My Proposals for a Skriker Soundtrack - Part 1

Do you spend all your time thinking about what you would do if you were able to direct a film of a book you reckon is top? Wouldn't The Skriker make a great film? You must regularly spend spare moments thinking about all the various interpretive processes and directoral decisions you would make were you to be priviledged enough to have the chance to direct a film of The Skriker!

What, you've never heard of it? But its the world's best play! Well, it is if you have an abiding passion for British folklore, are concerned about damage to the environment and/or damage to the brain, aren't too intimidated by wildly ambitious stage directions, love a good stream of consciousness, have a well developed sense of black humour and don't require a happy ending.

Being dead into the play and into music I think I'll start by compiling a soundtrack, I'm going to start with my four favourite songs about damage to the environment. I'll cover songs with a folkloric theme, or ones that just suit the tone of the play with sonic aptness at a later date.

225 – NEW MODEL ARMY
This is top and must be one of my Favourite Songs Ever. I know it must be one of my Favourite Songs Ever because 15-odd years after I first became a fan it still makes my toes open and shut with a bang when it turns up on random shuffle on the iPod. This is in comparison with, say, Catch by the Cure, which I used to love alongside 225, but now makes me cringe in near physical pain. It’s as if someone is rooting around inside the bottom of my spinal column with a flathead screwdriver every time I hear its horrid synthetic violin drone sparking up.

225 is essentially about feeling helpless in the face of rampant consumerism, the rising of corporate culture and exploitation of the environment. Whilst most rock songs about such concerns come across as politically naive, if not openly and preachingly hypocritical, 225 remains passionate whilst being wise enough not to come across as some patronising student radical’s call to revolution. The song sympathises with a young girl struggling to scan in barcodes and operate a till (“I would help her if I only knew how, but these things they are a mystery to me too”), it stresses a love of wild places, and an affront at their despoliation (“even in the freshest mountain air, the jet fighters practise overhead”), and a fear of being monitored by forces beyond your control (“we’ll hope that the corporate ears do not listen lest we find ourselves committing some kind of treason and filed in the tapes without a rhyme without a reason whilst they tell us that its all for our own protection”).

Musically it manages to sound both down-to-earth and spooky, with a long droning keyboard noise ushering the grungy tune in and out of existence. Thanks to the military drumming and squalling guitar riffs it also Rocks, and it Rocks with a northern accent at that.

So I think it’s a prime candidate for inclusion into a Skriker soundtrack. Perhaps it could even play over the closing credits.

MONKEY GONE TO HEAVEN – PIXIES
Another grungy rock song with an environmentalist bent, perhaps the most famous example, is Monkey Gone to Heaven. Like 225 Monkey Gone to Heaven also avoids seeming preachy and naive, but it does so by miring the message in self-effacing humour and poetic obfuscation. It flirts with an environmental message the same way a shy boy flirts with a girl he believes is out of his league. Ha ha ha, I’m not really doing this, if I was really doing this it would be embarrassing wouldn’t it? I’m not doing this really (yes I am).

I’m being a little unfair (after all, obscuring an environmental message within arresting poetry is an accusation that could be levelled at The Skriker as well). The song is great fun and I won’t deny the strength and intent of lyrical imagery in lines like “now there’s a hole in the sky and the ground’s not cold, and if the ground’s not cold everything is going to burn, we’ll take turns, I’ll get mine too”.

Musically it Rocks, and it Rocks with cellos too (which any fan of the Auteurs will tell you is A Good Thing).

It might be a bit light in tone for the play though. If I were going to use it I’d work it into the scene with the American woman in the bar. Black Francis’ accent and the musical style are so recognisably US that it might help forge an association in the viewers’ minds. The scene is also one of the few in which environmental concerns are clearly voiced by a character in the play.

As a bonus there’s the obvious association with fairies in the band name too.



OH LARSON B – BRITISH SEA POWER
Perhaps this jaunty number sounds just as jokey and guilty of avoiding the point as the previous choice, but I think Oh Larson B is far cleverer than that. It strikes me as being more of the “treating a weighty subject with levity” school, which I approve of, rather than being ashamed to openly admit to its intentions, which I'm less impressed by.

For those of you who don’t know Larson B was a swathe of Antarctic ice, some 3250 square kilometres in size, which collapsed in 2002. The break up of the shelf is pointed to as clear evidence of global warming by those who know what they are talking about, and dismissed as irrelevant by those who don’t.

So the song is unusual for being the only eulogy to a swathe of ice I can think of. It has a great sense of bleak humour (is the line “oh Larson B, you can fall on me” a message of support for the broken shelf or, as I prefer to think, a sardonic acknowledgement of where much of our future rainwater is going to come from?) whilst acknowledging the physical awesomeness of something that’s about the size of Wales or Rhode Island (“oh Larson B, desalinate the barren sea”).

Musically it Rocks. It Rocks in a sort of politely reserved manner, but it still Rocks.

Not too sure where or how I’d employ this in a production, it wouldn’t pay to put too much Rock into The Skriker, but I promise I would try.



DON'T ASK ME – PIL
Basically after choosing three songs that seek to avoid preaching or patronising I’m going to plump for one that doesn’t worry about that and seeks to hit the nail on the head, with a sledgehammer. After all if you’re going to try and get through to those who seek to deny that we need to do anything about the changes we are engendering in the sea, soil and atmosphere of the planet on which we live then I don’t think sledgehammers are out of the question. Why not sing at them in an aggressively arresting manner, utilising a tone of voice that engenders a sensation somewhat akin to having an orgasm whilst being forced to chew tinfoil?

“Protecting my planet! You wrap it in plastic! This package is product! Perfected eternal! A crap in cling wrap! I never met yet a Prime Minister or President who tolda da truth yet!”

It Rocks, it Rocks in a weird poppy-but-uncomfortable “I want to listen to it dead loud but don’t want the neighbours to think they live next door to a nutter” way.

Don’t know how I’d use it in a soundtrack exactly, I probably wouldn’t, it would distract too much. Bless it.