Half a century later this is still the oldies set par excellence, a prescient feat all the more astonishing given this curated compilation was merely a decade removed from the pre-Beatles limbo it resurrects.
Only ‘Forrest Gump’ comes as close to fully encapsulating an era, and that time capsule benefits from a wider scope while also suffering space-wise from lengthier tunes. Every song here attended the three-minutes-or-less school of pop thought, as home-taught by justifiable legends, amusing also-rans and a who’s-who of doo-wop — a crash course for the greasers then, a pop primer forevermore. All this unforgettable music (plus a few bits in between from Wolfman Jack) served a bigger supporting role than Candy Clark, Harrison Ford and at least a hundred bonus glimpses of Suzanne Somers in her white Ford Thunderbird combined, adding incalculably to what made George Lucas’s slice-of-life so relatable: its rich realism. This could have been Anytown America at the dawn of the ‘60s, although California natives (like moi) still detect a specific geographic luster. Takes me back further than my corporeal memories ever could. My copy is a repress from 1980, purchased around the time I first saw the flick and instantly fell madly in love with the sha-bop-sha-bop seduction of ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ by the Flamingos — sheer perfection, start to finish. That means mine isn’t a gatefold, and big whoop to that, even if I wouldn’t kick a crisp original out of my collection. Doesn’t matter if one never surfaces; the material, like the movie, has been permanently retained. Along with LA’s once-almighty K-EARTH, I owe this indelible double as much as my mother for enrolling me in a never-ending education.
#SoundtrackSunday 016:
‘American Graffiti’
MCA, 1973
d: George Lucas