This month, the Mental Jukebox revisits the movie soundtracks of the nineties. The music I’m highlighting are some of my personal favorites. In many cases, the movies themselves were huge for me as well. But the focus will still be on the music – as always. Let’s bring on the throwback classics, the grunge, the gangsta rap, and the indie gems. #31DaysOf90sMovieSongs
Movie: The Saint
Few soundtracks have the cohesion felt and heard on The Saint. It took very different artists — Bowie, Moby, Duran Duran, Duncan Sheik, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Luscious Jackson, among others — and somehow miraculously put them all together on the same sonic wavelength. There are a ton of great tracks on the album. But my favorite is still Bowie’s “Dead Man Walking”. Fans have often commented that the eighties were not Bowie’s best years. But it appears that in the nineties, the famed artist had regained his form.
As we’ve seen throughout his career, Bowie evolved with each recording — always changing, but always distinctly Bowie. With “Dead Man Walking”, his music went into hyperdrive. There are a ton of delicious electronic layers to this thing. And while it works marvelously as an electronic symphony, something in me wants to pick out and isolate each individual layer. Each one captures the mood and frenetic pace of the film in its own unique way. One of those layers is a guitar riff that Jimmy Page handed over to Bowie on a platter. Page said: “I've got this riff and I can't do anything with it. Do you want it?” Bowie answered the call.
“And I'm gone through a crack in the past like a dead man walking.”