I just saw this new film today, which made me think about the old Phil Collins song that used to be the TV show's theme (or at least, featured prominently in it - can't remember). The film features, at roll credits, a new cover of this song by what sounds like a bunch of whiny young suburbanites. This cover spectacularily fails, though I have to at least give the band (whomever they are) credit for having the balls to try and cover this song. The reason why it's risky to cover this song, and the reason why the fail, is due to the context and subject of the song. This is a bitter break-up song, seething with rage. The kind of rage, I think, that can only come from a man who is experiencing a slowly dying long-term relationship. Maybe the members of this band have experienced this but it sure doesn't sound like it. Regardless of Collin's other material this is a fantastic track. It crawls along and injects just enough venom to get under your skin. The lyrics are harsh and cathartic, and I can understand why my father took to this song so greatly after the messy end of his 24-year marriage. The vocals sound like they're coming from a deep, isolated place that is rarely allowed to speak. And the drums, oh man the drums. I think it is the same technique Collins used on Peter Gabriel's third album, and they work so well. They are like the distant echoes of supernovae long past, the trauma still felt years on. Amazing.
Fortunately the bad cover is the only real musical stumble in "Miami Vice." Michael Mann, as always, injects a lot of music into his films and quite often the music takes center stage (invisible, but felt and present). The best moment is the final few minutes of the film, which are set to "Autorock" by Mogwai, a slowly-building-but-never-exploding melody that plods along to the metronomic shudder of a drum. It was nice hearing one of my favourite bands on film, especially set to an absolutely wonderful, satisfying conclusion to an otherwise too-severe, mediocre film. I can't not mention the opening of the film, which just starts, no intro, no build. We are simply introduced instantly to a nightclub (Mann seems to love filming these). The song playing is... a Linkin Park song. I swear, I hate this band, but the song fits SO WELL. I don't know how Mann does it, maybe it's the superficial, self-important posturing of the band that reflects so well with the self-important posturing of the main character of the film? I'll never know, but by God it WORKS.
Going back to that ending... oh man what an ending. I have a personal category of songs. This category of songs is called "Ending-to-Michael-Mann-movie-songs." All of Mann's films have good endings, and they are all kind of the same - silent, overtaken by a final musical piece, with long, pensive shots of the various story threads resolving in dramatic ways interspersed with faster cuts of the same. It's incredibly effective! It makes everything just seem that much more huge, that much more sublime. My current #1 ending-to-Michael-Mann-movie-song is also my #1 song from last year - "Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar, and Computer" by Keith Fullerton Whitman! Just listen to it. Can't you imagine those slow, brooding pans and wordless looks? Can't you feel the tension of characters emoting, drowned out by the music since dialog has become unnecessary because it's just SO DRAMATIC? A camera shot looking up from a despairing character's feet as an airplane jets across the frame? Man, am I ever a sucker for drama.
My Trusted MOGs
Nah -- the original show's theme was a Jan Hammer instrmental (mostly synth) track; got sued and lost over the conga sample that opened it - it was so distinctive that after the first episode aired, people wer calling up the guy it was sampled from and congratulating him for being on the theme of what looked like a surefire hit.
Best cop show music in forevernevernever has gotta be the revised version of "Runaway" that Del Shannon recorded for Crime Story.
I've been told that the Crime Story DVDs are missing some or all of the original '60s music they used on the show's soundtrack (Al Kooper was the music co-ordinator.)
My Trusted MOGs
"The song's popularity in the 1980s increased after a nearly complete recording of it was featured in the pilot episode of the American television show Miami Vice, thus becoming one of the first pop/rock songs to be featured as part of a TV program in this manner. On the heels of this successful merging of media, Collins became associated with the show; other Collins tracks including Take Me Home were later featured, and Collins himself also acted in an episode."
nonpoint does the cover of in the air tonight
the meaning of the song has been the subject of variations of an urban legend arising from the lyrics' reference to drownin' http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/someair.htm
"I don't know what this song is about. When I was writing this I was going through a divorce. And the only thing I can say about it is that it's obviously in anger. It's the angry side, or the bitter side of a separation. So what makes it even more comical is when I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and say, 'Did you really see someone drowning?' I said, 'No, wrong'. And then every time I go back to America the story gets Chinese whispers, it gets more and more elaborate. It's so frustrating, 'cos this is one song out of all the songs probably that I've ever written that I really don't know what it's about, you know."
i also found this: "Gabriel's third album is generally credited as the first LP to use the now-famous "gated drum" sound, invented by engineer Hugh Padgham and Gabriel's old Genesis band-mate Phil Collins. Collins played drums on several tracks, including the opener, "Intruder," which featured the reverse-gated, cymbal-less drum kit sound which Collins would make famous on his single "In the Air Tonight" and through the rest of the 1980s." kool post