You’ve seen the TV series–now buy the music CD.
The marriage between television and music stretches back to the early ’50s, when “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and the theme to “Dragnet” were major radio hits. But in the ’90s, instead of just offering up occasional hit songs or soundtrack collections, some TV producers are taking the opportunity to play deejay for a day and are loading official soundtrack albums with eclectic and exciting musical material.
A superb example of this type of media cross-pollination appeared earlier this month when the official soundtrack CD to the Fox series “Party of Five” was released by Reprise Records. The collection leads off with the show’s official theme–the bouncy “Closer to Free” by the Bodeans–then presents 14 other songs, from intriguing cover versions (Holly Palmer doing Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do,” Rickie Lee Jones performing a warped-sounding version of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman”) to a string of less familiar songs and artists.
That, though, is where the fun comes in. You may never have heard of, much less heard, the group Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, but you will be pleasantly surprised by their jazz-jive song “Cruel Spell.” Similarly, enjoyable are the sort of Talking-Heads playfulness displayed by Rusted Root on “Send Me on My Way,” and the lyrics to Syd Straw’s “People of Earth.”
All these songs and performers are relatively quirky, complex and original–just like “Party of Five” itself, which makes this such a fine extension of the TV series. If you like the show enough to trust its musical judgment, you won’t be disappointed.
An even better example in this regard is the Warner Bros. Records release of a soundtrack CD keyed to another Fox series, “The X-Files.” For this one, series creator Chris Carter contacted some of his favorite artists and actually commissioned compositions–all of which complement Mark Snow’s moody “X-Files” theme perfectly.
In fact, there are songs on this CD that are hauntingly unforgettable. Soul Coughing’s “Unmarked Helicopters” and “Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are two such songs, and both are perfectly in keeping with the paranormal bent of “The X-Files.”
The same CD, which pursues its hidden-agenda theme so completely that two bonus tracks are hidden on the disc before the opening title track, also includes a morbidly moving song by Sheryl Crow, “On the Outside”–it is gorgeous in its simplicity and intimacy, yet is not contained on either of her own albums.
Credit for this TV-to-soundtrack sensibility, while including everything from the Monkees to the Rutles, probably began in earnest with “Miami Vice,” the show that in the 1980s popularized Jan Hammer and gave a big boost to the solo careers of Phil Collins and former Eagles frontman Glenn Frey.
MTV, with its very successful “Unplugged” releases, and its sister network’s recently released “VH1 Crossroads” collection, has done exceptionally well with the concept.
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