Patina of Cool
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Sci-fi geek that I am, I was enjoying an episode from the inaugural season of “Torchwood” yesterday. Music geek that I am, I was rather amused to hear a rather unlikely song pop up right in the middle of said episode.“Torchwood,” for those not in the know, is the slightly more adult-skewed spin-off of the recently invigorated, Hugo Award-winning U.K. television show “Doctor Who.” Currently airing in the U.S. on the BBC America cable channel, “Torchwood” is sort of an amalgam of “The X-Files,” “CSI,” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer," concerning an edgy quintet of sexually-frank adventurers who work for a secret organization dedicated to dealing with alien invaders and paranormal circumstances and whose base of operations sits next to a dimensional rift in the city of Cardiff, Wales.Anyhow, “Out of Time,” the episode in question, revolved around three passengers on a prop plane that took off in the early 1950s, flew through the rift, and landed in our era. The time travelers must each adjust to the strange new world around them, with the help of the Torchwood crew. One of the anachronistic trio is a timid, proper 19-year-old girl. This refugee from a more innocent time ends up in a Cardiff dance club where she is nearly seduced by a young man as the randy strains of Groove Armada’s “I See You Baby” (the Fatboy Slim remix) pump up the hormones of everyone in the joint.I love the Armada and the program, so I had to grin. It was a cool track lending its vibe (in an appropriate manner) to a very clever and entertaining series.I’m not always that pleased with the allocation of pre-existing pop music for scoring purposes. I remember my amazement and discomfort when I was a younger fellow watching an NBA game on TV, and I realized that the soundtrack going to commercial break was the instrumental outro from the intoxicating Roxy Music song “Take a Chance With Me.” That’s right. The elegant British art-rockers – and one of their most precious tracks from their most romantic album Avalon - were tapped to add a whiff of sophistication to a typically hyperbolic broadcast of a professional basketball clash.Speaking of clashes, I’ve also heard music by those righteous anti-establishment punks the Clash - specifically “Should I Stay or Should I Go? - used during a couple of televised sports events. In other words, no one is safe from exploitation in the madness and crazed consumer consumption of a technological society – or maybe everyone eventually accedes to the lure of money for catalogue.I’m not talking about the mighty “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols being flogged to every product that needs a sheen of hipness and youth - and being used in advert after advert. You expect that from fame-hungry types like Courtney Taylor and the Dandys. They’re in it for the cash and stardom, so anything goes. And that track continues to rev me up. But oh, the sadness that ripped through me when the late Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” was appropriated to sell Volkswagens. Yes, it turned a bunch of people onto Drake’s music - potential customers who might have sought out his albums after exposure to that one number, and did. Furthermore, I remain a devoted fan of his. Still, it brought the stench of commerce to some of the tenderest, most fragile and lovely sounds of the 20th century.It’s now a given that TV shows and films use familiar and unfamiliar pop and rock music to set a scene or enhance the drama, comedy or romance within. There are many folks who make a very good living by placing songs onto soundtracks – and more power to them. In a case such as the gritty, clever crime thriller “Layer Cake,” I applaud the judicious use of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World,” and the Kylie Minogue/New Order mash-up “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out of My Head.” The choices and context were perfect and potent and satisfying. I guess I just don’t like it when favorite artists and songs with deep emotional connections are used and abused for the sake of business and sales - or to give something an undeserved air of importance or cool.Screw it all. Here’s Groove Armada:
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