DAZED AND CONFUSED - Various Artists

YEAR: 1993

LABEL: The Medicine Label

TRACK LISTING: Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Rick Derringer, Slow Ride - Foghat, School's Out - Alice Cooper, Jim Dandy - Black Oak Arkansas, Tush - ZZ Top, Love Hurts - Nazareth, Stranglehold - Ted Nugent, Cherry Bomb - The Runaways, Fox on the Run - Sweet, Low Rider - War, Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Highway Star - Deep Purple, Rock and Roll All Night - Kiss, Paranoid - Black Sabbath, Free Ride - The Edgar Winter Group, No More Mr. Nice Guy - Alice Cooper, Living in the U.S.A. - The Steve Miller Band, Never Been Any Reason - Head East, Why Can't We Be Friends - War, Summer Breeze - Seals & Crofts, Right Place Wrong Time - Dr. John, Balinese - ZZ Top, Lord Have Mercy On My Soul - Black Oak Arkansas, I Just Want To Make Love To You - Foghat, Show Me the Way - Peter Frampton, Do You Feel Like We Do - Peter Frampton

IMPRESSIONS: The movie depicts the last day of school in 1976 and, for those of us of a certain age, is stuffed full of nostalgia. Even though I'm too young even to have been one of the youngest of the junior high school students shown (I would only have been in 5th grade at the time), it still looks veeeeeeeeery familiar to me and what it was like back then. The soundtrack fits the time and feel of the film perfectly and, unlike most films which plug popular songs into them to merely exploit nostalgic recognition, every song in the film derives from the action itself and has an internal source because the kids are listening to them on their car radios, at their hangouts or elsewhere. Even when there isn't a direct source for the music (such as at the baseball field, for instance), one can rationalise quite easily that someone's got their puke-coloured Camaro parked just outside the camera's viewpoint with the motor running and the car door open.

MY FAVOURITE TRACKS: Slow Ride - Foghat, School's Out - Alice Cooper, Stranglehold - Ted Nugent, Fox On the Run - Sweet, Low Rider - War, Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Highway Star - Deep Purple, Paranoid - Black Sabbath, Free Ride - The Edgar Winter Group, Living in the U.S.A. - The Steve Miller Band, Why Can't We Be Friends - War, Summer Breeze - Seals & Crofts

FACT SHEET: DAZED AND CONFUSED is Richard Linklater's second film as director. The soundtrack album was actually released as two cds with the second being entitled "EVEN MORE DAZED AND CONFUSED" but here I treat them as one soundtrack album cuz they are, ya dig? The name of the film is taken from the Jake Holmes song covered most famously by Led Zeppelin. Linklater asked the surviving members of Zep for permission to use the song in his film but while Jimmy Page said yes Robert Plant said no. When first released in 1993, the film only grossed less than $8 million but since then it has grown to become a huge cult film on video. Quentin Tarantino has placed it on his list of 10 greatest films of all time in a 2002 "Sight and Sound" article.