Wading into the Ocean

(And, sadly, I'm not talking about Billy Ocean.)

Last night, my wife and I went to see the movie Walking to Werner at the Seattle International Film Festival -a documentary about a young filmmaker walking from Seattle to LA in hopes of meeting the acclaimed director Werner Herzog. Toward the end of the film, there is a scene involving the director wading into the ocean set, rather effectively, to the Velvet Underground's "Ocean".

Or at least I think it was...

The thing is, I've got a bit of an adversion to any music made before about 1990. I'm shamed to admit it, but the reality is that it was Grunge that first got me interested in music, and to this day I have a bit of a problem mustering the energy to go explore what music came before that.

There are notable exceptions to this rule. For example, the Talking Heads are one of my all time favorites. But, for the most part, I admit that its a shortcoming in my music knowledge. One that I decided to correct a bit today by throwing on the Velvet Underground's Gold, an album that Pitchforkmedia.com assured me was their best Best Of.



Needless to say, its good stuff. The type of good stuff where you have an "I've heard this song before" moment pretty much every other song. From Wes Anderson movies to random college party memories, these songs have already woven themselves into my life. And I didn't even really realize it. You probably already know this, which makes this blog entry a bit pointless beyond just letting you know that I have had that moment. That same moment you likely had a long time ago.

In a way, this sort of reminds me of when I watched Simple Men and first encountered the song Kool Thing. A great song in a near perfect scene. I should really listen to more Sonic Youth.

Walking to Werner (film)

"Sand in the Vaseline" - Talking Heads

"Gold" - Velvet Underground

Simple Men (film)

The scene in Simple Men where there lead characters dance to "Kool Thing"