Rushmore: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.com
The Rushmore soundtrack manages to pleasantly skirt the line between sentiment and sentimentality with a nuanced, eminently listenable combo of score and song. The songs mostly blend raw, adolescent urges and insecurity with an awkward grace. Though composed primarily of popular music from the 1960s, none of the selections is a hit of the expected Big Chill variety. In fact, compiler Randall Poster proves himself a '60s pop connoisseur, including little-known gems such as Cat Stevens's buoyant, hummable "Here Comes My Baby" (covered by Yo La Tengo on Fakebook) and the Who 's revved-up, intentionally silly proto-opera "A Quick One While He's Away." The bossa nova folk-pop of Unit 4+2's "Concrete & Clay" is lovingly contrasted by the Creation's blistering, feedback-enhanced hit-that-never-was "Making Time." Devo founder Mark Mothersbaugh's incidental music is nothing short of delightful, but the Rugrats composer clearly comes by whimsy easily. The intriguing thing about Mothersbaugh's score--seven snippets from which are sprinkled throughout the disc--is that it complements the archival tunes while combining Beethoven-lite flourishes and jazzy instrumentation with percolating mod keyboards. Like the film itself, this soundtrack is an inspired, left-field effort, and it's difficult to plot out its many charms. --Mike McGonigal

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-08-08 rating:
Withstands repeated vigorous listenings!
As others have already pointed out (a long time ago, but it bears repeating), a great mix!

Only disappointment on the disk is the Nothing in The World cut by The Kinks, with it's vocals driven into clipping at a few points. Ironically, cheaper sound systems actually sound worse as they struggle to deal with this issue. A very minor point to be sure, and I assume it came from the original tracks like that, because the rest of the album sounds great.

I've always liked the one-hit wonder Concrete & Clay by Unit 4+2. If you do too, I'd suggest not trying too hard to find anything else by them. If you do manage to find one of their albums, be open-minded because apparently whoever wrote Concrete & Clay left the room leaving the rest of their tunes never hitting that fun hook again.

Buy it today! I command you!

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review by: Mr. C date: 2008-03-12 rating:
All The World's A Stage
The vision of soundtrack producer Mark Mothersbaugh and movie director Wes Anderson which captures the movie scenes, while standing on its own as an eclectic collection of songs from classic artists.

The Mod movement and British Invasion - Chad & Jeremy, Unit 4 + 2, The Kinks (Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl), The Who (A Quick One While He's Away) - and early 1970s compositions - Ooh La La (Faces, by Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood) and Oh Yoko! (John Lennon) - tell the story of the ever changing moods of the rebellious teen, Max Fischer.

Selections by Cat Stevens (Here Comes My Baby & The Wind), Zoot Sims, Yves Montand, The Creation are paint brushes over a vast canvas, which are seamless in the mix. Mothersbaugh is responsible for nine of the tracks for the soundtrack, which was released on February 2, 1999.

Five songs in the movie do not appear on the CD, including Donovan's Jersey Thursday and I Am Waiting by the Rolling Stones. But the scope of the music makes this a great example of a soundtrack that tells a perfect story, all by itself.

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review by: galaxy girl date: 2008-01-22 rating:
Rushmore is my life
I freaking love this soundtrack! It added so much to the movie - it certainly wouldn't be the same without those great songs. I'm not young enough to remember when these songs first hit the airwaves and turntables, but I understand why Wes Anderson chose them. Mark Mothersbaugh's additional original songs are also fantastic!

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review by: date: 2007-11-16 rating:
Not All Bad But Mark Mothersbaugh Score Ruins It
The movie Rushmore was great and the soundtrack pretty good. But Mark Mothersbaugh's annoying score is placed at all the wrong intervals on the soundtrack. You're listening to some great British invasion rock and then one track later some totally out of place incidental music comes in and ruins the whole vibe of the album. The Mothersbaugh film score belongs on its own album just as other films have done. Mixing between songs and the score just kills the flow of the songs. You're constantly having to skip forward to the next track when the out of place score starts up again. Annoying as hell. And without the film's visuals? The score loses a lot of its power. It works great in the film but falls flat as day old soda water on its own.


review by: date: 2007-07-09 rating:
Proper length and sequence for this magnificent soundtrack
Here are all the songs and the order in which they appear (* denotes a track that is not on the CD):

1.Hardest Geometry Problem In The World - Mark Mothersbaugh
2.Sharp Little Guy - Mark Mothersbaugh
3.Making Time - Creation
4.The Lad With The Silver Button - Mark Mothersbaugh
5.Take Ten - Paul Desmond (*)
6.Concrete & Clay - Unit 4 + 2
7.Nothing In This World Can Stop Me Worrin' Bout That Girl - The Kinks
8.Edward Appleby (In Memoriam) - Mark Mothersbaugh
9.A Summer Song - Chad & Jeremy
10.Blinuet - Zoot Sims
11.Piranhas Are A Very Tricky Species - Mark Mothersbaugh
12.Here Comes My Baby - Cat Stevens
13.Friends Like You, Who Needs Friends - Mark Mothersbaugh
14.Jersey Thursday - Donovan (*)
15.A Quick One, While He's Away (live) - The Who(* the ragged-but-right version featured in the film is from The Rolling Stones' Rock 'n Roll Circus, NOT the Live at Leeds version found on this soundtrack)
16.I Am Waiting - The Rolling Stones (*)
17.Snowflake Music from Bottlerocket - Mark Mothersbaugh
18.Rue St. Vincent - Yves Montand
19.Kite Flying Society - Mark Mothersbaugh
20.The Wind - Cat Stevens
21.Oh Yoko! - John Lennon
22.Manoir De Mes Reves - Django Reinhardt (*)
23.Ooh La La - Faces
24.Margaret Yang's Theme - Mark Mothersbaugh

I've listened to this longer and more frequently than any other soundtrack. Pitch-perfect for the summer time.

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