On a whim I read through the script for High Fidelity digging for bands I hadn’t heard of. Thought I’d share it with any fellow audiophiles, enjoy.
Carly Simon
Carole King
James Taylor
Cat Stevens
Elton John
Jah Wobble
Glen Glenn
Stereolab
Licorice Comfits
Kraftwerk
Falco
Hasselhoff
“How to Kill a Radio Consultant” by Public Enemy
“Little Latin Lupe Lu” by The Righteous Brothers
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
Deep Purple
“Always and Forever” by the Commodores
Sex Pistols
Jerry Lee Lewis
“Baby, I Love Your Way” by Peter Frampton
“Cruel to Be Kind” by Nick Lowe
Jesus and Mary Chain
The Stranglers
Stiff Little Fingers
“Cats and Dogs” by the Royal Trux
Brian Eno
Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Break Beats
Serge Gainsbourg
Ryuchi Sakamoto
Syd Barrett
“Bright Eyes” by Art Garfunkel
Patsy Cline
Crumblers
Blasters
"Janie Jones” by The Clash
“Motel Matches,” “I Want You,” “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” “Green Shirt” by Elvis Costello
“Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” by Robert Johnson or Nirvana
Silver Jews
“Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las
"Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan and Dean
“Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson
“One Step Beyond” by Madness
“Abraham, Martin, and John” by Dion
“Somebody’s Gonna Die” by Blitz
“Bella Lugosi’s Dead” Bauhaus.
Minor Threat
“Call Me A Liar” by Palace
“Sin City” by the Flying Burrito Brothers
“New Rose,” by The Damned
“Hit It and Quit It” by Funkadelic
“Shipbuilding,” Elvis Costello
“Mystery Train” by Elvis Presley
“Spaced Cowboy” by Sly and the Family Stone
“The Upsetter” by Lee Scratch Perry
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell
“City Baby Attacked by Rats” by GBH’s
“Just Begun” by Jimmy Castor
“Let’s Get it On” by Otis Redding
“Got to Give it Up” by Marvin Gaye
Interesting. A lot of those didn’t end up in the movie, and others that aren’t here did - Belle and Sebastian’s “Seymour Stein” and Katrina and the Waves’s “Walking on Sunshine,” off the top of my head - not to mention other songs that play during the movie but aren’t discussed.
Another one in the movie but not on this list is one of my favorite singers, Edith Frost. In the movie, her song “On Hold” is the one that’s playing in the record store when Marie DeSalle walks in. I was hugely surprised when I heard it in the movie
What about fg… fg… Beethoven? Track one side one of the Fifth Symphony?
“You can’t always get what you want” by the Rolling Stones I guess was left off the list because of it’s association with “The Big Chill.”
Nor Stevie Wonder and the implied Neil Young link (Is it better to burn out than to fade away?)
And who could forget: “I sold my mom’s wheelchair” by the Kinky Wizards?
“The James Gang Rides Again” by The James Gang has a prominent place in the racks (and is also one of the first albums I bought). But if we went to visual references …
but what I want to know is what song is it that John Kusak tells Jack Black–“and now I’m gonna sell some…?” He puts on some music that everyone in the store nodding and bopping to–it’s a great tune and I have never figured out who does it. I like it, too, and would love to get a copy. I can’t make out the name of the song or the band that he says. Any clues?
I assumed this was some editing done by the OP as a favor to the SDMB at large.
**Barry’s Customer: ** Hi, do you have the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You?” It’s for my daughter’s birthday.
**Barry: ** Yea we have it.
**Barry’s Customer: ** Well, can I have it? Barry: No, actually, you can’t. Barry’s Customer: Why not? Barry: God. Do you even know your daughter? There’s no way she likes that song. Oops, is she in a coma?
Bingo. Around the time that the movie came out, there was an article that explained that a lot of the music in the movie reflected the personal tastes of its co-producers/writers (as opposed to executive producers) Cusack, DeVincentis, and Pink. The Beta Band was specifically mentioned as one of those picks; Love (“Little Red Book”) was another one of those. Neither was in the novel.
I bought the soundtrack right when it came out as it had a John Wesley Harding song that was going to be on his (then) forthcoming album. It’s got a lot of songs that aren’t listed in the OP.