V01-T05 Concrete Beach

.....There are few examples in music history where a soundtrack album has outsold, by multiples, tickets to the movie. To paraphrase Rod Serling, I present to you for your consideration:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 5

• 03:09 "CONCRETE BEACH" (Joe Keithley)
• performed by D.O.A.
• original source: VA LP"Terminal City Ricochet - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" Alternative Tentacles VIRUS 75 (US) 1989
• and my source: VA CD"Terminal City Ricochet - [~]" Alternative Tentacles VIRUS 75CD (Canada?) 1990

.....In the late 1980's it was common, even for major labels, to release an album on vinyl and cassette formats first, use their initial sales to gauge the album's longevity as a catalog item and then press CD quantities accordingly. Of course, when the CD format launched publicly, only Sony and Philips owned the means of manufacturing. EMI, RCA and WEA had to queue up and pay for the use of the plants. Until they realized that building their own means of production was worth the investment, they used that pricey access judiciously. Often times, they didn't bother making CD's for movie soundtracks at all. By the time a CD could get into the shops, the movie would likely be out of the theaters thereby losing what they believed was the main impetus for sales. That may seem strange if you consider that ten years later there were soundtrack albums for every 'extreme sports' event and 'Spy Kids' movie conceivable. For smaller labels, delaying the release of one format or the other was almost always a matter of cash flow. In the case of the "Terminal City" soundtrack, my CD copy has, in the innermost edge of the playing side in tiny little print, the name of the album and the numbers "452-129-007-E 01/15/90G". That date, January 15th, couldn't be the projected release date because labels like AT used too many 'mom & pop' forms of distribution to bother setting a national simultaneous release. It probably refers to the mastering or the pressing or both, meaning that the average street date was maybe a month later. At about that time Restless Records released the D.O.A. album, "Murder" containing the same song.

.....Many people may remember the Reagan-Bush era as a continuous, one-sided culture war but few are aware of the extent of the Soviet-style tactics used on artists and entertainers, mainly because they were so successful at suppressing dissent. The animated film "When The Wind Blows" was pulled from theaters because it showed the effects of radioactive fallout on inhabitants of a country (England in this case) not even engaged in the nuclear war that causes it. The reasoning was that if people were to know that these weapons had consequences besides the ones intended that the public might not support their use. Musicians Legendary Pink Dots and Echo And The Bunnymen were prohibited from entering the country on the grounds that they constituted a threat to national security. (In the case of the Scandinavian Dots, it's possible that that incident stemmed from a Bush appointee in the state department trying to extort a bribe from their managers, but in the case of the British Bunnymen, it was almost certainly because they criticized Thatcher and were very visibly leftist.) In that environment, "Terminal City" was shown much the way John Waters described 'distributing' his early movies almost two decades earlier: he drove around with prints in the trunk of his car, went to towns with colleges or bars nearby (something that says "risk-taking behavior") and found a theater that was doing meager business late at night and looked like it was privately owned (rather than a chain or franchise theater) and offered the owner an under-the-table cash deal for showing his movies. Unless you were very lucky, you didn't see "Terminal City Ricochet" in a theater. However, the soundtrack has been floating around in stores for years.

.....The song "CONCRETE BEACH" does not immediately bring to mind leftist politics, but skateboarding has been widely criminalized, largely prompted by insurance concerns but definitely promulgated in local politics by cultural prejudices. Nobody bans bicycles when a cyclist is hit by a car. Hell, nobody bans cars when they hit cyclists. But adults generally don't skateboard and teens generally don't vote, so... This certainly isn't the first or most popular skateboarding song (just look at the J.F.A. or Suicidal Tendencies catalogs prior to 1990), but it is defiantly positive. Catchy, too.

.....For the next track, we're still on wheels, but we've upgraded from a skateboard to a motorcycle.