Caught by the Fuzz

You certainly wouldn't confuse the soundtrack to Hot Fuzz with a buddy cop movie (thank goodness.) Featuring classic Britpop from The Kinks, T Rex, The Troggs and recent indie rock acts like The Fratellis and Jon Spencer (Blues Explosion), the soundtrack instead pays respects to the genre by using pieces of score from these films it looks to for inspiration: Lethal Weapon III, Bad Boys II and that pantheon of buddy cop movies Point Break. Even with those diversions, this soundtrack is a rarity... one that actually follows a narrative without the need of actual dialogue.

After the opening theme (penned by 007 veteran David Arnold,) our first taste of narrative music comes as co-writer Simon Pegg's character, supercop Nicholas Angel, introduces himself to us over the top of Adam Ant's ’80s camp classic "Goody Two Shoes," and the mood is set. Then XTC's "Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me") helps further Angel as the bobby who gets things done.

When Angel's exploits makes the big city bobbys look bad (turning the usual buddy cop formula on it's ear,) as punishment he's promoted and sent off to Sandford ("the village of the year,") the place with the lowest crime rate in England. It's here that Angel warns a model citizen "this isn't your village anymore," while we hear songs from The Kink's great album Village Green Preservation Society, which frontman Ray Davies wrote with the idea of feeling nostalgia for a simpler time and place. Director Edgar Wright, feeling nostalgic himself, chose to use the town he grew up in (Wells) for this idylic setting, making for the ultimate (and therapeutic) geek fantasy: turn the town you grew up in into the set of a smash-em-up action movie.

One song that didn't make the soundtrack, to my great disappointment, was The Move's "Night of Fear," which hints that there's more going on this village then meets the eye. The Move is a band still begging for discovery here in the states some 40 years after the fact, and while this release wouldn't break them, it at least would have furthered the cause (and got at least a song from them in the Rhapsody music service.)

It's about this time in the film when, to quote Martin Lawrence's character in Bad Boys II: "This sh*t just got real!" Bits from the scores to both Point Blank and BBII make appearances here, but really it's original music contributed to the film by mutual admiration director Robert Rodriguez that steals the show. Pegg's Angel gets his Desperado on, and Rodriguez's score is the perfect marriage for the scene. The movie's only sticking point with me is that Wright falls in love with the Michael Bayisms a bit too much, and the action goes on a little too long (with about two too many climaxes.)

To finish up the film, I couldn't think of a better song then the great Supergrass classic "Caught by the Fuzz," but that's not the ending. Instead there's another Fuzz song, this time written for the film by indie rock legend Jon Spencer called "Here Come The Fuzz."

The stateside release is a trimmed down affair, but as is my want to do, I've included every song as it appeared in the film (and a couple from the trailers) for my Rssmbld Sndtrck (reassmbled soundtrack) series.

>Playlist: Rssmbld Sndtrck - Hot Fuzz

1. "Souljacker Part 1" - Eels - Used in trailers for the film (note: song is mismarked as 'Part 2' in Rhapsody)
2. "Chelsea Dagger" - The Fratellis - Used in trailers for the film
3. "Goody Two Shoes" - Adam Ant
4. "Sgt. Rock (Is Going To Help Me)" - XTC
5. "The Village Green Preservation Society (Hot Fuzz)" - The Kinks
6. "Down Bond Street" - Tommy McCook and the Supersonics
7. "Baby Fratelli" - The Fratellis
8."Kick Out the Jams" - Tub Thumper
9. "Slippery Rock 70's" - Stavely Makepeace
10. "Lethal Fuzz (Osymyso Remix)" - John Eric Alexander
11. "I Can't Control Myself" - The Troggs
12. "Lovefool" - The Cardigans
13. "Night Of Fear" - The Move (YouTube)
14. "Romeo And Juliet" - Dire Straits
15. "Blockbuster" - Sweet
16. "Solid Gold, Easy Action" - T Rex (Marc Bolan)
17. "Foot Chase (from Point Blank - Mark Ishram (Download)
18. "Hostage Situation" (from Bad Boys II - Trevor Rabin
19. "Fire" - Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (YouTube)
20. "Village Green" - The Kinks (YouTube)
21. "Dance With The Devil" - Cozy Powell (YouTube)
22. "Heston Services" - Robert Rodriguez (Chingon)
23. "Avenging Angel" - Robert Rodriguez (Chingon)
24. "Caught By The Fuzz" - Supergrass
25. "Solid Gold Easy Action" - The Fratellis
26. "Here Come The Fuzz" - Jon Spencer & The Elegant Too
27. "The Hot Fuzz Suite" - David Arnold (score medley)

More: To underscore even more the significance of music in the film, Pegg's character Nicolas Angel is a nod to music supervisor extraordinaire Nick Angel (who also worked with the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg team on Shaun of the Dead.)

tags: film, hot fuzz, music, soundtrack, the kinks, the fratellis, jon spencer, adam ant, movies, point break, t rex, rhapsody

Freak Folk - Beginnings

Freak Folk Beginnings/Influences

The Rhapslibrary recently got some great additions of a genre that has become to be known as 'freak-folk.' It's an unfortunate genre name, as it poorly dumps some folks together that are either not 'freak' or 'folk,' but it's a name that has stuck. When you say it, artists like Devandra Banhart, Animal Collective and Joanna Newsom are the first that come to mind. But the main waver of the freak flag is young folk artist Devendra Banhart, and truly one of the nice things about Banhart is he's never shy about naming his influences, and so we start with these influences/inspiration/beginnings.

While Nick Drake is considered "a saint," according to Banhart, their living inspiration seems to truly be Vashti Bunyan, who only released one album (Just Another Diamond Day) but has seen a comeback of sorts, recently appearing on songs with Banhart ("Rejoicing in the Hands") and Animal Collective ("It's You.") Bunyan's one album was produced by Joe Boyd, who also produced British folk artists Fairport Convention, and the Incredible String Band. It also featured arrangements by Robert Kirby who was also Nick Drake's arranger as well. Other folk/psychedelic-folk artists cited include the finger-pick stylings of John Fahey and Bert Jansch, the lyrical style of early Marc Bolan (Tyrannosaurus Rex,) and Donovan, vocal style of Karen Dalton, and worldly influence of Ali Akbar Khan and Ali Farka Toure. These artists danced around the margins of folk, not playing to the political/protest or the traditional styles that were popular at the time. Nick Drake is often cited, but it's his late recordings that sound more like an influence, at a time when his depression was so consuming, he could barely speak a full sentence.

Karen Dalton is another one album artist who's got a lot of cache with the new movement. She was in with Bob Dylan and Fred Neil and released an album mostly covering their material, making it her own, but she's still mostly unknown today. Says Banhart:

I've really got no idea why Karen Dalton is unknown. She is one of the most amazing musicians in the universe. Forget about the amount of soul she's got -- she's got the most far-out, fucked up, amazing soul. She's the most soulful singer in the universe. But the technicalities...her timing and her phrasing is perfect. It's beyond perfect. You can't even try to imitate it because it's like beyond, it's brilliant.

Bert Jansch's is another terribly under-appreciated artist and guitarist. His angular, interlacing fingerpicking influenced Neil Young, Nick Drake, and Jimmy Page, with Young even going so far as saying that Jansch did for the acoustic guitar what Jimi Hendrix did for the electric. When the new appreciation for Nick Drake started 5+ years ago, it made sense that Jansch's work would follow, but he still remains unknown (while Clapton still has God status? I ask you, where's the justice!) John Fahey, on the other hand, while just as innovative and talented, was a bit odd and it's no surprise that he's relatively unknown. His tastes ran from Native American to Raga, to Blues and back (and through, and all together...) A great find for the discerning ear, as he's got a huge catalogue of music to consume.

Marc Bolan's early work in the folk-duo Tyrannosaurus Rex is barely recognizable to it's later electric glam incarnation, T.Rex. Bolan was so into Lord of the Rings at the time, he interwove it's characters and story line into many of his songs (even naming his bandmate Steve Peregrin Took, after the Rings character.) After few releases and a lineup change, Bolan (like fellow psychedelic folkie David Bowie) moved into glam. Donovan, on the other hand, had more conventional pop leanings, but in much of his early recordings (and some of his later psychedelic work) the lyrics, like Bolan's, were out there.

Non-western influences abound as well, especially from the East in the form of Ali Akbar Khan. A master of the sarod, a 25-stringed, lute-like, Indian instrument, Khan is one of the Eastern world's greatest musicians. From West Africa, Ali Fraka Toure was described as "the African John Lee Hooker" so often both Hooker and Toure must've cringed after awhile. But he's that good, and that important to folk music.

This combination of artists together make for a very interesting legacy, one that was picked up in the 2000's and is now the phenomenon that is Freak Folk.

Next: The current Freak Folk movement.

tags: playlist, music, folk music, freak folk