burning the poetry in the bathtub.

• 1:08:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, burning the poetry. I mean, diving into, is that the East River or was she diving into what body of water that was?

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  It was the McCarran pool.

• 1:08:15Yasi Salek?

  She went from Times Square down to.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Movie logic, you know?

• 1:08:18Yasi Salek?

  Sure. But yeah, it's, it's really powerful. And I guess like some of that makes sense to me too. Like the, the Patti Smith and the Talking Heads moment, which we'll, we'll talk about in a second, but those are New York bands, you know, those are very like fundamentally New York, like gritty, uh, you know, examples of the city or whatever. So I could see maybe that's why they put them on here. Man, they really went for it with this because it is a double one. Okay. You like this song. Help me exclamation point by Robyn Gibb featuring Marcella Detroit.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  I didn't want to like, uh,

• 1:08:51Yasi Salek?

  It's okay.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  And I know that it was, I'm sure that Alan Moyle didn't want the song in the movie. I've.

• 1:08:56Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure he was like, get this Gibb out of here.

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  This was like some cronyism to the max, you know?

• 1:09:01Yasi Salek?

  And it was the lead, lead and only single.

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  I'm also like, okay, Stigwood is being sued by the Bee Gees and he's putting this song in. It's like, he doesn't give a fuck. He's like, he knows he's going to make money off this. So he's lining his pockets, even though he's lining the pockets of the people that are suing him. It's what a time.

• 1:09:20Yasi Salek?

  I have like a weird sidebar about Marcella Detroit, just because I found it because she was also on, on a song of Dirty Dancing. Um, she co-wrote the 1977 Eric Clapton song, Lay Down Sally. And more importantly, she was in Shakespeare's Sister with Siobhan Fahy from Bananarama.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  I just think.

• 1:09:38Yasi Salek?

  That's cool.

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  It is cool.

• 1:09:41Yasi Salek?

  I don't.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  He outshines her on this.

• 1:09:42Yasi Salek?

  I don't love this song and I especially, I will say, I don't love how they use it because they, if you'll remember, they, this song comes on right after Nikki has her triumphant concert in the middle of Times Square and all this fast. This, the fans come and she's like being like feted and like she's absconding into the night and then they're playing Help Me by Robyn Gibb. That is not the right song to be playing right there. I was like pissed at Robert Stig. Alan Moyle, my hair was also falling out. I was like, get this shit out of here.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  They could have put it in somewhere else. They could have put it in the Cleo Club somewhere, you know?

• 1:10:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  But it's like,

• 1:10:19Speaker 04

  when Robyn Gibb's voice comes in on that song, if you do not find it completely irresistible and pop perfection, it is truly like, listen, I, you can go fuck yourself.

• 1:10:33Yasi Salek?

  Are we fighting?

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  No, I'm talking to your listeners, your imaginary reply, guys. This is not a Disco Sucks podcast when Mr. Velvet Mafia is here.

• 1:10:42Yasi Salek?

  I do not think Disco sucks. I simply, I feel this should not be here. Hold on, let me just pull it. I just want to remind myself.

• 1:11:01Yasi Salek?

  No, babe, you're wrong.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  I'm right.

• 1:11:06Yasi Salek?

  This is absolutely like Robert Stigwood using his evil nefarious powers for evil and like sticking this, putting a blight on this soundtrack.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Well, you don't know what he was going through.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  If you listen to this song in isolation.

• 1:11:23Yasi Salek?

  Then you can enjoy it.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  But also, I think the production of it, like, there's something really funny about this soundtrack. Where it's hard for me to not like things that are on the soundtrack because they're so embedded in the movie. Like, it's such a soundtrack movie.

• 1:11:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  And it does, like, the little moments of disco or punk or the ska origins, like, all of that, it just feels like, oh, that's New York in 1980.

• 1:11:46Yasi Salek?

  I guess to be generous, like, obviously, there, like, we talked about it with the charts, like, there was very much still a creeping disco situation happening in 1980. Well, I, I more like the Life During War Time Talking Heads moment. I love, I think that's one of the-

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  That's easy, though. That song was already a hit.

• 1:12:04Yasi Salek?

  It's one of the greatest Talking Heads songs.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:12:09Yasi Salek?

  It's worked so well when there's-

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  This Ain't No Disco.

• 1:12:12Yasi Salek?

  This Ain't No Disco, Peanut Butter. When they're, like, in the streets, dancing to it, and again, it's so great. It's so great. Like, it's such a great moment. I love it. And they let it play for a long time. And it's just like-

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  And what I love about that in the movie is for it to be playing on the radio makes sense, because you're like, and the same with I Want to Be Sedated.

• 1:12:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  Where you're like, those songs would have been on the radio.

• 1:12:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, especially Life During War Time came out in 1979. You know, absolutely. Um, yeah, I just, I love, that's like such a joyful, montage-y part of, like, they're really in their groove of, like, okay, we-

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  It's like a capsule of the whole movie in one scene.

• 1:12:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Because it's them, like, dancing down the street in Times Square, surrounded by, like, vagrants and weird hustlers, and they're in front of the porno theaters and the strip clubs. And it's like, it all happens in this one scene.

• 1:13:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's so great. Um-

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  And it's them having fun. They're free. They're liberated. This is them, like, at the peak of their, like, we're doing it.

• 1:13:10Yasi Salek?

  They're wearing their weird, like, clothes that they found in the, like, bags in the loft, and they keep, like, coming out in more and more unhinged outfits.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  I love the costume design in this movie.

• 1:13:19Yasi Salek?

  It's amazing.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  It's so, and that, like, their romance is, like, filtered in through the wardrobe.

• 1:13:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  You know, like, because when she escapes, she's wearing the pajamas.

• 1:13:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's very, like, um, buttoned up.

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  And like, the robe.

• 1:13:30Yasi Salek?

  And has long hair.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  And then, like, the next scene, it cuts to them, and she's giving Pammy her leather jacket and hat over the pajamas, and she's wearing the pajama robe over her punk clothes. And you're like, they're, like, switching outfits.

• 1:13:42Yasi Salek?

  I feel like there must have been a cut scene, because I'm like, she must have cut Pammy's hair.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Pammy's hair is an issue throughout the movie.

• 1:13:49Yasi Salek?

  It's just all of a sudden short. And I'm like, when, did we not want to discuss how that happened? Um, Pretty Boys, we kind of talked about.

• 1:13:57Speaker 04

  There are lyrics in the song, "Maybe I Should Get a Facelift," which really resonated for me.

• 1:14:02Yasi Salek?

  Evergreen?

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  It actually is not in any scene. I don't know why they put it on the soundtrack.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:14:15Yasi Salek?

  Maybe it's in a cut scene.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Joe Jackson was big at that point.

• 1:14:19Yasi Salek?

  Is she really going out with him?

• 1:14:21Speaker 04

  That was a commercial choice to put him on the soundtrack.

• 1:14:23Yasi Salek?

  And then later Stepping Out was his biggest song of all time.

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Also, The Cure, which is on the soundtrack and not in the film.

• 1:14:28Yasi Salek?

  No, The Cure is in the film. Aren't they?

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:14:31Yasi Salek?

  Isn't it in that part where they're-

• 1:14:32Speaker 04

  I was waiting the whole time. I was like, grinding halls in this movie.

• 1:14:35Yasi Salek?

  Isn't it the part where they run from the, um, when they're doing the card stuff?

• 1:14:39Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:14:40Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's not in that part?

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  And it should be.

• 1:14:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  It's such a fun caper of a song, but-

• 1:14:45Yasi Salek?

  I'm glad it's on the soundtrack. It's an incredible song. Weird.

• 1:14:48Speaker 04

  There's a couple of songs on the soundtrack that are not in the film.

• 1:14:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, I, I remember not seeing Joe Jackson. Was Take This Town by Ecstasy?

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Yes. This is my favorite one. My favorite, my favorite story about the soundtrack.

• 1:15:03Yasi Salek?

  Tell me.

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  Because this song was made exclusively for the soundtrack.

• 1:15:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I don't think I knew that. Is that why it only appears on one of their, like, greatest hits compilation, or whatever?

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  It's not on streaming. It was only released on the soundtrack. It's brilliantly produced. Like, it sounds so good. When the melodic break hits, it's like-

• 1:15:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a great song.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  It's a really, really good song. And, like, the band told a story that when the movie premiered in New York, they had come over from England, and they were, like, completely starstruck because they were seated directly behind Andy Warhol. And, like, they were, like, this is, like, such a huge moment for us, like, being part of this movie. And then the song only plays on the transistor radio in the movie, and it sounds like shit. It's like, the radio is, like, going in and out of, like-

• 1:15:52Yasi Salek?

  So fucked up.

• 1:15:53Speaker 04

  Reception, you know?

• 1:15:54Yasi Salek?

  It's crazy to get a song penned for a film and then use it in that capacity.

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Yasi Salek?

  That's crazy.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  It's really crazy. And, like, it's, it's when she's in the van, um, when Nikki's in the van going to the, to the mental facility.

• 1:16:08Yasi Salek?

  When she smokes a cigarette, the lady's like, no smoking.

• 1:16:10Speaker 04

  And it's just like this song playing, and like, it's, and they were just like, what? Like, that's what that was all for?

• 1:16:17Yasi Salek?

  It's a great song.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  So, but if you listen to it, everyone should go listen to it. It's such a good song.

• 1:16:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a really good song.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  I was playing it on YouTube, and I was like, damn.

• 1:16:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's only on YouTube. So annoying. Um, well, or if you want to-

• 1:16:27Speaker 04

  Andy Partridge said that he wanted it to sound as if sailors were singing along to it. It has this sort of dogs howling at a police car quality to it.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  That's also kind of very Times Square, right? Or, like, the sail, like, Fleet Week has descended upon Times Square, you know?

• 1:16:49Yasi Salek?

  And we, and we discussed I Want to Be Sedated, um, which, you know-

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it plays a few times in the movie.

• 1:16:56Yasi Salek?

  The Ramones are now very extremely famous, but, like, I, I still, one was for us in 1980, it's like, not every Tom, Dick, and Sally knew who the fuck the Ramones were.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  No. But if you hear it, it's played in such a way where you're like, okay, Nikki is a punk.

• 1:17:12Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  You know?

• 1:17:13Yasi Salek?

  And, and she's, she's costumed as a punk. I mean, the first time we see her, she's wearing a leather jacket with, with badges all over it, and her, like, little leather hat.

• 1:17:21Speaker 04

  Film School 101, Nikki is a punk. She's playing I Want to Be Sedated by the Ramones.

• 1:17:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:17:26Speaker 04

  Over and over again. And there's that line where he goes, the doctor is like, say, "Methodist Episcopole." And she says, "Take a piss, you asshole."

• 1:17:37Yasi Salek?

  It's so good. And, and remember Pammy says, "Take a piss, you asshole." That's poetry.

• 1:17:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Yasi Salek?

  Damn dog.

• 1:17:47Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:17:47Yasi Salek?

  Let's get into it. Speaking, speaking of written specifically for this film.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  This is Robert Stigwood doing what Robert Stigwood does. This is a muse, this is musical theater, honey. This is an original number.

• 1:17:58Yasi Salek?

  I can lick your face. I can bat it too. Um-

• 1:18:04Speaker 04

  When she reads it like a poem, all serious. It's like, this is never a poem.

• 1:18:08Yasi Salek?

  And that's where Pammy says, "Sounds more like a song." Um, this was written by two men, Billy Murnett and Jacob Brackman. Um, it's a very weird song, and I'll be really honest with you, it's not very punk at all. It has, like, a weird-

• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  It's like Cheap Trick, kind of. It has that, like, stomp clap.

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  Her performance of it in the Cleo Club, though, is so cute. She's playing the guitar.

• 1:18:39Yasi Salek?

  And she's got her cute little outfit on. And they never mention who the band is behind her. They just appear.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  The Blondes is what they call them in the movie. Which I have an interesting side note about that in a few songs.

• 1:18:48Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:18:50Speaker 04

  It's a really cute song.

• 1:18:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  For the movie and for the movie only.

• 1:18:53Yasi Salek?

  It's super cute. Yeah, yeah. A very pivotal scene of this film is when the Sleaze Sisters, which is what, uh, Pammy and Nikki have dubbed themselves.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  S-L-E-E-Z.

• 1:19:08Yasi Salek?

  S-L-E-E-Z. Um-

• 1:19:11Speaker 04

  No silent E.

• 1:19:12Yasi Salek?

  No silent E. Demand to come to the radio station and perform live.

• 1:19:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:19:19Yasi Salek?

  And they are performing their song, Your Daughter Is One, directed at Pammy's father.

• 1:19:28Speaker 04

  Uh-huh. Which is the most Pussy Riot song on the soundtrack.

• 1:19:31Yasi Salek?

  Do you want to talk a bit more about it?

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  They're like, they're speaking, it's a lot of spoken word, confrontational spoken word. And, and Nikki says, "Can you feel the pain yet, faggot social worker?"

• 1:19:44Yasi Salek?

  And remember the woman I, I mentioned in the beginning, the actress? She's, she's literally speaking directly to her. I think the first line of the song is Miss Rosie Washington, which is the name of the social worker.

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  They're yelling at the doctor from the mental hospital. They're like, they're talking to, uh, Mr. Pearl. Uh, she says, "Mr. Pearl, I hate you with every rotten tooth in my head. Black eyes to you, fucking Nazi."

• 1:20:08Yasi Salek?

  I, it, this is actually, like, quite a political song, because I think I didn't quite realize it the first time I saw it, because I was maybe just like, oh, my God, I can't believe they're saying those words. Um, but if you actually pay attention, the premise is that, like, they are taking to task the adults, particularly Pammy's dad, like, "I've heard you say these words about other people. Like, you have judged..." It ties back into the Times Square-

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  The chorus is a, is a series of slurs.

• 1:20:37Yasi Salek?

  Of slurs, yeah. And it ties back into, like, cleanup Times Square. These people are, excuse me, these people are lesser or whatever. And, and she's using these words, being like, "I've heard you say this. Well, guess what? I'm one of them. I'm an outsider too. I'm, I'm what you consider less than."

• 1:20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Little rich white girl from New York is the N-word.

• 1:20:58Yasi Salek?

  You would never see this in the film now. And for good reason.

• 1:21:02Speaker 04

  It cannot be repeated on this podcast.

• 1:21:04Yasi Salek?

  But they were, they did record it and put it on the soundtrack.

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  I like when she's talking shit to the doctor, and she calls him fat buns.

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  I don't remember the line, but she's like, you like that fat buns? And I'm like, that lovely Jewish doctor man from the earlier scene.

• 1:21:23Yasi Salek?

  Did she ad lib this? It feels like an ad lib on Jonathan's part.

• 1:21:27Speaker 04

  Fat buns is a really good name to call someone.

• 1:21:32Speaker 04

  And then at the end, Nikki dedicates the entire song to Brian Jones, which is such an interesting flourish.

• 1:21:37Yasi Salek?

  Other dinosaurs, like, oh, the Rolling Stones are over, honey. We've moved on, you know?

• 1:21:43Speaker 04

  It's cool. You guys got to see it to really understand.

• 1:21:46Yasi Salek?

  That we're not really giving it justice, I don't think.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  It's something that will, the kids will say it didn't age well.

• 1:21:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  But you kind of had to be there.

• 1:21:56Yasi Salek?

  I wasn't there. It was nineteen eighty and you weren't there either. We were unborn.

• 1:22:00Speaker 04

  It was a different time. Language, language was different.

• 1:22:03Yasi Salek?

  Keeping it a hundred, we, none of us were there. Babylon's Burning is on here. I think you referenced this a little bit earlier. The Ruts, they're an English sort of reggae influenced punk band. This song, I mean, someone, whoever was, was curating the soundtrack and I'm, I did a lot of research and I couldn't find that much about it. But I'm sure someone will get in touch and be like, it was me.

• 1:22:26Yasi Salek?

  Must have had like a pretty firm finger on the pulse of what was happening in the UK. Because a lot of these songs were popular in the UK. They weren't unknown. Like this was a top 10 single in the UK in nineteen seventy nine. The lead singer, Malcolm on died in nineteen eighty of a heroin overdose. This song plays at the off, again, like they use, they use as much as they can. So they're like, oh, they're, we're at the radio station. A song is playing.

• 1:22:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Yasi Salek?

  Cause we're at a radio station.

• 1:22:55Yasi Salek?

  It's really like.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  It's a vibe, though.

• 1:22:57Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense.

• 1:22:57Speaker 04

  It's like serious guitar punk. It's like.

• 1:23:00Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's awesome.

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  It's funny because my punk.

• 1:23:02Yasi Salek?

  Babylon is burning, Babylon is burning. Songs rules.

• 1:23:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  When I go back in time with punk, like when I got real super into punk in the nineties and then I went back in time with it. I got into like the Ramones, the Velvet Underground, the Clash, whatever. I didn't really know that this punk sounds even went back that far.

• 1:23:28Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:23:29Speaker 04

  Like, because it's so like what rancid and bad religion we're doing.

• 1:23:33Yasi Salek?

  Cockney rebels or whatever. Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  I mean, I did actually, but I think I thought they were more contemporary or something.

• 1:23:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  It's fun. It adds like a vibe to it. Just throw a punk song in there.

• 1:23:45Yasi Salek?

  I think they did a good job because it makes perfect sense. Yes, the Times Square, like edgy radio DJ would play this song. So it's like, it's not out of place. They, it's just like, yeah, they're playing it.

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  And can we talk about Johnny LaGuardia for a second and Tim Curry in this movie? You, so you think Tim Curry's hot?

• 1:24:02Yasi Salek?

  In, in this role.

• 1:24:03Speaker 04

  I know a lot of people think Tim Curry's hot. He was sort of a sex symbol.

• 1:24:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 04

  To me, he's just such a mugger. Like he has like this muggy mug.

• 1:24:13Yasi Salek?

  You mean a mugger?

• 1:24:14Speaker 04

  The face.

• 1:24:15Yasi Salek?

  You mean in today's parlance, he brutally frame mogged the other people in the scene?

• 1:24:22Speaker 04

  I was more like, it's getting muggy in here, sister. But yeah, mogging, he mogged. But it's like, he's not mogging like model style. It's like, he's like the mask. Do you know what I'm saying? Like in every Tim Curry performance in his career, there's one scene where the director is like, unleash the face. You know what I mean? Where he's being crazy.

• 1:24:43Yasi Salek?

  I think he just has like a permanent bemused expression. It's always just a little like.

• 1:24:51Speaker 04

  But I'm talking about the scene where he was fighting with Mr. Pearl in the radio station where like, you know, mic stands are being thrown and whatever. He does like a coming, like crazy, come and get me moment where you're just like, that's Tim Curry. Tim Curry brought out, he brought out the mask.

• 1:25:07Yasi Salek?

  He opened it up. He let it rip.

• 1:25:10Speaker 04

  Tim Curry was obviously the most famous person in this movie and he filmed all of his scenes in two days.

• 1:25:17Yasi Salek?

  And.

• 1:25:17Speaker 04

  Which shocks me because he's in the movie quite a lot.

• 1:25:19Yasi Salek?

  To be fair, when you say most famous, he still wasn't that famous in nineteen eighty, right?

• 1:25:27Speaker 04

  Right. But he was like top billed in the, on the film. He was the only known actor.

• 1:25:32Yasi Salek?

  Picture show was big ish.

• 1:25:36Speaker 04

  I know. Was it mainstream?

• 1:25:38Yasi Salek?

  I'm not really not sure.

• 1:25:40Speaker 04

  A phenomenal actor, a beloved actor.

• 1:25:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 04

  I'm a huge Tim Curry fan. They don't make them like that. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:25:47Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  But we just didn't really get into the Tim Curry of it all. So I thought it might, might be a moment to bring it up.

• 1:25:53Yasi Salek?

  I think without him, this film would be like an absolute disaster.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. And like his, because he's a radio DJ, they also had the ability for him to do voiceover, which gave so much like mood and attitude to it.

• 1:26:04Yasi Salek?

  That's something I wanted to ask you about, actually. I, I didn't mean to wait this long to do it, but I, I wonder if this soundtrack would have benefited from like, his voiceover being included as connective tissue throughout the soundtrack.

• 1:26:18Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:26:19Yasi Salek?

  You know, like how they did on, um, is it, uh, Good Morning Vietnam? You know how that Robin Williams is like, is do that? Like it would have been a possibility to do that. And I guess it's not exactly what Robert Stigwood was known for. And that's like, not how you sell like a major soundtrack, but.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  Listen, there's still time. This movie, if based upon the version I watched on Tubi last night.

• 1:26:44Yasi Salek?

  I paid three ninety nine and did Amazon.

• 1:26:46Speaker 04

  This film is in need of a 4K restoration.

• 1:26:48Yasi Salek?

  I know. Criterion.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  Re-release.

• 1:26:50Yasi Salek?

  Release it as part of the collection.

• 1:26:52Speaker 04

  And they should release the soundtrack as well and.

• 1:26:55Yasi Salek?

  Some of these songs are not going to get cleared.

• 1:26:57Speaker 04

  Include the interstitials.

• 1:26:58Yasi Salek?

  For example, you can't hurry love as covered by a man named D L Byron.

• 1:27:03Speaker 04

  This is who I'm so excited to talk about.

• 1:27:05Yasi Salek?

  Do you know more about him? Because all I know is that he wrote Shadows of the Night that won a Grammy for Pat Benatar.

• 1:27:11Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 1:27:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay. You know more about this than?

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  I did a little bit of a deep dive.

• 1:27:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  I can't, I can't tell you what strikes me sometimes and why I get into it.

• 1:27:20Yasi Salek?

  You don't have to explain that to me, a person who is constantly going down rabbit holes that I don't have any business being down.

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  So there's the cover of You Can't Hurry Love, the supreme song.

• 1:27:30Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:27:31Speaker 04

  Which of course was written by, uh, Holland, Dozier Holland, the trio of song, Motown songwriters.

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  It really hit my eardrum in a certain way where I was like, hold the phone. Who the fuck is this?

• 1:27:47Yasi Salek?

  It's a good cover.

• 1:27:48Speaker 04

  It's an incredible cover. It's incredible.

• 1:27:51Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to be like, how dare you? But then I was like, it's good.

• 1:27:56Speaker 04

  He kills this cover. His voice is spectacular. Also, this cover was produced by Jimmy Iovine.

• 1:28:04Yasi Salek?

  I know. I saw that.

• 1:28:05Speaker 04

  Which I thought was interesting. So D L Byron was on Arista Records. He was being sort of developed and A and R'd into being an American Elvis Costello.

• 1:28:15Yasi Salek?

  Right. Surprised that there's no Elvis Costello on the soundtrack. Would have fit right in.

• 1:28:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, this sort of was the Elvis Costello. Like I thought it was Elvis Costello for a second.

• 1:28:31Speaker 04

  He is such an incredible vocalist and performer that if you go and listen to this song, like isolated outside of the movie, it's, you're like, this guy was so talented. What happened to his career?

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  Apparently he just sort of stopped. He was, when he was young, he was hot too, which will interest you.

• 1:28:56Speaker 04

  It's like, he's, he just feels like one of those lost artists.

• 1:29:00Yasi Salek?

  Some people just don't make it, you know, like they have the talent. Like I, I did listen to a few of his other songs because they're on YouTube and they're not bad. Like they're pretty good. He just like, didn't have a hit and just like kind of faded into the background. He wrote a book.

• 1:29:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Yasi Salek?

  Called Shadows of the Night, which I did not read for this podcast, but.

• 1:29:15Speaker 04

  He's still with us. So if he hears this, he'll be pleased. I'm a big fan all of a sudden. But like, there are these certain bands, especially in the eighties that are really important to me that like are not on streaming.

• 1:29:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Speaker 04

  That I've had to like go bootleg and put on the, the fucking local files on my Spotify to be able to listen to it. Like the Comsat Angels is a big one. I love discovering these like alternative bands and singers from that time that create this very atmospheric, like eighties vibe music that wasn't, didn't get the right push or like didn't really.

• 1:29:49Yasi Salek?

  Didn't go.

• 1:29:50Speaker 04

  That's still like buried and underground. And I was like very into it with this guy, but at the end of the credits in the movie, there's like a thanks to, um, the D L Byron Band who played

• 1:30:05Speaker 04

  Nikki's music in the song, in the movie, her music in the movie, like I'm a damn dog.

• 1:30:11Yasi Salek?

  They're the, they're actually playing.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  They're the actual musicians on it. I don't know if the Blondes were actors or if that was the D L Byron Band in the movie.

• 1:30:20Yasi Salek?

  They must have been actors because they were like young women.

• 1:30:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:23Yasi Salek?

  Not to say that D L Byron's band couldn't have been young women, but it's not giving that they were, it was young women.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  But I was so, I just thought that was interesting that like D L Byron was in the mix somehow enough where Stigwood or whoever it was, was like, can you play it, like arrange these songs and do all this? But.

• 1:30:39Yasi Salek?

  So much we don't know.

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  I know. It's pretty crazy.

• 1:30:42Yasi Salek?

  That song plays when they steal the ambulance, like that part that you were talking about where they're switching the outfits.

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  Which is a very kind of who's that girl sequence, to be honest.

• 1:30:50Yasi Salek?

  It's very like, wow, was it, give me that.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  A screwball.

• 1:30:56Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  There's like screwball sensibility in here sometimes.

• 1:30:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, Nikki kind of has that, you know, Nikki, uh, Robin Donson.

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• 1:31:37Speaker 01

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• 1:32:08Yasi Salek?

  Well, then, they were like, I guess it is such a quintessential gritty, scummy New York song that like, they were like, we should probably include this. But putting Walk on the Wild Side by Lurie is so odd. Because if you're trying to capture-

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  I'm never gonna complain about that song showing up.

• 1:32:27Yasi Salek?

  It is an amazing song.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  It's one of the best songs ever written.

• 1:32:29Yasi Salek?

  God-tier fucking song. That's what I literally wrote here, "God-tier song." I just mean more of the like, Stigwood's whole like, master plan of, I'm, this is the new wave of now, I'm doing the Saturday Night Fever, and then you throw in an eight-year-old song? It's kind of bizarre. That's all I'm saying.

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  I'm playing a little bit of like fantasy fiction with this one, but I feel like the decision to include it is a testament to how integral that song was to the fabric of New York City already by that point.

• 1:33:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And it works so well, and it's like, they play this song when Pamela's father comes to get her at the Clio Club, and she's wearing that like amazingly hot pink little number and like-

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  I know. It's like very Playboy Club, like the pink satin-

• 1:33:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  With the tails on the back. It's so cute.

• 1:33:19Yasi Salek?

  There's something like very like dark and Paris Texacy about that scene. It's like an empty Clio Club, and like, she's just like, I'm not, I'm grown up now, or whatever. Like, she didn't say that, but it's like, kind of, that's the energy. I've changed, you know?

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Right. There's a sleaziness.

• 1:33:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 04

  Because it's like, he's walking into a strip club, and there's his 12-year-old daughter onstage in this like Playboy bunny outfit. And you get the literalism again of like, maybe that song is supposed to be like, oh, sleazy, scary, it's about transsexuals and hookers and like, but instead, because it's such a beautiful song, it comes across like sentimental.

• 1:33:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:57Speaker 04

  Where you're like, this is adorable. Like, what?

• 1:34:00Yasi Salek?

  Lovely. Okay, now we're fucking cooking with gas, because this is the song I've been waiting this whole time to talk about.

• 1:34:08Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 1:34:08Yasi Salek?

  "The Night Was Not" by Desmond Child and Rouge.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  Plays twice in the movie.

• 1:34:14Yasi Salek?

  Plays fucking twice in the movie. When Pamela does her first appearance at the Clio Club and dances.

• 1:34:22Speaker 04

  In that great outfit.

• 1:34:23Yasi Salek?

  So, that scene is so insane. And then, and again, they're not beating any of the lesbian allegations, because there sits Nikki with her hair like, full Katie Lang slicked back in like a blazer, like watching her girl dance, you know?

• 1:34:36Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, I feel like that scene must have influenced the Aerosmith Crazy video when Liv Tyler is on the stripper pole, and Alicia is watching, and she's wearing the like suit and the tie.

• 1:34:48Yasi Salek?

  Yes, totally. And they play, they play it again when Pamela's alone at their warehouse just before Johnny LaGuardia comes to visit her after Nikki's like on the street drinking to Two Boy Army. I'm sorry, I had to fall into, because I was like, this song is really good.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 1:35:05Yasi Salek?

  It's really good. The Rouge is, are the, are female singers, because Desmond Child's a man. His real name is John Charles Barrett. I went down a rabbit hole here, because I don't know if you're ready for this.

• 1:35:18Speaker 04

  I'm so ready. Bring it on.

• 1:35:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so, this act had a bit of success. They had like, I think, at least an album or two, and, and they had a song on the Warriors soundtrack. Warriors come out and play-

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  Could have been a good episode.

• 1:35:30Yasi Salek?

  However, John Charles Barrett, aka Desmond Child, let me give you a little sampling of songs he's co-written, or written.

• 1:35:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:35:39Yasi Salek?

  "I Was Made For Lovin' You" by Kiss.

• 1:35:41Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:42Yasi Salek?

  "I Hate Myself For Lovin' You" Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

• 1:35:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:35:45Yasi Salek?

  "You Give Love A Bad Name" Bon Jovi. "Livin' On A Prayer" Bon Jovi. Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady" and "Angel," two of the-

• 1:36:00Yasi Salek?

  Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca," and actually, and Crazy Aerosmith, so maybe that was the connection. "Living La Vida Loca," Desmond Child has a writing credit on "Livin' La Vida..."

• 1:36:11Speaker 04

  And probably "A Mansion in Bel-Air" to show for it.

• 1:36:14Yasi Salek?

  There's way more songs than this. I'm like, this man is a genius.

• 1:36:17Speaker 04

  A legend.

• 1:36:18Yasi Salek?

  And is probably rich as hell, as he should be. But I'm like, and then also has a random song on the Times Square soundtrack.

• 1:36:25Speaker 04

  Which is also a great song.

• 1:36:26Yasi Salek?

  It's also a great song.

• 1:36:27Speaker 04

  It's really the kind of song, and it also is a song that doesn't exactly belong in the milieu of the, of the rest of the songs, but it's so good for like, an erotic cabaret moment. You know, the scene that it, that it first plays in. It plays twice, though. What's the second time that it plays?

• 1:36:45Yasi Salek?

  The second time it plays, I told you, is, it's when-

• 1:36:47Speaker 04

  Oh, when they have their argument in the-

• 1:36:49Yasi Salek?

  Right before they have the argument.

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

  In the crash pad.

• 1:36:51Yasi Salek?

  Right after they have the argument. Like, Nikki leaves, and Pamela's alone, and Johnny LaGuardia arrives.

• 1:36:56Speaker 04

  Oh my God, because it's like, Pamela's like, who is she without Nikki? "I'm just a whore. I'm just a whore from the Clio Club, and now I'm gonna fuck the DJ." That's what's going on in that scene.

• 1:37:07Yasi Salek?

  I don't think that was the, the subtext at all.

• 1:37:10Speaker 04

  Really? I think it was. Don't you feel like Johnny LaGuardia came over to like, have sex with Pamela?

• 1:37:14Yasi Salek?

  No, I thought he-

• 1:37:15Speaker 04

  He brought a bottle of wine.

• 1:37:16Yasi Salek?

  Vodka.

• 1:37:17Speaker 04

  Vodka. Even worse.

• 1:37:20Yasi Salek?

  I thought he came to like, like, kind of like rescue her.

• 1:37:24Speaker 04

  No, I think he was like, "I'm in love with you."

• 1:37:26Yasi Salek?

  Really?

• 1:37:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then they're lying there talking, and then that's why Nikki's upset, because she's like, she doesn't like you, she thinks your show sucks.

• 1:37:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  It's like, but it's such a weird, interesting, like, he was like their champion, you know? And sort of their conscience, and like also encouraging them.

• 1:37:42Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's weird.

• 1:37:42Speaker 04

  But then he was like preying upon them a little.

• 1:37:44Yasi Salek?

  A man that-

• 1:37:45Speaker 04

  It's very music industry.

• 1:37:47Yasi Salek?

  You thought you could trust, turns out, turns around, tries to fuck you. That's, what a weird thing to happen.

• 1:37:51Speaker 04

  Well, I wonder if there was like a more overt thing that was cut from the movie or something, because you're like, why would he-

• 1:37:57Yasi Salek?

  Because Robert Stigwood wanted this to be Grease. "We love to get..."

• 1:38:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Why would he show up with a bottle of vodka to make, and then Nikki gets jealous? It's like, he went there with some intentions, for sure.

• 1:38:06Yasi Salek?

  That's a good point. I guess because it was cut so weird, I didn't get that.

• 1:38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then using that song again is a little bit like, that was the song when she sort of like, lost her innocence doing, like, working in the strip club?

• 1:38:28Speaker 04

  I don't know. It's very odd. We're having to decipher it, because the filmmaking is not so coherent.

• 1:38:33Yasi Salek?

  It's, yeah, it's not giving me understanding of it. But, because also, that character is not at all developed.

• 1:38:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Yasi Salek?

  The character of Johnny LaGuardia, so I don't know.

• 1:38:48Speaker 04

  You know what I wrote down? "It makes you want to drive a speeding convertible and shoot a gun."

• 1:38:56Speaker 04

  It's very Miami Vice. It's very Aaron Spelling. It's very like, later Dynasty.

• 1:39:04Yasi Salek?

  It's really wonderful. "Innocent Not Guilty" by Garland Jeffries. Not a love for me.

• 1:39:11Speaker 04

  This one is also only available on the Times Square soundtrack?

• 1:39:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's oddly very 80s, in a way that some of the other songs aren't, you know?

• 1:39:20Speaker 04

  This is the song that plays-

• 1:39:22Yasi Salek?

  When they're running-

• 1:39:23Speaker 04

  When they're running from the undercover cop. But, I, what I-

• 1:39:26Yasi Salek?

  It should have been Grinding Hall.

• 1:39:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it should have been Grinding Hall. Also, they run into a porno theater.

• 1:39:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32Speaker 04

  They run up on the stage in front of the screen where the porno movie's playing. They're running from the cops, the cop person, and everyone stands up and cheers for them.

• 1:39:41Yasi Salek?

  Because they're famous, they're the sleaze stars.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  And it's in the most beautiful theater I've ever seen.

• 1:39:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Speaker 04

  It's this blue theater, it's all blue.

• 1:39:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Speaker 04

  Giant like balconies, staircases. I'm just like-

• 1:39:52Yasi Salek?

  This whole scene is really cool. Like, the, the chase that ensues and all the things that you see along the way. And then, I guess Grinding Hall, I just want to mention Grinding Hall, A, because we love it, but B, because, again, someone was inspired, because this song is off Three Imaginary Boys, which, as you point out, first album of The Cure, comes out in 1979, only in the UK, okay? Grinding Hall doesn't appear in America until February of 1980, when it's on the compilation Boys Don't Cry, that had six of the songs off Three Imaginary Boys and some of the other B-sides. So, someone was a ball knower.

• 1:40:32Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 1:40:33Yasi Salek?

  You know, someone was like, oh, we need, and to pick Grinding Hall out of all the songs off of Three Imaginary Boys, good job.

• 1:40:40Speaker 04

  That's some foresight, because I have a theory that I've had my whole life.

• 1:40:43Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:40:43Speaker 04

  Which is that Michael Dempsey's bassline in the song actually invented post-punk.

• 1:40:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 1:40:51Speaker 04

  Like, I know there's like the television personalities, you know, the buzzcocks of it all, but like, that kind of winding, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun thing became so big and ubiquitous. Like, it became such a sound and a staple of that-

• 1:41:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:09Speaker 04

  -genre, that I'm always like, that's where it started, bitch.

• 1:41:12Yasi Salek?

  This patient zero.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if I agree, but I like the theory.

• 1:41:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:25Yasi Salek?

  We talked about Pissing in a River already.

• 1:41:27Speaker 04

  What's crazy about Pissing in a River is that completely divorced from this movie.

• 1:41:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:33Speaker 04

  The B-side to this single was Ask the Angels.

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  She was.

• 1:41:39Yasi Salek?

  She was cooking.

• 1:41:39Speaker 04

  Cooking with cats.

• 1:41:40Yasi Salek?

  She was fucking cooking. My favorite Patti Smith album is actually, let me make sure I get it right. Wave, is it, no, Wave is not the name of the album.

• 1:41:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Wave is the name of the album.

• 1:41:58Yasi Salek?

  I just really fucking love that album.

• 1:42:00Speaker 04

  I don't revisit Patti Smith ever. I kind of.

• 1:42:03Yasi Salek?

  I like implore you to revisit Wave. It's fucking amazing.

• 1:42:07Speaker 04

  I was obsessed with Patti Smith in high school.

• 1:42:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Speaker 04

  In college. I fell out of love with her and I fell hard out of love with her because I read her book, Just Kids, and it made me despise her, which is the opposite effect.

• 1:42:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that made me love her.

• 1:42:22Speaker 04

  That book has on other people.

• 1:42:23Yasi Salek?

  I was like, I'm gonna move to the Chelsea Hotel.

• 1:42:25Speaker 04

  I was like, enough.

• 1:42:29Speaker 04

  It's a me thing, okay? It's not a judgment. It was just a me thing. But sometimes you're watching a movie like Times Square because you're going on ban span and then you hear Pissing in a River and it.

• 1:42:39Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible.

• 1:42:40Speaker 04

  It strikes a chord with you. It burrows deep into your soul and then you remember who the fuck you are and why you are the way you are and you cannot divorce the importance of Patti Smith from your musical psychology.

• 1:42:53Yasi Salek?

  She's so major. Okay. Quick cue for you.

• 1:42:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Yasi Salek?

  Why would anybody go to the trouble of doing a song such as Flowers in the City featuring Robert Johnson and David Johansson of the New York Dolls?

• 1:43:12Speaker 04

  So special, so great.

• 1:43:13Yasi Salek?

  Only to have it not appear in the film at all?

• 1:43:17Speaker 04

  And pretty much never see the light of day again.

• 1:43:19Yasi Salek?

  No. I mean, I don't find it to be a particularly amazing song personally, but like, why get it made?

• 1:43:27Speaker 04

  Of the original songs on this soundtrack?

• 1:43:30Yasi Salek?

  You think it's the best?

• 1:43:32Speaker 04

  Of the sleaze sister.

• 1:43:34Yasi Salek?

  There's three songs.

• 1:43:34Speaker 04

  What was Nikki's name in the movie? Her like alter ego when she played? There's like another layer of.

• 1:43:39Yasi Salek?

  Whole other name. Yeah, I can't remember.

• 1:43:41Speaker 04

  It was like John Arbuckle.

• 1:43:43Yasi Salek?

  It was the guy from Garfield?

• 1:43:45Speaker 04

  It was Ned Flanders. Like, I don't remember what it was.

• 1:43:47Yasi Salek?

  It did sound like a man's name.

• 1:43:48Speaker 04

  It was like Artie something.

• 1:43:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Speaker 04

  Anyway, of her songs, of her three songs, there's three, right? Damn Dog, Your Daughter is One.

• 1:43:59Yasi Salek?

  Your Daughter is One.

• 1:43:59Speaker 04

  And this one, this is the best of the three to me.

• 1:44:03Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:44:04Speaker 04

  But that's not saying much.

• 1:44:06Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I kind of think Your Daughter is One is the best one.

• 1:44:11Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 1:44:11Yasi Salek?

  Well, no, I don't know. I guess they're comparable.

• 1:44:14Speaker 04

  That's the best scene.

• 1:44:15Yasi Salek?

  You're right. You're right. I'm conflating. Aggie Dune.

• 1:44:20Speaker 04

  Aggie Dune.

• 1:44:20Yasi Salek?

  I needed to know.

• 1:44:22Speaker 04

  Aggie Dune.

• 1:44:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:44:24Speaker 04

  Makes no sense. Was that the name of the woman who wrote The Diary?

• 1:44:27Yasi Salek?

  Oh, maybe. That's actually a good point, but maybe it was.

• 1:44:30Speaker 04

  I'm just making things up left and right.

• 1:44:32Yasi Salek?

  We're speculating.

• 1:44:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Yasi Salek?

  We said was.

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  We're trying to make sense of a chaotic world.

• 1:44:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:37Speaker 04

  Like.

• 1:44:38Yasi Salek?

  I just wanted to use this, this as a jumping point to point out that David Johansson was in multiple films later on when, after he created.

• 1:44:47Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:44:47Yasi Salek?

  Buster Point Dexter. I know you know that, but I just want people to go back and watch.

• 1:44:52Speaker 04

  Scrooge.

• 1:44:53Yasi Salek?

  One of the best movies of all time. A little Buster Point Dexter cameo.

• 1:44:59Yasi Salek?

  And then I just want to touch on Dangerous Type by The Cars, which is in the film but not off soundtrack.

• 1:45:07Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:45:09Yasi Salek?

  Maybe they couldn't get the rights. It's, uh, it's in one of the most.

• 1:45:13Speaker 04

  Rikko Keesic had had it with Stig Wood. He was like, you don't get, you're not getting any money from the song.

• 1:45:17Yasi Salek?

  But it's in one of the most iconic film, uh, scenes, which is when they are wearing the amazing garbage bag outfits.

• 1:45:25Yasi Salek?

  And they're like running and throwing all the TVs off the, of the thing.

• 1:45:28Speaker 04

  The best sequence in the movie, you could argue, the smashing TV sequence.

• 1:45:31Yasi Salek?

  With the garbage. I mean, it's so cool. And then at the end, obviously, the, the army of teenage girls that comes to see Aggie Dune and the Blondes perform is wearing, they're all wearing their garbage bags. Like, it's so cool.

• 1:45:44Speaker 04

  Candio, perfect album.

• 1:45:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Speaker 04

  Hugely important to me personally.

• 1:45:49Yasi Salek?

  Come on now. Come on now.

• 1:45:50Speaker 04

  She's a lot like you.

• 1:45:53Yasi Salek?

  Dangerous Type. But again, that could have been grinding hall too. Why, why put a song that wasn't on the soundtrack and then put?

• 1:46:00Speaker 04

  I'm so happy that song is in the movie. To me, it makes the movie feel more expensive. It's like, ooh, they got a Cars song in here. It's like, now we're really like, soundtrack lore.

• 1:46:10Yasi Salek?

  Do you have more?

• 1:46:11Speaker 04

  Letters to Cleo covered the song for the soundtrack of The Craft. So there you go.

• 1:46:17Yasi Salek?

  Wait, what song?

• 1:46:19Speaker 04

  Dangerous Type.

• 1:46:19Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Dangerous Type. It's so funny. I was just talking about Letters to Cleo this morning in the gym. How often do people talk about Letters to Cleo?

• 1:46:26Speaker 04

  More than you think.

• 1:46:27Yasi Salek?

  Me, probably more than the average bear, but like even me to talk about it twice in one day is like unusual.

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  That is, that is a coincidence. I just felt like for the soundtrack.

• 1:46:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, soundtrack lore. I like that.

• 1:46:40Speaker 04

  I'm thrilled that that's in the movie. I also, can I do a little tinfoil hat right now about something that's completely like unrelated, which is that you and I have both been engaging with music fashion film. The Charli XCX album.

• 1:46:54Yasi Salek?

  God tier album. Perfect, from start to finish. I love it.

• 1:46:57Speaker 04

  And I don't even know if she's seen this movie, but I was like, isn't it interesting that the movie begins with Roxy Music saying, um, nothing lasts forever?

• 1:47:08Yasi Salek?

  Now, every time you hear that, I think, I'm thinking, I can only hear David Cronenberg saying, they are dead. They are gone.

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  Nothing lasts forever. And then like, we have the sequence of them throwing all the TVs off the buildings of New York and in the, the rock music video, right? She's throwing TVs out the window. I'm like.

• 1:47:27Yasi Salek?

  What does it mean?

• 1:47:28Speaker 04

  It's like, this was like the very beginning of the kind of like new romantic, new wave, post punk, like musical era. And now it's come full circle with Charli. She is the sleaze sister.

• 1:47:42Yasi Salek?

  We got John Kill on that cover.

• 1:47:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:45Yasi Salek?

  There's a lot, a lot of connective tissue here. I love it. And also, I just, we, we mentioned a couple of times, but like, I, I loved hearing from Courtney how important this film was to her and how like, she had like, the Blondes were so cool to her and she would like, wear the garbage bags and she said, she was like, I took the bus to see the film and seeing these young punk girls, like, I, I have to imagine she's not the only one. I mean, she's probably the one that made it into the most major, um, you know, thing for our lives, but like, I, I was just trying to wrap my head around both aspects of it, like, being a teenage girl and seeing these teenage girls on film. Who cares if it was like the good or bad

• 1:48:28Yasi Salek?

  movie? It's like, how, how inspiring and amazing.

• 1:48:32Speaker 04

  Playing music.

• 1:48:33Yasi Salek?

  Playing music, being free, running around, telling their parents to fuck off, like, you know, like, just so, talking about poetry, talking about art, like, it's a really fucking, and the garbage bags and the fashion, like you pointed out.

• 1:48:45Speaker 04

  Having a strange parasocial relationship with a radio DJ.

• 1:48:48Yasi Salek?

  Who amongst us? Who amongst you?

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  It's like, which was sort of a little microcosm of like the music scene or something, like the music industry. It was sort of, I'm sure it was very inspiring. The way that the fabulous stains was probably very inspiring to a lot of female rock musicians as well.

• 1:49:04Yasi Salek?

  Courtney said something about how like, the idea that people would dress like you was so inspiring and look what happened, you know, like, because all the girls, we just said, dressed in these garbage bags, like.

• 1:49:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it kind of, it kind of predicted grunge. Also, like when she's working.

• 1:49:18Yasi Salek?

  Stan culture a little bit, right? It's like, we talked about with Madonna, like all those Madonna bees, you know, but like.

• 1:49:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. It is the most heartwarming part of the movie, how all those fans show up wearing garbage bags with the bandit makeup on.

• 1:49:31Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool.

• 1:49:32Speaker 04

  And like they're flooding Times Square.

• 1:49:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:35Speaker 04

  But yeah, I was gonna mention like when she's working at the Cleo Club, how she was like, I'm not gonna get topless. And when they're getting dressed in the back, she just like layers all the stripper clothes on top of each other and it becomes this like cool, baggy, like.

• 1:49:47Yasi Salek?

  And I, there's, when Aggie Dune was performing at the Cleo Club and she had like, fox tails or something, you know? And then it made me think of like, those early Madonna outfits and I don't remember like how she wore those outfits. And I was just like, wow, like, while a lot of those bits are not endure, as enduring in culture as some other like looks that we've seen, like specific punk looks or like maybe Debbie Harry Blondie era outfits, this was also so real.

• 1:50:15Speaker 04

  Or even like Molly Ringwald's outfits and like Pretty in Pink or whatever. It's like, this was, this is a movie that had like a kind of pervasive influence in its own quiet way.

• 1:50:27Yasi Salek?

  Of like what was really happening in New York. I ride for it. I ride for this movie. I ride for the soundtrack. I think making a mainstream soundtrack and putting Grinding Hall by The Cure and Talk of the Town by The Pretenders and The Ruts and stuff on it is fucking cool. Maybe Robert Stigwood is evil Australian Kim Fowley, but he did something for the culture.

• 1:50:51Yasi Salek?

  Did he mean to do it for the culture? No. Did he want to make a lot of money? Probably, but.

• 1:50:56Speaker 04

  I feel like Alan Moyle got his revenge a little bit with Empire Records.

• 1:51:03Yasi Salek?

  Or probably the fucking volume.

• 1:51:04Speaker 04

  The volume two. But I think that it's like, he was able to later like steer these movies with, in a way where he controlled the messaging, like it was like sort of damn the man.

• 1:51:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:15Speaker 04

  You know, and then Empire, it's funny that.

• 1:51:18Yasi Salek?

  Fascinatingly, two movies that are also extremely known for their soundtracks.

• 1:51:23Speaker 04

  Very known for their soundtracks. Empire Records had like a much more eclectic, interesting, cool, alternative soundtrack.

• 1:51:29Yasi Salek?

  The Jim Blossom song that was written.

• 1:51:31Speaker 04

  Throwing muses and shit, like.

• 1:51:33Yasi Salek?

  Found out about you.

• 1:51:36Speaker 04

  That's, that movie is so, that character is so Jim Blossom's coded, the cute guy at Empire Records. I haven't seen it in so long. Both movies end with like a free concert, like a rebellious free concert on top of like a structure.

• 1:51:52Yasi Salek?

  With coyote shivers, but some respect on his name.

• 1:51:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he, I guess he had a story to tell. Alan Mo had a story in his heart and involved.

• 1:52:01Speaker 04

  It involved like everyone outside, we're gonna put on a concert, yeah.

• 1:52:05Yasi Salek?

  My name isn't fucking Warren and.

• 1:52:09Speaker 04

  So in a way, Times Square led to Empire Records, which led to me being a nuisance at the video store, which led to me getting my first job, which led me to filmmaking, which led me to Hollywood, which led me to Bandplain.

• 1:52:21Yasi Salek?

  To Bandplain. All roads end at Bandplain.

• 1:52:24Speaker 04

  Times Square started it.

• 1:52:27Yasi Salek?

  In case you don't recall. I was yours and you were mine for getting. I feel like, why are you singing to Blossom's, not on the Times Square soundtrack? It's time to go.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, we've said enough about this movie, more than anyone ever has, probably.

• 1:52:43Yasi Salek?

  I would love to say more, but I think, I think we kind of. I think we kind of, you know, we hit all the points.

• 1:52:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, is it a great movie?

• 1:52:55Yasi Salek?

  Is that even important?

• 1:52:59Yasi Salek?

  Does that matter?

• 1:53:00Speaker 04

  It's a fun movie.

• 1:53:01Yasi Salek?

  I think if the movie was completely irredeemable, we would not be having this conversation about the soundtrack. The only movie I can think of that is like. With love and respect in my heart, pretty much pure garbage is Judgment Night. But that soundtrack is so.

• 1:53:16Speaker 04

  Haven't even heard of that movie. What is Judgment Night?

• 1:53:18Yasi Salek?

  You don't know about Judgment Night?

• 1:53:19Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:53:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Judgment Night, no one's.

• 1:53:21Speaker 04

  I know Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

• 1:53:23Yasi Salek?

  Judgment Night, wow, we've really, we've strayed far from God's light. Judgment Night is a film starring.

• 1:53:32Speaker 04

  Tales from the Crypt demon knight.

• 1:53:34Yasi Salek?

  Wait, is it Emilio Estevez and Cuba Gooding Jr.? Yes, Emilio Estevez, Steven Dorff and Cuba Gooding Jr. It's just, and Dennis Leary, it's just like, and I think Jeremy Piven's in it. It's like a pretty just generic.

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  Love Dennis Leary, love Jeremy Piven.

• 1:53:49Yasi Salek?

  Me too. It's, it's not great, okay?

• 1:53:54Yasi Salek?

  They're a group of friends on the run from a gang of drug dealers.

• 1:53:56Speaker 04

  But it has a great soundtrack.

• 1:53:58Yasi Salek?

  They invented rap rock. Like, this is the sound.

• 1:54:01Speaker 04

  So no.

• 1:54:02Yasi Salek?

  No, it's, babe, don't, you, we did an episode on Judgment Night, you guys can go back and listen to it. This is this cra- you've never heard the Judgment Night soundtrack?

• 1:54:11Speaker 04

  Well, maybe I've heard the songs on it and not known.

• 1:54:14Yasi Salek?

  They basically created, it's all new songs, and they paired. Like Teenage Fan Club with De La Soul. That's the most famous song off there. It's called Fallen. It's one of the best songs of all time. Or they have like Anthrax and, um, God, who does it with Anthrax? Is it Onyx? Or the biohazard in Onyx? It's biohazard in Onyx.

• 1:54:36Speaker 04

  So is the point is this like?

• 1:54:37Yasi Salek?

  Slayer and Ice-T.

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  It's not the worst movie with the best soundtrack that you could bring up, is what you're saying.

• 1:54:42Yasi Salek?

  That's what, I'm, I'm just saying like, I was more saying that this is like.

• 1:54:45Speaker 04

  It's a charming movie.

• 1:54:46Yasi Salek?

  Most great soundtrack movies, I have, I can, whether or not it's like a great movie, I have an affection and a fondness for the film. The only one I can think of that the movie is like, I don't care if it lives or dies, is Judgment Night. Respectfully.

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 1:55:01Yasi Salek?

  And that is the end of this podcast, I think.

• 1:55:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:55:05Yasi Salek?

  Unless you have more to contribute.

• 1:55:08Speaker 04

  No, I was just gonna say, like, this movie to me is like a lesser Christian F. Which is also a soundtrack.

• 1:55:15Yasi Salek?

  David Bowie.

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  That matters a lot, yeah.

• 1:55:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Walter Wall, David Bowie. Did you see that?

• 1:55:21Speaker 04

  But this is like a little bit of, it's, this is like the PG version, but you're like, it also involves porno theaters and strip clubs and topless women and songs that have. Vile slurs in them, so it's not exactly Disney, but.

• 1:55:36Yasi Salek?

  Did you, did you see that tweet?

• 1:55:40Yasi Salek?

  This tweet, put up this like, it's like one of those history, like music history Twitter accounts, and it was like. David Bowie moves to West Berlin with his old friend Iggy Pop in the hopes that they will escape the smog and reduce their drug use, and it's a picture of them, and someone goes.

• 1:55:54Yasi Salek?

  I moved to Drug City with my close friend Mr. Drugs, so I would quit drugs.

• 1:56:01Yasi Salek?

  My close friend, Mr. Drugs.

• 1:56:03Speaker 04

  Sometimes.

• 1:56:04Yasi Salek?

  I moved to Drug City with my friend, Mr. Drugs.

• 1:56:07Speaker 04

  Where else were they gonna go, you know? Walla Walla, Washington?

• 1:56:10Yasi Salek?

  At least they made low. All right, Patrick, as always, it was an honor and a pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you for coming to speak about Times Square. You're welcome back anytime. Come back next week for a new episode of Bandplain.

• 1:56:38Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guest today was Patrick Sandberg. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges, help from Justin Sales. Video production by Chris Thomas. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Delvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavain, and graciously recorded by Carlos La Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fantasy and the Katsuya in Studio City. Come back every Thursday for new episodes of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  I'm Yasi Salek.

• 1:57:27Yasi Salek?

  You are not Yasi Salek, how dare you? Nobody could possibly. I'm Anthony Fantano.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

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