Soundtracks of our lives: "Clueless" (1995).

At a glance, it might seem like Clueless hasn't aged well. A retelling of Jane Austen's Emma, it reads like a sympathetic portrait of the super-rich, designed to show that their wealth doesn't insulate them from the trials and tribulations of the human heart. But Clueless is much more than clunky propaganda, and its glib appearance is part of the film's design. 

It's a smart, satirical, and devastatingly sweet movie, wrapped in a tartan miniskirt. It's a film about appearances, and the deception they work on us: the film repeatedly finds people writing Cher off as a clueless, privileged airhead—but she turns out to be much smarter, more caring, and more genuine than people give her credit for.

It's about the push-and-pull between style and substance, and finding value in bringing people together instead of stepping on them to get what you want. It's about realizing that the image of happiness can be dramatically different from the genuine article. It's about recognizing that the map is not the terrain—as Paul Rudd's Josh might describe it, quoting ostentatiously from one of his assigned readings.

Revolution is just a T-shirt away.

In a weird way, it reminds me of The Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris' epoch-making documentary about LA punk. Featuring performances from bands like The Germs, X, Fear, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and those other ones you don't remember, Spheeris' pic seems to offer exactly what it says on the tin: a portrait of civilization unraveling, abetted by the bloodlust of a crowd of psychotic teenagers. (That's certainly what LAPD Chief Daryl Gates saw, since he typically responded to Black Flag with a phalanx of armored riot cops.)

But as anyone who's seen it knows, there's more to Decline than that. Despite the violent nihilism of figures like "Mike the Marine" ("X-Head" in the below clip), Spheeris paints a portrait of a group of people who are deeply invested in the creation of a culture they can call their own.


"Where's your sense of pit hospitality?"
Both films were also directed by women. Spheeris and Clueless director Amy Heckerling were part of a group of breakout female directors that emerged in the 1980s, along with Penny Marshall (Big) and Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty). While Spheeris was finishing Decline, Heckerling was making Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a depiction of kids in America from outside the bubble of punk's avant-garde. It's new wave at the food court, rather than hardcore at Oki Dog—but it's still not too hard to imagine Spiccoli as a Decline interview subject.

Ironically, the Fast Times soundtrack (which featured artists like Don Henley and Jimmy Buffett) ended up pretty far from what Heckerling originally imagined:

I guess a lot of people like that stuff, but being young as I was at the time, I really wanted a new edgy eighties music soundtrack. I wanted Fear, Oingo Boingo, The Go-Gos, The Talking Heads, and the Dead Kennedys. I was one of those obnoxious teenagers that thought that the music I liked was great and everything else sucked. Getting that Oingo Boingo song in the film was a big fight. But I had to make some compromises and put in some songs that I didn't like at all.

Just think: instead of Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby", Stacy could have lost her virginity to the strains of "Beef Bologna".

The guiding theme for the Clueless soundtrack is a marriage between the new wave of Heckerling's youth and the alternative nation that the film was released to. The friction between artifice and authenticity, upmarket and thrift store, etc. is woven through the soundtrack as well as the film; the meticulously couture'd Cher still isn't too cool to go see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones in a warehouse.

The transformation of history into a series of stylistic pastiches is one of the trademarks of postmodernism, and since new wave was all about decontextualized stylistic gestures, Clueless is actually the ultimate '80s new wave movie—despite being released in 1995, deep in the grunge era. ("I don't want to be a traitor to my generation and all...") But this is also a bit of sleight-of-hand, since the film's message is pure flannel: think globally act locally, mean people suck, come as you are.

Stylistically, the soundtrack is kind of all over the map, from electronic beats to weepy acoustic ballads to spiky pop-punk. But it makes sense, as this phenomenal piece by Elizabeth Sankey argues, because many of the songs also work as themes for the individual characters.

"Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend?" 
(Emma, Volume I, Chapter V.)

Thus Amber—Cher's catwalk frenemy and full-on Monet—gets The Muffs' take on Kim Wilde's all-surface "Kids in America", while Cher herself gets Cracker's version of the Flamin Groovies' "Shake Some Action", because she's cooler and more reflective, and lots of hip people listen to her.

The musical turtleneck of Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"? That's Josh, all the way. The Beastie Boys' "Mullet Head"? That's chronically tardy skater boy Travis Birkenstock. (I totally forgot his last name was Birkenstock until I watched it again, it's a nice touch.) That one is apparently a B-side from Check Your Head, but it sounds very much like the pre-rap, NYHC version of the Beastie Boys—again, you get the present gesturing with the past.

Elton doesn't get a theme song, because he left his Cranberries CD in the quad.

I like to think that World Party's "All The Young Dudes" (originally by Mott the Hoople, written by David Bowie) is the anthem of Ms. Geist, Cher's impassioned English teacher; it was what she listened to during her wild, younger days. And the Smoking Popes' "Need You Around" feels like Mr. Hall to me, because he's also good-natured and old-fashioned, and their singer is sort of the Wallace Shawn of pop-punk—endearing bald guy with a one-of-a-kind voice.

Fun and relevant fact: Twink Caplan, the actress who plays Ms. Geist, appeared in an episode of Who's the Boss (and one where Samantha goes to see the Beastie Boys, no less) that also features Lee Ving.

(In case you don't know, Lee Ving was the singer from Fear, the band who closed out The Decline of Western Civilization. He also appeared in Flashdance and Clue!)

Possible future post: "punk" episodes of '80s sitcoms.

Of course, there's not a 1-1 correspondence for songs and characters. Some of them are just killer jams, like The Lightning Seeds' "Change" or Supergrass' "Alright", two Britpop gems that are too often overlooked (although "Alright" turns up in commercials now and again). 

Perhaps best of all is the effervescent bubblegum of Jill Sobule's "Supermodel"—which, as Sankey notes, accompanies one of the finest makeover montages you'll ever see. The song's actually a pretty biting satire, a la Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl", but Heckerling knows this, and is foreshadowing Cher and Tai's realizations later in the film.

Clueless also came out just as ska-punk was poised to take over the airwaves (it hit theaters three months before the release of No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom), and appropriately the film features a cameo by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Their two contributions, "Where'd You Go?" and "Someday I Suppose" (not on the disc, but in the movie), are excellent songs, and they honestly feel a lot less dated than most of the limp indie rock from this era that nerds still salivate over.

The ska revival has long provided an easy target for snobs, but compared to modern fads like grad student black metal, the Bosstones feel bracingly sincere and charming—even with (or especially because of) the dancing guy.

"One man's style must not be the rule of another's." 

(Emma, Volume III, Chapter XV.)

There are some other pretty clutch songs in the movie that didn't make it to the CD. The most obvious is No Doubt's "Just a Girl", which could easily serve as a manifesto for the whole film. But the biggest omission is "Tenderness", the sparkling General Public single that plays over the final scene at Ms. Geist's wedding. Tellingly, "Tenderness" also appeared in some of Clueless' brat pack forerunners like Weird Science and Sixteen Candles (which also ends with a wedding).

But good news: here's a Spotify playlist of the soundtrack that I made for you, with those three missing songs added back in. Accept no substitutes! ("No shit, you guys got Coke here?" "Yeah, this is America.")



It's not quite as sterling a listen as Angus—the Luscious Jackson tune feels really out of place, and I'd definitely scrap that stupid fucking Radiohead song, Josh be damned. But it's still a quality collection of tunes that's worth revisiting...and hopefully not just sporadically.

Soundtracks of our lives: "Angus".

"Girls want guys who are dangerous. Have tattoos, play the guitar."

For a brief window in my youth, ice skating became the cool thing to do. Kid would lace up their skates, hit the ice, and try to "spray" by stopping suddenly and creating a blast of ice chips, a technique familiar to seasoned hockey players everywhere.

At the rink by my house, they would play music as we endlessly circled the ice. This was 1995, so you could expect to hear "Gangsta's Paradise", "Fantasy", and that U2 song from the Batman movie in an endless loop. (After listening to that Mariah Carey song for the first time in about 15 years, I have to say: what a sick fucking jam.)

The video—which features Mariah kicking back at an amusement park full of menacing clowns and overweight children—is also impossibly bizarre by modern pop standards.

But one day I heard something that stopped me in my skates.  It rocked harder than any of the Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins songs I was accustomed to, but it had a wistful edge that left me feeling all nostalgic and reflective even though nothing had happened to me yet. It was "J.A.R." by Green Day, their contribution to the Angus soundtrack.

Green Day had broken through into mainstream popularity a year earlier with Dookie, and I think by that point I was already acquainted with "Basket Case" and "When I Come Around" from the radio—but "J.A.R." grabbed me in a way that nothing else had. It was pretty much the best thing I'd ever heard.

To be fair, the competition at that point was not particularly intense:

When I heard this song on the radio I didn't realize he was talking about the Miami Dolphins, and I thought Hootie just meant that the eerie majesty of dolphins reduced him to a state of infantile wonder. This is still how I choose to interpret it.

That year I received the Angus soundtrack as a birthday present, and found that it featured numerous other gems—and pretty soon I had a copy of Dookie, which led to ...And Out Come the Wolves, which led to Minor Threat, etc. Before long, I was arguing about The Locust and collecting Japanese hardcore records.

You know times have changed when someone's arguing that The Locust are the real deal and some other band is "gay hipster bullshit".

When I was in college, I revisited Angus, with some trepidation. Having long since lost or sold my copy, I picked one up at Amoeba in Los Angeles and hit the 101 to the familiar strains of "J.A.R." But I was afraid that the seminal album of my childhood would have lost some of its luster for me—like the pizzeria you loved as a kid, but revisit as an adult to discover that the pie tastes like cardboard and tire and you really only liked it because they had Street Fighter II.

It turns out that I was totally wrong; if anything, it sounds even better to me now, like the girl next door who grows up to be a total knockout.

Somehow this still makes me feel kind of skeezy, even though I'm only like a month older than her.

To my jaded ears, Angus is as good a compilation as any released in the '90s, and a manifesto for the artistic validity of a style—pop-punk—viewed with disdain by most scenesters. (Very little has changed, other than that nobody uses the word "scenester" anymore.) 

The lineup is a delicate balance of mainstream alternative rock and underground legitimacy, as bands like Weezer and Love Spit Love rub elbows with Lookout luminaries like Pansy Division and the Riverdales.

They didn't use this Pansy Division song, though.

Everybody brings their A game too. Pansy Division's "Deep Water" is an unusually moving song from a band known for their cheeky sense of humor (see above), while Weezer's "You Gave Your Love To Me Softly" is the bridge between the blue album's sunny power-pop and the murky Japanophilia of Pinkerton. (The analog synth also foreshadows the Get Up Kids and their fellow travelers).

And then there's Ash, the only band to contribute more than one song. They epitomize the record's balance of pop-punk and more mainstream alternative: "Jack Names the Planets" is a quintessential piece of '90s slack pop (complete with movie tie-in video featuring bedroom moshing and singing band posters), but "Kung Fu" could practically be a Teenage Bottlerocket song.

I wish you'd come back; everything's ready for you.

And the song that at first seems the most out of place actually turns out to be one of the best on the entire record. "Ain't That Unusual", a deep cut from the Goo Goo Dolls album A Boy Named Goo, is basically the best Replacements song never written, complete with title and lyrics so redolent of Paul Westerberg they should be wearing sunglasses and swearing on live TV.

The album closes out with Love Spit Love's gorgeous ballad "Am I Wrong?", which is used in the movie's opening, with the marching band nicely integrated into the tune. (Notably absent is Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You", which plays when Angus and Melissa dance; it's a very pretty and apropos song, but one that admittedly wouldn't have fit into the album very well. This isn't the Joyride soundtrack.)

This is what high school was like, in my mind.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But for me, Angus is one of the quintessential '90s albums and honestly one of my favorite records of all time. In two years, Angus will be 20 years old(!), and I can't think of a more appropriate comment than what Angus says to the jock bully Rick (James Van Der Beek, in the role he was born to play) at the film's climax:

"I'm still here asshole. I'll always be here."