Customer Reviews

Crossroads: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This soundtrack is an excellent display of Ry Cooders considerable talents. But to own the final guitar showdown between Cooder and Steve Vai, purchase Vai's "The Elusive Light and Sound Volume 1" to hear one of the greatest examples of blues and rock guitar.

Good sountrack, and while I think that the idea was to lean towards blues on this release, some of the best music from the movie isn't on this release. To get that you need the movie DVD, and though I have no complaints in seeing the movie to get hear these tracks, it would have been nice to have them included on the soundtrack.

I give this one 4 stars for the artists effort in reaching the ears and grabbing the attention of someone like me who is not "Blues" literate (in other words I don't know who the top Blues artists are or were).But, I do know what I like. To say that I just like this soundtrack is an understatement;I love it !...Whether the music comes from Johnson or Cooder, all artists have done an incredible labor of love in giving us music that is so timeless and without any "artificial" synthesized sound.While it does not contain the complete soundtrack, it still conveys the very essence of the film; aside from the supernatural aspect of the film (the devil), it's main supernatural ingredient is about the blues !...Another highly recommended Ry Cooder project is the Buena Vista Social Club which brings the beauty and power of Cuban-jazz music and musicians...

I am totally in agreement with the reviewers who were disappointed by the absence of the Vai-Machio solo-fest. That part of the movie was integral with the story, so it is curious as to why the songs have been deleted.Anyway, as a rabid neoclassical heavy metal fan, I was extremely disappointed with this soundtrack. If you have to get those previously mentioned tidbits, I would recommend buying the video and recording it onto cassette, or burn a CD yourself.The Ralph Maccio acoustic guitar solo where he was thrown out of The Juliard School for inserting the blues riff was based on Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turka." The major theme of the Vai solofest was based on Niccolo Paganini's 24th caprice.Eliot Fisk does an awesome job of playing Paganini's 24 Caprices on guitar, otherwise Yehudi Menuhin or Itzhak Perlman tear it up on violin.Good luck to the disappointed heavy metal guitar fans out there.

This album/movie opened my ears to blues music at a young age. I started taking classical guitar lessons at 6 and when I was about 15, I saw the movie. The music of ry cooder inspired me to explore that beautiful music. I love this album. I only wish they included Steve Vai's guitar duel scene on the albulm.

All of the best cuts from this movie are actually located on Steve Vai's CD entitled "The Elusive Light and Sound". It is a very excellent CD, and has over 40 tracks on it. Thats all, Thanks.

Croassroads the soundtrack is an invaluable source for early blues afficianados.Ry Cooder has surpassed himself with this soundtrack for the equaly engrossing movie.
Pity though that the duel between Macchio and Vai is also not on the soundtrack, as this would have made it even better and more popular.
The soundtrack is rather short clocking in at around 37 min.
Maybe one day some bright spark may reissue it with the missing tracks added.

The main reason I have given this soundtrack only 3 stars is that although the music it contains is very good, it is missing a huge portion of what made the movie so good. Namely, the entire guitar battle for the main charactors soul. I'm sure I am not the only person that purchased this soundtrack after seeing the movie and was very disappointed to find this out. Why have Stevie Via in a movie and then leave out his "licks". Rediculous!

On the positive side, this album contains some very good songs and would make a good "intro CD" for someone just getting into the blues. However, the obvious omission of the final guitar duel between Ry Cooder and Steve Vai was too bad. I would suggest picking up Ry Cooders "Get Rhythm" CD for a better example of his music. There isn't much available by Steve Vai ("Passion and Warfare" is pretty good, but not bluesy), and who knows--maybe he and Cooder will get together and re-record the duel! About the best thing that can be said is that Ralph Macchio isn't on this album!

After searching for many years I was extremely happy to finally find this soundtrack and found it very enjoyable, however the main reason I ordered the cd was for the final "guitar dual" that takes place during the movie's finale. I was very surprised to find that it is not on the soundtrack. It severly lessened my satifaction of this purchase.