Soundtrack Saturday

Alex Cox's 1984 film Repo Man is one of those classic counter- culture 80s films, a combination of road movie, music, Los Angeles, science fiction, UFOs, crime, cars and black comedy and a satire on Reagan's America, 80s consumerism, the nuclear bomb and anything else Alex Cox, in his directorial debut, could throw at the camera. It stars Harry Dean Stanton and Emelio Estevez as repo men- 'the life of a repo man is always intense', says Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). 

The musical backdrop to the film, the scene around which Estevez's character Otto comes from, is 80s L.A. punk. The soundtrack is in part a snapshot of early/ mid 80s L.A. punk rock with the title track coming from Iggy Pop who wrote it specifically for the film after his manager saw a screening of it. 1984 isn't necessarily the best period in Iggy's musical back catalogue. In 1982 he'd released Zombie Birdhouse and the year before Party. Party is poor. Zombie Birdhouse isn't much better. For Repo Man he enlisted ex- Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Blondie's Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison and they make a decent fist of it, the song a heavy piledriver with Iggy in good voice. 

Repo Man

The rest of the songs, ten of them, take in The Plugz (last seen at Bagging Area backing Bob Dylan on David Letterman), Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, Fear, Burning Sensations (cvering Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso) and Juicy Bananas. As a document of Californian punk rock in Reagan's USA its pretty good. The soundtrack is completed by possibly the most archetypal L.A. punk band of them all, Black Flag, and their 1982 song TV Party. 'We've got nothing better to do/ Than watch TV and have a couple of brews', bawls Henry Rollins. 

TV Party

Three Nights And Days I Sail The Sea

Mike Mitchell, the last surviving member of The Kingsmen, has died aged 77. He was a mainstay in the band from 1959. The Kingsmen, from Portland, Oregon, released their version of Richard Berry's Louie Louie in 1963 and in the process laid down one of the cornerstones of garage rock- three chord riff, primitive beat, the whole group crowded round one single microphone, muffled vocals about a sailor trying to get home to his girl and Mitchell's guitar solo. I'm sure Mike Mitchell achieved many, many things in his life other than just being the man who played the guitar solo on Louie Louie but if it were the only one, it's not too bad a thing to have as an epitaph. 

Louie Louie

If you've been in a band you've probably done a cover of Louie Louie or a song very similar to it. The Beach Boys, The Troggs, Jan and Dean, Motorhead, Toots and The Maytals, The Flamin' Groovies and The Sonics all covered it.

Paul Revere And The Raiders did too, also in 1963, intro riff played on sax.

Louie Louie

In 1981 US hardcore band Black Flag, with new vocalist Dez Cadena making his debut at the mic improvising the lyrics while the rest of the group, guitars like a wall of sludge, pummel the song into submission in one minute twenty seconds. 

Louie Louie

Iggy covered it for his 1993 album American Caesar adding the clanging piano from I Wanna Be Your Dog. 

Louie Louie

Coincidentally, yesterday was Iggy's birthday, 74 years young. Happy birthday Mr Pop and RIP Mike Mitchell.