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Pump Up The Volume: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

You ever have one of those days where the most random sh@t just keeps relentlessly popping into your head? You know, old girl friend's phone numbers, previous addresses, forgotten term paper topics, cartoons you loved as a kid, and movies and music that may have made an everlasting impact on you during your formative years? Well, I was having one such quasi-nostalgic moment recently and for some bizarre reason the film Pump Up The Volume sprung into my mind. But it wasn't the film I was yearning for. Instead it was the music imbedded on the soundtrack that had wrapped itself around my fading memory. And the only way to quell the jones was to snag a copy of the album. Thankfully ye olde neighborhood used record shop had a cheap, used copy in stock. I liberated it from them right quick, I might add.
Before I get into the music, however, I should probably touch upon the film, if ever so briefly. For those too young to remember, Pump Up The Volume was (and still is) the greatest mainstream Hollywood picture ever made about pirate radio. The late '80s/early '90s King of angst ridden outsiderism himself, Christian Slater, stars as the new kid in school, Mark Hunter. 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 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. Needless to say, the movie struck a definitive chord with me. So, too, did the soundtrack. 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.

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. But despite the pointed commentary of the film, how does the music hold up? Surprisingly well, all things considered.

Granted, I was never much for the sounds of Concrete Blonde, Liquid Jesus or the Cowboy Junkies. 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. Dre beatology.

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. 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 slickness continues on Ivan Neville's "Why Can't I Fall In Love," which begins the album's short-lived soulful section. Rolling along to an organ fill that sounds suspiciously like the one used on Squeeze's "Black Coffee In Bed," it's a sharply produced, late night love jam. Liquid Jesus delivers a glam rock rendition of Sly & The Family Stone's seminal "Stand." Purely by the books, it's more or less innocuous.

Alternative/Modern rock pioneers The Pixies are served up next, their breakthrough number "Wave of Mutilation [UK Surf]" helping to switch the tone from studio clean to gritty introspection. Peter Murphy lends his serpentine swagger to the mix on "I've Got A Miniature Secret Camera." And then Bad Brains, along with Henry Rollins, literally "Kick Out The Jams." As can be expected, their rendition is rife with squirreling guitars, screamed lyrics, and rapid fire rhythmic breaks.

The much underrated Above The Law drop the appropriately titled "Freedom of Speech," showcasing the bygone era of SoCal gangsta rap. Dropping curse words and graphic innuendo, not to mention First Amendment patter, over a smoothed out Dr. Dre track, A.T.L. show and prove with some serious gangsta lean. The head nodding groove also provides a perfect set up for the next track.

Easily the linchpin of the album, Soundgarden's entry is entitled "Heretic" and lemme tell you, it is beyond seminal. That's right, it is perhaps one of the greatest songs the combo ever committed to tape (next to "Hands All Over," that is). Chris Cornell unleashes an ungodly caterwaul throughout the entirety of the track, which is juiced with thunderstruck rhythms and screaming mimi guitar lickage. In short, it's blisteringly insane. Just imagine music that you could kill kids and small animals to, only reigned back into the realm of acceptable naughty behavior--say pissing on your landlord's front porch in broad daylight--coupled with an unnerving pop schematic tossed in between all the banshee careening and ear-splitting guitars and you've got post-modern metal that is searing beyond belief. And that doesn't even begin to capture the primal goodness of this song.

The music supervisors keep the mood sufficiently gritty by serving Sonic Youth's "Titanium Expose" up next. The swirling miasma of swelter guitars, crunky feedback, and Kim Gordon's rusty alto is a perfect after burn from SG's third degree burn. Surprisingly enough, the Cowboy Junkies inclusion, "Me And The Devil Blues" also fits the bill, taking the album further into the nether realm with smoldering ambiance and amber glow tainted atmospherics. It's a hazy comedown from a speed demon eclipse and it gels well with what has come prior.

The album's finale is something of a head twister, given that it's a "bonus track" available on CD and cassette only (remember, back in 1990 vinyl albums were still a thing of normality). "Tale O' The Twister" returns the album to the slick, studio rock that it began with, bringing the entire endeavor full circle.

Sure, both the film and the soundtrack resonate with a certain amount of nostalgia, especially for anyone who found themselves either in high school or college at the dawn of the '90s. And for that reason, the impact of the album may be lost of some. Case in point, I loaned the disc to a co-worker after talking it up. He'd seen the movie, but didn't really remember the music. He promptly returned the album shortly after listening to it passionately exclaiming "This album contains everything I hated about the late '80s and early '90s music scene." Like I said, there's a nostalgic factor involved, but there's something else. The music from Pump Up The Volume in large part is slick and vapid, capturing a period in American music that's not wholly unlike the malaise we're experiencing right this moment.

But more importantly, the album also flows from start to finish, every song blending into the next as if the music supervisors actually took the time to consider the sequencing, striving for a perfect balance and emotionally logical pacing. The album literally slips in with slickness, builds momentum and then succumbs to entropy, only to be reborn and climax with slickness again. It's a perfect cycle, nostalgia or not, and does what so few popular rock soundtrack ever manage to: it becomes an actual album. For that alone, Pump Up The Volume: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is almost revolutionary in and of itself.

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Sebrina Pilcher

Update: 2024-05-03