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The Breakfast Club 1985 |
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| Weird Science 1985 |
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| Pretty In Pink 1986 |
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| Some Kind Of Wonderful 1987 |
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John Hughes
FEATURED: Saturday, June 3rd, 2000 Ok, so he's not a recording artist, he's a film director. Work with me here and I'll 'splain myself. In the 80's, John Hughes pioneered a technique that we pretty much take for granted these days. Instead of hiring a composer to score an entire picture, or using "classics" from the vault, he used contemporary songs as the soundtracks to his films. Not just any old pop tunes, either; this was stuff that you couldn't hear on the radio unless you lived near a college or a struggling non-commercial station (hello WBER!), or you might have caught it on MTV's 120 Minutes if you stayed up late enough. No VCR's back then, remember? I'm talking about mainstream-misfit bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, Flesh for Lulu, the Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds that were the perfect underscore for the mainstream-misfit casts of movies like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful and Weird Science. Sidebar: During the summer of 1988, I was working in NYC and it was hot enough to fry an egg on your own forehead. The office radio was tuned to Z-100 pretty much all day, every day, and after the 3rd or 4th hourly rendition of Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer", I would slip on the headphones and pop the Pretty in Pink soundtrack into the cassette player. Tweleve years later, all I remember about that whole summer are the 100 degree heat, Bon Jovi and that soundtrack. Now if I could forget about Bon Jovi... Anyway, this week we pay homage to John Hughes for the bunch of very excellent movie soundtracks that he created during the 80's. Note that I am NOT saying anything about the films themselves, for I am only music critic and not a film critic. Well, OK, I will say this: if you can sit all the way through "Some Kind of Wonderful", more power to ya! :") - Mike Dailor, Underground 80's And now, boys -n- girls, here's some of what you might expect to hear this week: Sixteen Candles 1984
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