While it doesn't quite cut the edge that it did back in the day, it's not entirely dreckish, but neither is it as dark and brooding as Cohen's original version, either. The album slinks out with Concrete Blonde's darkly slick rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." The song ebbs and flows with Modern A/C serenity, from the shimmering guitar licks to Johnette Napolitano's smooth alto croon.
Yet when put on at home, late in the evening on a Sunday, the disc resonated like a well-compiled, albeit slickly eclectic, mixtape that runs the gamut from vapid pop to ear-splitting neo-metal, and vintage Dr. Granted, I was never much for the sounds of Concrete Blonde, Liquid Jesus or the Cowboy Junkies. But despite the pointed commentary of the film, how does the music hold up? Surprisingly well, all things considered.
Pump up the vallum movie#
Now, some 14 years later, the theme of the movie seems rather apropos, especially given FCC Chairman Powell's crackdown on what he deems inappropriate material floating out over the airwaves and the continued Clear Channelization of both commercial and public radio. At the time it was chock fulluv what seemed like cutting edge soniference, bands ranging from The Pixies to Peter Murphy, Bad Brains, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies, and Soundgarden, most of whom were just rising to mainstream popularity, dotted the soundtrack, instilling the film with a budding sense of uber coolness. Needless to say, the movie struck a definitive chord with me. The film came out in theaters in 1990 and at the time I was still in college and more appropriately a DJ on the college radio station. And while he's a mild mannered, shy dweeb by day, at night he's transformed into Hard Harry, a deviant disc jockey pushing new music and rebellious ideas to his disenfranchised classmates via the illegal airwaves. The late '80s/early '90s King of angst ridden outsiderism himself, Christian Slater, stars as the new kid in school, Mark Hunter. For those too young to remember, Pump Up The Volume was (and still is) the greatest mainstream Hollywood picture ever made about pirate radio. Before I get into the music, however, I should probably touch upon the film, if ever so briefly.
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