Difficult Music

I had planned to go see Nomeansno and Removal on Saturday night, but I learned once again that there's a crucial difference between "have plans" and "have tickets." The show had sold out by the time I tried to score some on Saturday morning. Oh well. I made the rounds of the stores downtown and bought the new Celtic Frost album, along with PJ Harvey's Please Leave Quietly DVD.

With the show a no-go, I stayed in and watched Blue Velvet for the first time in years. David Lynch loves music and odd sounds in general, which is one of the reasons I like his movies. From a musical angle, Blue Velvet's an important movie because it was the first time Lynch worked with Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruise (who got involved because Lynch wanted a song with a similar atmosphere to This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren," to which he couldn't get the rights).

It's cool how he'll bring a film to a halt so one of the characters can sing an entire song. Blue Velvet seems almost entirely driven by music. Isabella Rosellini sings the title track and Dean Stockwell lip-synchs "In Dreams". In Wild at Heart, Nicholas Cage/Sailor hijacks a Powermad gig to croon "Love Me" for Laura Dern. Eraserhead has "Heaven (the Lady in the Radiator song)" and Twin Peaks has my all-time favourite Lynch musical moment—I think I've written about it here before—James, Maddy, and Donna's home-fi session in episode 9.

Watching that Wild at Heart scene with Powermad again, it's funny to notice that Sailor's Elvis-style martial arts dancefloor moves match exactly what I've seen in the pit at all-ages hardcore shows over the last few years.