When I was at college a few of my friends were really into skating and BMX-ing (as is probably true of every teenager everywhere, regardless of time or place). Tom and Nick were really into both sports and, along with Hugh, we spent a lot of time at Tom's parents' house watching skate and BMX videos. I always found the flatland BMX bits the most fascinating and eventually bought an old BMX from Nick with the intention of learning how to do some of the cool stuff I'd seen. The notion of understanding where my weight was and how to move it wasn't something I'd figure out until I tried snowboarding many years later, so trying out these BMX tricks usually just involved me falling off the bike a lot. I learned one trick and pretty much gave up there.
In one of those videos - and it's important to note that this was the early-2000's, so YouTube wasn't a thing; these were actual videos - there was a section of someone BMX-ing to Cry Little Sister from the film The Lost Boys. It was nothing like the music I was listening to at the time, but I was crazy into it. That choir! It was perfect. The song is dark and brooding and the layering of the vocals is brilliant. The organ adds to the gothic feel along with all the reverb on the vocals. I know nothing about Gerald McMann, but he had a stroke of genius with this song at least. I can't remember anything about the BMX video but setting anything to this music is a bold move, especially something that is so commonly soundtracked by shitty punk bands, so fair play to them.
I can't remember the order of events - I'd either seen the film before seeing that BMX video or I hadn't. I think I hadn't, so must have looked up the song from the closing credits, researched it on the internet and seen it was from the soundtrack (I'm reluctant to use the verb "google" because at this point in time it probably would have been Yahoo search or even Ask Jeeves - reminiscing about the early days of the internet makes me feel like a grandad). I've watched the movie a good handful of time over the years, and it's a great vampire movie but I certainly don't consider it one of my all time favourite movies. I imagine it's riding the wave of 80's nostalgia really well though - the second song here Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Boys) wouldn't sound out of place in a montage in Stranger Things.
I've just been reading about the soundtrack on Wikipedia and never released how many of these songs were covers - mostly because the originals and people playing them here are largely unknown to me (Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me being an obvious exception, here recorded by Roger Daltrey, who I feel like I should know was in The Who, but they're just not a band I care enough about to store these things away in my mind. My initial thought was a strange mix of James Bonds: Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. That's not who he is). The feeling isn't consistently "incredibly 80's", in fact Good Times is really upbeat and ends quite far away from a typical 80's sound. The Echo and the Bunnymen cover of People Are Strange doesn't try anything similar.
Every song that appears after Cry Little Sister just makes me wish I was still listening to Cry Little Sister. I've not played this album a huge amount over the years, but it's always a waiting game until that song, then a case of letting side-B play out pretty much out of pity that the songs aren't as memorable or interesting; almost like it's rude to just play the song I want to hear and skip the rest (in case you needed any more clues that I'm not embracing the Spotify-generation). I Still Believe by Tim Cappello has something going for it; it reminds me of Talk Talk a bit, which, having just googled who Tim Cappello is, is probably pretty offensive to Talk Talk.
Anyway, a few years later on Christmas Eve as we headed out for the tradition of getting Christmas-ruiningly-drunk back in Winchester, Hugh gave me this copy of The Lost Boys soundtrack that he'd found in a charity shop that day. It was an unexpected gift, and I appreciated the thought. It was something of a pain carry it around the rest of the evening, but I managed to avoid it getting covered in drinks and it's mostly still in the condition I was given it in. It doesn't get much play, so I'm just going to listen to Cry Little Sister one more time before I put it back away...
Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: Free second hand
Bought: Gift
When: 24/12/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none
