Far Out There: Character Soundtracks - Bridget

Okay, so if the previous Character Soundtrack was too gentle and boring for you, fear not, ‘cos this one is ALL RAWK. We did Alphonse last time, which of course means that now it’s Bridget’s turn! And let’s get it out of the way right off the bat: with the way Bridget idolizes her momma, I could have easily just had Bridget listen to the exact same music as Tabitha and called it a day. But that’d be really boring… and worse, it’d be something I could do quickly and without much effort, so of COURSE I can’t allow myself to do that. No, Bridget has to have a whole separate soundtrack to herself, and I have to spend extra time working on it and everything has to get drawn out and be behind schedule and THAT’S JUST HOW THINGS ARE WHENEVER I DO ANYTHING WHAT EVEN IS MY LIVE AAAAAAUUUUGH. …okay, that got a little off topic. Let’s start over.

As much as Bridget may love to copy Bridget’s taste in boots and arm socks, they ARE pretty different. Bridget is a lot more aggressive and impatient and straightforward than her Mom, so I just can’t picture her sitting still for a stoner metal bass solo. Bridget’s music of choice would need to be a lot faster, a lot shorter and to the point, a lot more AGGRESSIVE. Right from the start, I knew Bridget would need to be a fan of Punk… which immediately presented a problem, since that’s another genre I don’t listen to a whole lot. Heck, I’m listening to 80s jazz fusion as I write this, that’s how much of spiky-haired anarchist punk I am. So Bridget’s soundtrack was one of the more scattershot ones for a while, as I basically just threw every particularly aggressive song on my iPod at it, regardless of whether or not the songs actually flowed into one another or not. Then one day, like a hairy, smoky-smelling, leather-clad angel descending from the big biker bar in the sky, it hit me. The common thread this playlist needed to bring itself into focus, the one band that encapsulated everything Bridget would conceivably enjoy listening to. The one, the only, Bridget’s official favorite band: Motörhead.

Honestly, for all that build up, there isn’t THAT much Motörhead on the final playlist, just three songs: “Heart of Stone,” “Dead Men Tell No Tales,” and of course “Ace of Spades.” (plus an addendum  that I’ll bring up later) But that’s only after the final round of editing that happened once this template had been set. At one point, there was a TON of Motörhead songs on this list… most of which I’ve managed to forget by now. (though I know for sure sure “Fire, Fire” was one of them) Once that all-important too-punk-to-be-metal, too-metal-to-be-punk tone had been set, I could finally start adding songs with some sense of purpose.   Actually, The Stooges could make as much of a claim to being the “heart” of Bridget’s playlist, since they have the same number of tracks on here. Then again, I should say “Iggy & The Stooges” since all three of those tracks are from Raw Power: “Search & Destroy,” “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Tale,” and the eponymous “Raw Power.” It really captured that same sense of punk-esque speed and simplicity, but with metal’s swagger and meatiness. That was the problem I had with a lot of the more “traditional” punk songs I’d thrown at this playlist in the past, a lot of that stuff is too nervy and thin-sounding for me to buy Bridget listening to it (I tried the hardest to squeeze in “California Über Alles” by The Dead Kennedys but it just never fit for that reason). As much as I’m throwing the word around here, most of the songs I’m referring to as “Punk” here would more properly be categorized as “Protopunk.” There’s precious little connection to the specific subculture that began in the late 70s, instead hearkening back to the same primordial ooze where the music now known as Metal once dwelled. Case in point, Bridget’s playlist also boasts both tracks off the only single by cult French group Soggy, and while B-side “47 Chromosomes” is a recognizable, if sludgy, version of what most most people think of when they hear the word “Punk,” A-side “Waiting For The War” is so metal that you could easily slip it into a New Wave Of British Heavy Metal compilation an d no one would bat an eye.

Which sort of brings us back around to what I was saying at the beginning. I couldn’t picture Bridget listening to the kind of stoner metal Tabitha likes since it’s too slow, but a lot of the faster breeds of metal didn’t seem to fit either since a lot of it feels too clean and technical. Bridget would want speed and aggression, yes, but also something crude enough to be performed with a blood alcohol level that’s clinically fatal. So in swoops Motörhead to save the day once again (now THERE’S a mental image), capable of being incredibly fast while still feeling boozy and lose. The Motörhead connection provided a smooth transition to a lot of early Thrash and NWOBHM that never would have flowed naturally otherwise, even though the distinctions between NWOBHM and Punk are pretty minimal in a lot of places. The final draft of this playlist contains three full-on Metal songs outside of the Motörhead selections: “Night Danger” by Dutch stalwarts Pretty Maids, “The New Age Of Warfare” by, um, Warfare, and “Whiplash” by an obscure little go-nowhere band you’ve probably never heard of called Metallica. All great examples of the kind of muscular aggression Bridget would like to hear, yet all stuff that never would have fit in with the punkier stuff on the playlist without Lemmy & co. to serve as the through line.

But yeah, the Punk stuff still makes up the bulk of Bridget’s playlist, even if most of it is either a heavier precursor or, in the case of several of these, a latter day, White Stripes-era revisionist retro garage whatever type thing. Obviously, I need to find a way to squeeze at least one Japanese band onto the list, too, so Thee Michelle Gun Elephant represents both with “G.W.D.” Also Japanese, and representing the SPIRIT of that retro/nouveau/revivalist garage band movement if predating it a bit, is Guitar Wolf with “Wild Zero” and “Jet Generation.” I even threw in “Whatcha Doin” by The Go, which actually featured a pre-White Stripes Jack White at that point. While Bridget definitely wouldn’t have much use for the artier side of the Garage Revival (no Strokes for this girl) she’d probably like the Stooge-ier side of the scene just as much as its pre-punk inspirations. In fact, the only song here to be “Punk” as most people think of it is “We Are 138” by The Misfits… which is admittedly not the most obvious choice if you’re only going to pick one song by Danzig & friends. Aside from the fact that it just happened to be a really good transitional track between “The New Age Of Warfare” and “Whatcha Doin,” I also have this funny mental image of Tabitha not allowing Bridget to put “Where Eagles Dare” on her playlist because it has too much cursing. That makes less and less sense the more you think about it, but I still think it’s a cute idea.

And finally, there’s the opening and closing selections, which deserve special mention. The first track, and one of the few tracks to actually have stuck around since the first draft of Bridget’s playlist, is “M1 A1” by Gorillaz. The main body of the song is nice enough (even if it’s pretty obvious that Damon Albarn is just re-writing “Song 2” again) but the main attraction here is the lengthy opening sample from Day of the Dead. I’ve always thought that amazing, suspenseful slow-build is wasted at its spot at the end of Gorillaz, the song is a born opener. What’s more, though, I just love the thought of a zombie child getting all pumped up listening to the soundtrack of a film where humanity is overrun by the undead. It really celebrates Bridget’s ancestral heritage.

Last of all, the final track, which… okay, the odds that anyone reading this will be really diehard Lemmy fan are slim to nil, but I still feel the need to apologize for what I did with the final track. The last song on Bridget’s soundtrack is “Motorhead” by Hawkwind, and yes, there is a connection. Hawkwind was the band Lemmy was in before Motörhead, and the song of the same name was the last thing he recorded with them before they fired him, hence him reusing the name for his new band. The thing is, I’m not using the version recorded with Lemmy here, but a later version on which Hawkwind overlord Dave Brock replaced Lemmy’s vocals with his own (along with adding some thick layers of synthesizer noise).  Hijacking someone else’s song like that is kinda scummy on principle, especially if it’s somebody you fired in the first place, but I still think the Brock version actually works better. If nothing else, Bridget would definitely prefer the latter version, if only because all that extra synthesizer noise completely replaces Simon House’s violin parts. It doesn’t matter how noisy and rocking the rest of the song is, Bridget absolutely will NOT stand for any mamby-pamby violin on her playlist!

(As always, tracking down unblocked videos of all the songs here was a bit of a journey, and it’s weird just what was easy to find and what wasn’t. It never stops weirding me out how a relatively obscure European band from the early 80s can have its entire discography on YouTube Music, but a comparatively well known Japanese band doesn’t exist outside of fan posts. I mean, couldn’t USE any of those videos for the playlist, but it’s still wacky to me. In fact, even the totally unofficial postings of Guitar Wolf songs are still blocked in Japan, like, every single one I could find. It’s really amazing that such an aggressively unprofessional band should still be the target of such an all-consuming record label crackdown. So sorry if anyone’s trying to watch the playlist from there. I don’t make the rules! But speaking of Guitar Wolf, there’s a major word of warning I need to include with this playlist: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR VOLUME SETTINGS! KEEP EVERYTHING SET LOW IF YOU VALUE YOUR EARDRUMS! These are exactly the type of bands that love to mix everything absurdly, obnoxiously, counter-productively LOUD, to the point that playing them at what would traditionally be “normal” volume levels can be downright dangerous. The Iggy Pop remixes of the Stooges tracks and the Guitar Wolf stuff especially harsh offenders. In fact, the Jet Generation album actually came with a printed warning claiming it was the loudest mixed album EVER MADE at the time, and that playing it at an improper volume might actually damage your sound systems. I don’t know how true THAT is, but the blast of feedback at the beginning of Jet Generation could legitimately hurt your ears if you’ve got the sound up too high. And, of course, it’s even worse when you’re dealing with unofficial postings, since there’s no telling how the audio levels of each individual video might fluctuate, even if they’re off the same album. So please, keep your volume safe and low, only bringing it up per song as needed, and TURN IT BACK DOWN after each video is over just in case the next one turns out to be an eardrum-buster. I know it’s a weird warning to give, but these guys are downright STUPID in their desire to win the Loudness War)

Bridget's YouTube Playlist