The Wily Filipino

Your New Favorite Song.

Bull Schanen (the winner of the previous movie quiz) never did respond, so I decided to go ahead and figure out a new theme for the mp3 uploads. Not sure if I can fill up a CD like before, but we'll see.

The next few uploads will be called "Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film." His films, while perhaps thematically similar in general (and almost all of them have a fussy and almost distracting attention to detail, which isn't necessarily a bad thing), are also distinguished by an impeccable taste in music, which I won't dare to replicate here. But think, for instance, of the transcendent opening credits of The Royal Tenenbaums, with the muzaky version of "Hey Jude," or the ending of "Rushmore" with the Faces' "Ooh La La," or Sigur Ros' "Staralfur" in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (which I won't spoil); it marks Anderson as one of the young directors who meshes what are essentially mixtapes almost perfectly, and inextricably, with the rest of the film. (The other possible theme would have been "Soundtrack for an Imaginary Quentin Tarantino Film" -- maybe next time.)

Anyhow, the opening credits will be running over John Cale's "Paris 1919," from the fantastic 1973 album of the same name -- a track suitably classy-sounding and enigmatic and inaugural (can't think of the right word) and evocative, at the very least, of a kind of wistfulness. (If I were to pick a favorite Velvet, it would certainly be Cale, who had a greater command of melody and willingness to experiment than the more lionized Lou ever did -- with the exception, I suppose, of Metal Machine Music).

It's not clear what the song is about -- there's a ghost, and Beaujolais raining on the Champs Elysees, and "William William William Rogers." Somehow I envision quick cuts of different people tying bowties to this song; I'm not sure why.

Hear it (5.62 mb).

Posted by the wily filipino at April 13, 2005 10:38 PM