80s nostalgia: Sid and Nancy
I ran across a recently-written review of Sid and Nancy today, and I just thought I would link to it, since some of you who read this blog actually accompanied me to see Sid and Nancy in the movie theater back in 1986. http://thisrecording.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/in-which-we-are-haunted-by-the-ghost-of-your-precious-love/ It was the first time I saw Gary Oldman or Chloe Webb in anything, and I remember being so impressed with them both.
(I know very well that I have posted about Sid and Nancy somewhere in the past, but I can't find it now. I apologize. Here it all is again, and clearly I am experiencing a wee bit of early-onset senility.)
That link title quotes my favorite song off the movie soundtrack, Haunted, by the Pogues. What a great soundtrack that was. I had that soundtrack on vinyl, and I am still pissed that it vanished from my mom's storage space (I have a pretty good suspicion who was responsible for that, and it wasn't my mom). I bought the soundtrack immediately after seeing the movie, because I loved the movie so much, and I loved the music. I was just starting to dare to experiment with edgier music, and the Sid and Nancy soundtrack was a perfect complement to the cassette of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks that I had bought in Austin, feeling very grown-up and daring indeed, while I was visiting UT on a brief summer honors program the summer before my senior year of high school. I remember so clearly, I bought Never Mind the Bollocks at Sound Exchange on Guadalupe, directly across the street from the UT campus. I don't think I had ever been in a used record store before, and it was a revelation. It was small and dingy and crammed with used tapes and records. I don't think I realized right up until that moment that there were places where people exchanged used tapes for other tapes, and you could pick up a used tape that someone else didn't want, for cheap. Revolutionary! Yeah, I wasn't the hippest kid in my class. I also didn't live in a hip city, so cut me a break here.
But San Antonio was hip enough to have a single arthouse-type theatre that was showing Sid and Nancy, and so I got to see it. That movie affected me. It planted the seed of wanting to go to New York someday. It started me on a long musical road upon which I discovered, say it with me, I like the moody ones, and also, I like the punky ones. I was going to school in my cute silver heart-shaped jewelry and Student Council button-down, and then coming home and listening to Sid and Nancy, and it occurs to me that I have never really broken that pattern. Still leading that double life to this very day.
Anyway. I may need to rent Sid and Nancy again sometime soon. I am sure I won't find it nearly as cool as I did when I was sixteen, but I would like to see it again for old times' sake. And goodness knows, I need to download that soundtrack. My cassette tape that I made of the vinyl album (that was what you did in 1986, you bought vinyl and then made a tape and then you had TWO copies of the album, one of inferior sound quality but easily portable) is somewhere around, but does me no good in my car or at work.
I wonder if Sound Exchange is still there? It was a major part of my college experience. I'm sad to think it might have closed.
(I know very well that I have posted about Sid and Nancy somewhere in the past, but I can't find it now. I apologize. Here it all is again, and clearly I am experiencing a wee bit of early-onset senility.)
That link title quotes my favorite song off the movie soundtrack, Haunted, by the Pogues. What a great soundtrack that was. I had that soundtrack on vinyl, and I am still pissed that it vanished from my mom's storage space (I have a pretty good suspicion who was responsible for that, and it wasn't my mom). I bought the soundtrack immediately after seeing the movie, because I loved the movie so much, and I loved the music. I was just starting to dare to experiment with edgier music, and the Sid and Nancy soundtrack was a perfect complement to the cassette of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks that I had bought in Austin, feeling very grown-up and daring indeed, while I was visiting UT on a brief summer honors program the summer before my senior year of high school. I remember so clearly, I bought Never Mind the Bollocks at Sound Exchange on Guadalupe, directly across the street from the UT campus. I don't think I had ever been in a used record store before, and it was a revelation. It was small and dingy and crammed with used tapes and records. I don't think I realized right up until that moment that there were places where people exchanged used tapes for other tapes, and you could pick up a used tape that someone else didn't want, for cheap. Revolutionary! Yeah, I wasn't the hippest kid in my class. I also didn't live in a hip city, so cut me a break here.
But San Antonio was hip enough to have a single arthouse-type theatre that was showing Sid and Nancy, and so I got to see it. That movie affected me. It planted the seed of wanting to go to New York someday. It started me on a long musical road upon which I discovered, say it with me, I like the moody ones, and also, I like the punky ones. I was going to school in my cute silver heart-shaped jewelry and Student Council button-down, and then coming home and listening to Sid and Nancy, and it occurs to me that I have never really broken that pattern. Still leading that double life to this very day.
Anyway. I may need to rent Sid and Nancy again sometime soon. I am sure I won't find it nearly as cool as I did when I was sixteen, but I would like to see it again for old times' sake. And goodness knows, I need to download that soundtrack. My cassette tape that I made of the vinyl album (that was what you did in 1986, you bought vinyl and then made a tape and then you had TWO copies of the album, one of inferior sound quality but easily portable) is somewhere around, but does me no good in my car or at work.
I wonder if Sound Exchange is still there? It was a major part of my college experience. I'm sad to think it might have closed.