REPO MAN
Repo Man is a 1984 American science fiction comedy film written and directed by Alex Cox. It stars Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez, and was produced by Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy with executive producer Michael Nesmith. Repo Man received widespread acclaim, and was considered one of the best films of 1984. It has achieved cult status. (More from Wikipedia)
The Cruzados, The Cruzados – The bandmembers in the Cruzados were previously in the Plugz, the first Latino L.A. punk rock band and one of the best L.A. punk bands, period. They showed up on New Wave Theatre more than once and also performed the score of the 1984 cult classic film, Repo Man. The Cruzados were more of a pure rock band that were being, er, plugged as the “next big thing”. I had heard of them already, and these two albums were what drew me to that CD rack at the flea market in the first place. The first track on this album is called “Wasted Years”; it is a good opening track on a good CD, but I have never been able to shake the feeling that this song was a comment on the band’s years as the Plugz, and that ruins the effect for me.
(December 2015)
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The Modern Lovers are probably best known for their song “Pablo Picasso”. (Another of their tracks is “Roadrunner”; “Roadrunner” was covered by Sex Pistols on their little-known, sort-of second album, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle). I actually first heard the song on the Phranc album, Positively Phranc (1991), where (with Jonathan Richman’s blessing) she had rewritten the song as “Gertrude Stein” in honor of the famed Paris avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein who was the life partner of Alice B. Toklas – her 1954 recipe for marijuana brownies was celebrated in the Peter Sellers film, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968). An excerpt of “Pablo Picasso” (as performed by Burning Sensations) appears in the 1985 cult classic film, Repo Man that has been in heavy rotation on my TiVo for most of the year.
(December 2016)
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Repo Man (1984) – not at all the same movie as the rather odious Repo Men – would be my current candidate for the “greatest movie ever made” (as I have been telling Peggy for the past year) that I never get tired of watching. The story is a wicked mixture of science fiction, action movie, and sight gags, with a wild array of mostly unknown character actors, and Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez as the stars.
The soundtrack album, Repo Man: Music from the Original Motion Picture collects a variety of punk rock classics plus others made especially for the film. The opening theme music, “Repo Man Theme” (a gut-busting, guitar-driven instrumental that is the best music of all, though it is not on the album) and the title song, “Repo Man” (performed over the ending credits, which crawl downward rather than upward) are by Iggy Pop, while the score is performed by L.A. punk stalwarts the Plugz. I have watched Repo Man a few times with subtitles; that has helped me follow the stream-of-consciousness lyrics in the Iggy Pop song and pick up on some of the other fine points of the movie. For instance, Dr. J. Frank Parnell is mumbling “Oh My Darling, Clementine” to himself in the opening scene, where he warns the doomed motorcycle cop when he asked about the trunk: “Oh . . . you don’t want to look in there”.
(March 2017)
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Anyway, here is what and who I talked about last year:
September 2017 – 1980’s garage rock band THE TELL-TALE HEARTS; Story of the Month on Repo Man; also, bootleg records, Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be (the Rolling Stones), Kum Back (the Beatles), Great White Wonder (Bob Dylan), John Birch Society Blues (Bob Dylan), The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan), Let it Be (the Beatles), the Stooges, Iggy Pop.
(Year 8 Review)
