Love letter
Jan. 10th, 2008 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
constanceLast night I read a pre-S3 con interview with Eric Kripke where he mentions that WB nixed his ideas for a Supernatural soundtrack, and that made me a little wistful. I have a residual fondness, thanks to the Dazed-and-Confused boys I spent my early teen years hanging out with, for the particular brand of classic pop-metal/prog rock that the show likes best, and almost every song featured on SPN gives me a little jolt of pleasure. It's not music I ever thought to collect, for the most part, but it's music that takes me to a particular place and time, and it thrills me every time I hear the opening bars of a song, which, thanks to those aforementioned boys, I can usually identify in five notes or less. It's not music I ever thought to collect, as I say, but I'm collecting it now.
(It just makes me sad that Led Zeppelin's members are so famously stingy about handing out usage permissions, because you know Dean is a huge, huge fan, and one surely feels the lack of Zeppelin on the show. Ditto Van Halen, though I didn't know that Van Halen was careful about such things. Being only the casualest of Van Halen listeners.)
I don't really need a soundtrack, though. I have a 24/7 soundtrack available to me, in the form of a radio station that plays what I used to call test-rock (as in testosterone-rock), but have now come to think of as SPN Rock. Dean would fucking love this radio station, man. I'm not kidding about this. I have this story in mind that I wish someone would write, where they come to Macon and Dean lets Sam finish the job himself while he sits holed up in a motel near where I work, the skanky one which reportedly hosts a number of convicted sex offenders, and feverishly makes new mix tapes using a twenty-year-old boom box he bought at the Salvation Army. Finding the streaming station on the internet, as they travel to other places, just to connect himself with like-minded folk.
It's a story for a very specific audience, I know, but what I'm saying is that now when I listen to the radio, I'm listening with Dean's ear. ZZ Top? Check. Jethro Tull? Maybe a little artsy-fartsy. Judas Priest? Hell yeah. Aerosmith? Steven Tyler's more for the chicks, but hey, who doesn't groove to "Walk This Way?" The scale moves backward (Dean's more of a Rolling Stones Dude than a Beatles Dude), and forward (Tool, did you say? Hmmmm.) in time, but I like to picture Dean listening to the same playlists I'm listening to, with his ear bent close to the speakers, eyes closed, smiling, head bobbing old-school style, an involuntarily function like breathing or a heartbeat.
(It just makes me sad that Led Zeppelin's members are so famously stingy about handing out usage permissions, because you know Dean is a huge, huge fan, and one surely feels the lack of Zeppelin on the show. Ditto Van Halen, though I didn't know that Van Halen was careful about such things. Being only the casualest of Van Halen listeners.)
I don't really need a soundtrack, though. I have a 24/7 soundtrack available to me, in the form of a radio station that plays what I used to call test-rock (as in testosterone-rock), but have now come to think of as SPN Rock. Dean would fucking love this radio station, man. I'm not kidding about this. I have this story in mind that I wish someone would write, where they come to Macon and Dean lets Sam finish the job himself while he sits holed up in a motel near where I work, the skanky one which reportedly hosts a number of convicted sex offenders, and feverishly makes new mix tapes using a twenty-year-old boom box he bought at the Salvation Army. Finding the streaming station on the internet, as they travel to other places, just to connect himself with like-minded folk.
It's a story for a very specific audience, I know, but what I'm saying is that now when I listen to the radio, I'm listening with Dean's ear. ZZ Top? Check. Jethro Tull? Maybe a little artsy-fartsy. Judas Priest? Hell yeah. Aerosmith? Steven Tyler's more for the chicks, but hey, who doesn't groove to "Walk This Way?" The scale moves backward (Dean's more of a Rolling Stones Dude than a Beatles Dude), and forward (Tool, did you say? Hmmmm.) in time, but I like to picture Dean listening to the same playlists I'm listening to, with his ear bent close to the speakers, eyes closed, smiling, head bobbing old-school style, an involuntarily function like breathing or a heartbeat.
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Date: 2008-01-10 07:34 pm (UTC)feverishly makes new mix tapes using a twenty-year-old boom box he bought at the Salvation Army OMG, this is how my cousin used to make me mix tapes- he'd hold it up to his turntable and record songs onto it. Such deliciously bad sound quality!
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Date: 2008-01-10 09:21 pm (UTC)Oh, I adore Dean, who is an amalgam of every boy I knew in grades 6-9. Only, you know, supercute and also completely legal. :D
Let's see, glancing quickly through the show's playlist (http://fan.cha-otical.net/spnmusic/), I came up with two lists of favorites for you, in no particular order.
Top Five Best Uses of Music on the Show
"Time Has Come Today" by The Chambers Brothers
"Renegade" by Styx
"Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston
"Bad Company" by Bad Company
"I Shall Not Be Moved" by Johnny Cash
Top Five Personal Favorites
"Fell On Black Days" by Soundgarden
"Down In The Street" by The Stooges
"Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult
"Laugh, I Nearly Died" by The Rolling Stones
"All Right Now" by Free
:::
And the boom box I had in mind was one that sat in the LSU Union Craft Center, where I worked for a couple of years. It recorded straight from radio, or tape-to-tape, and we used it to record each other's tapes, but it also recorded outside sound, too, so that over, say, Pianosaurus, you also heard voices talking about signmaking or our boss or some such. I can totally picture Dean listening to radio-recorded Foghat or whatever with him and his brother talking or arguing in the background, and listening to those conversations and arguments forever.
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Date: 2008-01-13 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-13 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 03:50 pm (UTC)*hugs back, just because*
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Date: 2008-01-15 11:43 am (UTC)I'm trying to think if there are any other examples of Dean playing inappropriate music because those scenes really makes me laugh.