I know…many of you will tell me to just shut up and enjoy the show, but I just can't.
Over the weekend, D and I saw Pirate Radio. I enjoyed the show, but I was a little distracted by timeline discrepancies. The movie takes place in 1966 and ends on New Year's Day 1967. This is kind of the important bit.
As it is a story about a radio station, the music plays a very key role in the story. Some of the musical selections seemed a little odd with me. So with some good old fashioned research, I looked up most of the songs that were on the soundtrack of the movie (and prominently displayed). It took me about a half hour to look up these songs to check when they were released. This is what I found.
"All Day and All of the Night" - The Kinks - 1964
"Elenore" - The Turtles - 1968
"Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" - John Fred and His Playboy Band – January 1969
"Dancing in the Street" - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - 1964
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys - 1966
"Ooo Baby Baby" - Smokey Robinson - 1965
"This Guy's in Love with You" - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - 1969
"Crimson and Clover" - Tommy James & The Shondells – November 1968
"Hi Ho Silver Lining" - Jeff Beck – March 1967
"I Can See for Miles" - The Who – October 1967
"With a Girl Like You" - The Troggs - 1966
"The Letter" - The Box Tops – August 1967
"I'm Alive" - The Hollies – May 1965
"Yesterday Man" - Chris Andrews - 1965
"Silence Is Golden" - The Tremeloes - 1964
"The End of the World" - Skeeter Davis - 1962
"Friday on My Mind" - The Easybeats – November 1966
"My Generation" - The Who – October 1965
"I Feel Free" - Cream – December 1966
"The Wind Cries Mary" - Jimi Hendrix – May 1967
"A Whiter Shade of Pale" - Procol Harum – June 1967
"These Arms of Mine" - Otis Redding - 1962
"The Happening" - The Supremes – March 1967
"Sunny Afternoon" - The Kinks – June 1966
"Father and Son" - Cat Stevens – November 1970
"Nights in White Satin" - The Moody Blues – November 1967
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" - Dusty Springfield – March 1966
"Stay with Me, Baby" - Lorraine Ellison – October 1966
"Hang On Sloopy" - The McCoys - 1965
"This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" - The Isley Brothers – January 1966
"So Long, Marianne" – Leonard Cohen – December 1967
A whopping 42% of the songs that I found would not have been available to any radio station on the very last day of the movie. To bring it home another way, it was a higher percentage of songs than people who voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 (40.6%...something else that I found from this research). As we all know, 42 is the answer to everything concerning life, the universe and everything, but this is pretty ridiculous. Yes, this is nitpicky, but the music IS the backbone of the story. Don't you think that the producers could have taken the time to figure this out before they released the movie? Remember, it only took me a half hour, and I'm not one of them smart Hollywood types. I'm just a smart ass from Indiana.
Only one movie a year can screw up the whole time space continuum concept a year, and unfortunately for Pirate Radio, Star Trek already did it in May.
3 comments:
That's pretty ridiculous.
1966 was a great year in music, it's not like someone couldn't find a wealth of tunes to have in the film. This would have been a great opportunity to help introduce people to lesser known songs of the time, but instead the producers got a little lazy.
They may have had some issues with the song rights, which is why we haven't seen a "Wonder Years" DVD set. But really c'mon people.
I'm totally with you on this one.
I totally agree about the song rights. For as much as they had talked about this being the era of the Beatles, there were no songs from the Fab Four.
As for the Wonder Years, I hope that they don’t do the same thing WKRP did by changing out the music for the DVD series (and cable broadcasts). It would be a real shame if they did that. It killed KRP, and there is no way I would buy any of the seasons.
I feel your pain; I have similar complaints about novels and films that have been off on song and album dates--particularly if the story takes place in the eighties. It was the decade I came of age and began to seriously follow music (and pop culture in general), so it was a significant time in my life. I've seen movies set in the mid-80's that don't even bother to be accurate about basic aspects like clothes and hairstyles, and novels set in a particular year that will mention a song or band that wasn't even in the public consciousness at the time. I'm always like, "Dammit, I lived this shit! I was there!" It really irks me when filmmakers and authors don't do their research, especially since the audience for a story that's set in a specific decade tends to be people who were either around at the time, or fans who know a fairly good deal about the film's subject matter.
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