I was tooling around the city yesterday in my banged-up foreign car when I heard “Stuck in the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel come on the radio. Personally, I can’t hear a note of this song without thinking of two things. The first is how Sheryl Crow stole a good chunk of the tune for “All I Wanna Do.” The second is Michael Madsen dancing around with a straight razor in that diabolical scene from Reservoir Dogs.
So for what’s left of today, and while we wait for Joe Girardi’s Flying Circus to hit town tomorrow, I wanted to throw this out to the masses. What are some songs that you can never hear without instantly thinking of a scene from a movie in which that song appeared?
Here’s a few that I got:
“Somebody’s Baby” by Jackson Browne: A great song, to be sure, but I can’t hear it without seeing Jennifer Jason Leigh getting nailed by Mike Damone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Interesting side note: A buddy of mine is a relative of Robert Romanus, the actor who played Damone. Back in the day, he was able to get a photo of Mr. Romanus holding a sign with my name on it. Didn’t get me laid, but it made for a very cool conversation piece.
“Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta” by the Geto Boys: Any ounce of menace this song might have hoped to maintain was washed away when Mike Judge used it as the soundtrack to Peter Gibbon’s random acts of white-bread rebellion in Office Space. Brilliant stuff.
“Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger: A great song, absolutely ruined for me by the thought of Tom Cruise jumping around sans pants in Risky Business. Although that recent Guitar Hero ad that parodied the scene but cleverly replaced Cruise with Heidi Klum was a significant improvement on the original.
Feel free to add yours in the comments while we prepare to welcome the Headwarmer back to Boston.
