Various Artists - Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I was saddened to learn of the death in Pittsfield, Massachusetts last week of singer and actress Julee Cruise. About four years ago, she announced that she was suffering from systemic lupus, a painful autoimmune condition that left her depressed and unable to move and walk. Reports state that she took her own life at her home, with The B-52's song "Roam" playing as she died (Cruise was a touring member of The B-52's in the early 1990s, replacing Cindy Wilson who took a few years off to raise her children; I remember seeing her on stage at a band show I attended in Washington, DC during that period).

In a post I wrote almost a dozen years ago, I detailed how I first came across Cruise's music and my impressions regarding it - the melancholy, haunting quality that both repels and attracts the listener. After the release of her debut album Floating Into The Night in 1989, Cruise issued a follow-up, The Voice Of Love, four years later. As with the first album, almost all of the songs on her sophomore release were written by director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti, so the sound and atmosphere are remarkably similar to Floating Into The Night. The Voice Of Love is more of a continuation of her debut, rather than a stand-alone entity. If you liked the first, than this one will be right up your alley as well.

Between these two albums, Cruise recorded a Lynch/Badalamenti-modified cover of an old Elvis Presley song, "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears", for the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' scifi drama Until The End Of The World, starring William Hurt. The plot of the film had something to do with in a finding and using a device that can record visual experiences and visualize dreams... but the end result was so confusing and convoluted that the few people who DID go to see the movie were left flummoxed by it. Cashing in on his success with small, cerebral films like Paris, Texas and Wings Of Desire, Wenders managed to secure a budget of $22 million for this latest film, an amount more than the cost of all of his previous films combined. And he proceeded to spend every penny of that money, spreading his production over almost half a year with setups in 11 countries.

While Graeme Revell (co-founder of the Australian industrial band SPK) was commissioned to compose the movie theme and other incidental music for the film, Wenders asked a number of his favorite recording artists (including Cruise) to contribute songs as well for inclusion. For their selections, he asked them to anticipate the kind of music they would be making a decade later, when the film was set. It was Wenders' desire to use every song he received to its fullest extent that ultimately contributed to the overall length of the film. The initial cut was reportedly TWENTY HOURS long, from which the director and producer whittled down to a more standard running time versions of 2 1/2 and 3 hours (which Wenders called the "Reader's Digest" versions). There is also reportedly a five-hour "director's" cut of this film which has been screened at various festivals over the years.

...Not that any of that mattered. The truncated versions of Until The End Of The World were released to theaters, first in Germany in September 1991, and later in the U.S. that December, and overall the flick was a commercial failure, managing to gross only about $830,000 against its $22 million budget.  Critics at the time savaged it; Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars out of 4, describing it as lacking the "narrative urgency" required to sustain interest in the story, and wrote that it "plays like a film that was photographed before it was written, and edited before it was completed". He went on to say that a documentary about the globe-trekking production would likely have been more interesting than the film itself.  Other reviewers were even less kind.

But while the film flopped, the soundtrack was, frankly, amazing, featuring great songs by some of the top alternative performers of the day.  Wenders chose well.  Here's the soundtrack lineup:

1. "Opening Title" – Graeme Revell
2. "Sax and Violins" – Talking Heads
3. "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" – Julee Cruise
4. "Move with Me (Dub)" – Neneh Cherry
5. "The Adversary" – Crime & the City Solution
6. "What's Good" – Lou Reed
7. "Last Night Sleep" – Can
8. "Fretless" – R.E.M.
9. "Days" – Elvis Costello
10. "Claire's Theme" – Graeme Revell
11. "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "It Takes Time" – Patti Smith (with Fred Smith)
13. "Death's Door" – Depeche Mode
14. "Love Theme" – Graeme Revell
15. "Calling All Angels" (Remix Version) – Jane Siberry with k.d. lang
16. "Humans from Earth" – T Bone Burnett
17. "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" – Daniel Lanois
18. "Until the End of the World" – U2
19. "Finale" – Graeme Revell

Personal favorites on this disc, in additon to the Julee Cruise song, include R.E.M.'s "Fretless", Depeche Mode's "Death's Door" and the Jane Siberry/k.d.lang collaboration "Calling All Angels".  At the time, most of these songs were unavailable anywhere else, making the compilation a gold mine of rarities. All in all, the soundtrack did better than the movie, eventually reaching #114 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 Albums chart in 1992.

So, in honor of the life and art of Julee Cruise, I proudly offer to you all Until The End Of The World (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released on Warner Brothers Records on December 10th, 1991.  Enjoy, and as always... well, you know.

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Julee Cruise - "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" Remixes EP

One of my other favorite movies (in addition to Raiders below) is Blue Velvet, David Lynch's masterwork, as far as I'm concerned. I think that it's one of the all-time great film comedies.

Yes, that's right, I said "comedies". Yes, yes, I know, Blue Velvet's depiction of crime, sexual deviance and murder taking place below the placid surface of a seemingly sleepy small town is profoundly disturbing to a lot of folks. And people were shaken by Dennis Hopper's portrayal of the psychotic Frank Booth - I understand all of that. But in many ways, the film is hilarious, especially in Hopper's over-the-top performance and a lot of the scripted dialogue. My buddy Ed is also a huge fan of this movie, and it's guaranteed that we can crack one another up in any location or situation by dropping one of the movie's lines - "It's DADDY, you shithead! Where's my bourbon?" "PABST - Blue Ribbon!" "No, I don't want you to pour it, I want you to fuck it - shit yes, pour the fuckin' beer!" "Here's to Ben!"

Ah, that never gets old - at least not for us.

One of the great things Lynch did in that movie was to set viewers up regarding the sleepy, bucolic nature of the town of Lumberton through the soft, semi-dreamlike cinematography and through the music. The soundtrack features a lot of old-fashioned pop songs from the '50s and '60s, like "Blue Velvet" (of course) and "In Dreams", in addition to some original songs penned by Lynch and his music director for the film, Angelo Badalamenti. But the song that really grabbed my attention was one at the end of the film, a airy, haunting melody called "Mysteries Of Love" that reminded me a lot of the Cocteau Twins, but was actually sung by an Iowa chanteuse named Julee Cruise. Cruise was working as a talent scout for Badalamenti in New York, and noodling around on the fringes of New York's music and arts scene after moving there from Des Moines. Her boss recommended her to Lynch for the Blue Velvet gig, and it was her big break.

"Mysteries Of Love" got a pretty good response, so much so that it led Badalamenti and Lynch to write additional songs for her, and finance her debut album, Floating Into The Night, released by Warner Bros. Records in September 1989. I bought that album on Super Bowl Sunday, 1990, at the record shop on Thames Street in Newport, RI, shortly before the big game. Cruise has an airy, haunting voice, and the album is superb, a fine example of ethereal dream pop (One song off of it, "Falling", was used as the theme music for Lynch's TV show "Twin Peaks", which debuted later that year). But the thing that really struck me about Floating Into The Night was the strong thread of SADNESS running through all of the songs. Note that I didn't say "depressing" - there's a difference between the two states of emotion, I think. Cruise sings about lost loves and missed opportunities, backed by retro-50's style pop music morphed by Lynch and Badalamenti into something spooky and infinitely heart-rending. I enjoy this album quite a bit, but there are some songs on it I simply cannot bring myself to listen to with any regularity; the sadness contained therein is just THAT affecting.

A year or so after I purchased Floating Into The Night, I was driving from the DC area to Atlantic City to test my skills at the poker tables. On the way there, I was twiddling the radio knob, trying to see if I could pick up any decent music. Near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I chanced upon a station playing a cowbell-horn-and-bass-driven dance beat that sounded a little like Soul II Soul, and settled on that for a bit. Imagine my surprise when the lyrics kicked in, and I heard the familiar words of Floating Into The Night's "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" in Julee Cruise's voice!

The remixed version I was hearing completely dispensed with the sadness inherent in the original song, while still retaining the feel and sound of the original. Needless to say, it definitely tickled my ears, and I made a note to find it when I got back to DC. It took a while, but I finally tracked down the EP at my old reliable, the GWU Tower Records.

And so, here you are, the elusive "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" Remixes EP, released in 1991 on Warner Brothers Records. It includes the original and two modified versions, along with another song off of the original album, "The World Spins" (which was also featured in "Twin Peaks" the year before). Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

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