As I was watching Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control the other day, I thought to myself, “Oh man, I have to get the soundtrack for this!” And so I did. Then I was listening to it and it made me want to go back and listen to the soundtrack from Broken Flowers, another Jarmusch film. And then I got to thinking, “Hey… don’t I have the soundtrack to Night on Earth, too?” And as I was looking for that in my CD “archives” I found out that I also had the soundtrack to Ghost Dog. So, basically, every single time I’ve seen a Jim Jarmusch film, I’ve gone out and acquired the soundtrack afterwards. Actually, I don’t think I actually own the Dead Man one, but I’ve listened to enough Neil Young that it’s pretty academic. Also, I did see the Neil Young concert film that Jarmusch shot (on Super-8!) so that must count for something!
Anyway, after I realized all this, it made me think back to an article I read bout Jarmusch around the time that Dead Man came out. Which was in… shit… 1995?! Fuck knows how I remembered it, but anyway, here’s the link:
Addicted to Noise: Jim Jarmusch, Rock and Roll Director
And now that I’ve dug that link out of the depths of the Internet Archive, I feel compelled to say a few words about Addicted to Noise, which was probably the web site I visited most frequently during my first few years on the internet. I guess it was sort of like Pitchfork for people who hadn’t destroyed their attention spans yet. Something like that. Anyway, the thing that amuses me most now, looking back at ATN, is that in the days of 14.4K modems, they still went to the trouble of providing audio and video samples with their articles & reviews, although as you can see, they were careful to spell out exactly how large each file was, as well as providing “mono” versions, in case you didn’t want to sit around for an hour waiting for a 1.13MB file to download so you could hear a 45-second excerpt of whatever song they were talking about. Additional bonus LOLs can be had by noting that the downloads are actually MP2 files, instead of the MP3s we all came to know and love. And as I recall, the version of Winamp that I used to play these MP2 files actually had a setting that decoded the audio at half it’s original bitrate, which was quite helpful in getting them to play back on a 386DX without stuttering. And don’t even get me started on RealPlayer!
But enough about how old I am, let’s get back to Jim Jarmusch. So the quote I was looking for in that article was:
What I envy is that musicians can pick up an instrument and just express themselves. Film is so painstaking, it’s so long, and it’s such a process, that once you get on the train, you can’t get off. You gotta ride it all the way. I feel like somewhere along the way I got re-routed.
Which I remember finding pretty interesting, as a kid learning how to make movies at the time. And now having spent the past few years learning how to make music, I guess I’m just totally impressed by how consistently good Jarmusch’s films *and* soundtracks have been since then.
Which is all just a preface to saying: “Hey, you guys! Here is some awesome music!”
- Night on Earth Soundtrack [82MB ZIP Archive] by Tom Waits
- Mulatu Steps Ahead [lala.com] a brand new album from the Ethiopian jazz musician (Mulatu Astatke) responsible for the Broken Flowers soundtrack
- Addis to Axum [stream and/or download] a 1-hour DJ set by Quantic featuring records acquired during a trip to visit Mr. Astatke in Ethiopia in 2004
And, for the sake of leaving no link unlinked, here is the William Burroughs essay from which The Limits of Control takes its name.
OK, now that that’s done, I’m going to sleep. Rock over London. Rock on, Chicago! Mitsubishi: The word is getting aroOOOOOUND!!!!
