Sunday, October 30, 2005

Ten Best

Slightly different concept this time: Ten Steely Dan songs that could've been '70s movies.

1. "Do it Again": Experimental piece as Bruce Dern trips through time getting in, out and back into trouble.

2. "Boston Rag": Warren Beatty is a laid-off Beantown newspaperman trailing a drug cartel story to New York. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s guitar solo plays the role of Gene Hackman’s fists.

3. "My Old School": Bud Cort experiments with girls and drugs in the rarefied world of privilege and prestige that is Bard College.

4. "Through with Buzz": Ned Beatty can’t shake Dustin Hoffman, a do-nothing moocher who may not even be real!

5. "Charlie Freak": Drug dealers living hand to mouth during the coldest Christmas in 12 years. Uh, I’m not sure who’s in this one. You tell me.

6. "Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More": The last days of an ailing mob kingpin. Starring Peter Falk.

7. "Kid Charlemagne": Dennis Hopper is the acid dealer fallen on hard times, in this thinly veiled biopic of Owsley Stanley.

8. "Deacon Blues:" Chris Makepeace is the disaffected teenager dreaming of life as jazz hepcat.

9. "Josie": I read a description of this song as Rumble Fish if Mickey Rourke’s character was a girl. That works for me.

10. "Hey Nineteen": Jack Nicholson is the aging ex-fray boy lothario feeling this age.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd say you have it backwards, and Ned Beatty should be the possibly imaginary Buzz in Through With Buzz.

Walter Matthau and Warren Oates are the lawmen who end up in a standoff with victim of circumstance Charles Bronson that ends well for no one in Walter Hill's Don't Take Me Alive.

Disgraced federal agent Paul Newman can salvage his career by bringing in international jewel thief Robert Redford...or will he make a deal to work with him on one big score? George Roy Hill's forgotten 70s heist classic Green Earrings.

And Max Von Sydow has to play one of the ex-Nazis in Chain Lightning, right? Oh, and Harvey Keitel is definitely in Charlie Freak. Maybe Elliot Gould, too.

9:32 AM  
Blogger japanesegodjesusrobot said...

Furthermore, Elvis Costello's "Beaten to the Punch" could provide the soundtrack to Jack Nicholson's aging frat-boy lothario vehicle in the place of "Hey Nineteen". Maybe that (10 EC songs that could be movies) should be your next topic. :-0

4:06 PM  
Blogger frankenslade said...

Chris Makepeace references don't come along every day! Nice work from top to bottom. "Hey Nineteen" is the one with the champagne and reefer coda, right? That always strikes me as a Martini & Rossi-style tv spot, complete with clinking glasses, knowing glances, and rain streaming down the city apartment windows.

10:59 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

"Hey Nineteen"'s coda celebrates tequilla and cocaine; you were close. It sounds like Martini and Rossi, but I like to think the song really takes place in a suburban Bennigan's-type place.

11:12 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home