Customer Reviews

Fast Times At Ridgemont High: Music From The Motion Picture

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Like Heavy Metal, the soundtrack for Fast Times At Ridgemont High was long out-of-print until 1994 or 1995, when both were finally issued on CD, and the music here is a mixture of late 70's California rock, as personified by ex-Eagles flying solo, and new age popsters. The two sounds are disparate but they make for a superb compilation. Here are the highlights.

The main theme song is the rhythmic but semi-melancholy "Somebody's Baby" by Jackson Browne. "going walk up to her, I'm going to talk to her" reflects Mark Ratner's feelings towards Stacey.

With "Waffle Stomp", ex-Eagle Joe Walsh has one of his goofy songs with a stomping beat. "You can punch out your boss/get fired from your job/collect unemployment/for your enjoyment/take out he trash/come down with a rash" and so on. One of the funnier songs here.

Fellow ex-Eagle Don Henley comes next with the tender guitar and piano "Love Rules." Standout lyric: "I wish I didn't have so much to feel/it's much too scary and it's all too real"

Louise Goffin's poppy "Uptown Boys" has a bit of 60's girl-group stylings in the chorus and backing singers, but the pre-chorus bits have that California sound a la Ronstadt or Karla Bonoff. Timothy B. Schmit's fingersnapping "So Much In Love" is a nice bit of doowop, with only a bass and drums coming in. The Ravyns' rocking "Raised On The Radio" is heard at least twice, once when Brad is washing his car.

The Go-Go's' "Speeding" has a jamming beat reminiscent of "We Got The Beat", which wasn't included here despite playing during the first scene, but has a sound close to their Vacation era. One of the best songs by them and on this album. "Driving faster, driving faster..."

"Don't Be Lonely" by Quarterflash fits more on their debut album than Take Another Picture, and it's a good-enough song. And yes, there is a brief Rindy Ross sax solo.

Like Heavy Metal, Fast Times sports two title songs, and they fit in the rock mode. The first is Billy Squier's "Fast Times (The Best Years Of Our Lives)" and the second is Sammy Hagar's hard-driving, with a grinding guitar and tempo like "I Love It Loud" or "We Will Rock You."

Jimmy Buffett's goofy "I Don't Know (Spicoli's Theme)" perfectly fits the character, incorporating lines and loves of Spicoli: "too gnarly a day for a classroom" and "cruising is what I dig the most."

Graham Nash's "Love Is The Reason" has a melody and sound like the Eagles' "Take It To The Limit", while Poco's well-paced "I'll Leave It Up To You" with its new wave synths makes it far from the country-rock band that emerged from the ashes of Buffalo Springfield. Donna Summer's "Highway Runner" sports some Eagles-ish guitar and sitar, and is a far cry from her usual disco stuff. It's not bad, just weird for her.

Stevie Nicks' "Sleeping Angel" can also be found on the Enchanted box set; when I first heard it from there, I chalked another all-time great melancholy ballad for the Welsh Witch. This is played while Mike Damone is calling people who owe him money, to no avail.

Palmer/Jost's "She's My Baby (And She's Outta Control)" is pure 80's new wave a la Devo or Cars. Oingo Boingo's raucous "Goodbye, Goodbye" is more like Stray Cats-like rockabilly, with a call and repeat bridge section.

One of the best 80's soundtrack compilations, with the legacy of the Eagles included in various spots.

Fast Times is one of the funniest movies ever made and the soundtrack captures the spirit of the movie quite well. Although the movie employs some great previously released material that doesn't appear on the cd (The Go-Go's "We Got The Beat" & Zeppelin's "Kashmir" as examples), the songs written specifically for the movie and appear on this cd stand up to those quite well. "Sleeping Angel" is one the prettiest songs Stevie Nicks has ever recorded as is "Love Rules" by Don Henley. Jimmy Buffett contributes a typically humorous track with "I Don't Know", the usually insipid Sammy Hagar mines a heavy chunk of rock in the title track, the Go-Go's provide a great original song with "Speeding" and the big hit off the album, Jackson's Browne's "Somebody's Baby" is still catchy. There are some very weak songs ("Uptown Boys" & the Timothy B. Schmidt remake of "So Much In Love" to name two)which prevent it from being a 5 star cd, but overall if you loved the movie, you'll love the cd. Even if you're not a fan, there is some outstanding music that makes the cd worth a listen.

"Fsst Times At Ridgemont High" is one of my all time favorite movies ever. I've rarely laughed harder than I did when I saw this all time 1980s' classic.

One of the main reasons I loved it was because of the soundtrack, which I found to be an awesome compilation of music from thst time period. For months I searched for it but wasn't able to find it. I finally found it last night.

I'm so glad I did. Be advised that not every song from the movie is on it, but I think that's inevitable. Besides, I already have "Kashmir", "Moving In Stereo" and "American Girl", and I can do without "We've Got The Beat". But there's some darn good stuff on here. I love Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby", a fine piece of early 1980s' soft rock. There's a lot of other great stuff as well, such as Joe Walsh's "Waffle Stomp", Don Henley's beautiful "Love Rules", Quarterflash's "Don't Be Lonely", Sammy Hagar's title song, Jimmy Buffet's "I Don't Know (Spicoli's Theme) and of course Oingo Boingo's "Goodbye, Goodbye".

The songs sound very good, though I'd like to see a new version since next year is the film's 25th anniversary. Still, this will do for now.

Although I could take or leave the movie itself, this sountrack is a great recap of the early 80's.

Tracks feature some groups who back in 1982 were riding high on the charts, and probally thought that they would be around forever such as the Go Go's (Speeding), Quarterflash (Don't be Lonely), Oingo Boingo (Goodbye, Goodbye), and The Ravyns (Raised On The Radio), as well as 80's icons such as Sammy Hagar, Joe Walsh and Don Henley.

The big hit from this album belonged to Jackson Browne with Somebody's Baby, proof that he can deliver a great non-political pop song.

Two "from the vault" tracks also delivered sales to this album, and they are Stevie Nick's Sleeping Angel (later to appear on at least one of her compilations), and Donna Summer's Highway Runner from the then unreleased rock/new wave orientated album I'm A Rainbow (released in full in 1996).

"Never Surrender" your love for the music of your High School & College Years!

This movie is the best representation of the 80's to date. It completely captures the mood and feel of the decade. I was in high school during that time, and was too young to see it when it first came out. In watching it many years later, I was instantly transported back to high school. Who, from that generation, did not know a Spicoli, or Rat or even Damone? The music really brought back memories; rocking out in the school gym, first job, first girlfriend, etc. Beyond a doubt, this movie and the music will serve as the best representation of the '80s ever filmed and recorded.

This album is preceded by its reputation and is one of my favorites.

The 90s Compact Disk release of it is terrible mastered.

I was wondering who did such a bad mastering job, and quickly found out that this is the one CD I own that has NO credit given for CD mastering.

Track #6 is twice as loud as track #7.

Does anyone know who to blame for this inept CD mastering?

Overall great soundtrack.....but aside from it missing The Cars and Led Zeppelin (which I've read was due to licensing rights), it's also missing another song. If you recall when the video was out in the 80's, Goodbye Goodbye from Oingo Boingo wasn't at the end. It was some song called "That's All There Is". Whatever happened to that song...who was the artist...and wouldn't it be great if they re-issued the CD with all the missing song? One can only hope.

This soundtrack to one of the early 1980's most enjoyable teen flicks is without a doubt a 5-star effort. Most soundtracks as a whole tend to miss the boat because they (especially these days) seem to be put together by a marketing team to try appeal/sell to as broad an audience as possible no matter how uncohesive the final product turns out or how tired or bad the song selection turns out to be. In the worst of cases, soundtracks wind up including songs "inspired" by the movie (talk about a stretch!!!!) or songs that only appeared in the credits after the audience is long gone. An example of the latter is the soundtrack to one of the "Batman" movies, as there were at least 3 different songs that were never part of the movie and only appeared one after the other in the bloated closing credits.

Fortunately, this soundtrack plays fair by compiling a generous 19 songs that not only worked beautifully in the movie, but they also work well as part an independent musical product. What is also interesting about this collection is that almost all songs were either written specifically for the movie (best exemplified by Billy Squire's "Fast Times (The Best Years Of Our Lives") or had never appeared on any of the artists' respective releases to date. Highlights include Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby," Don Henley's "Love Rules," and Timothy B. Schmit's take on "So Much In Love." I also loved Ravyn's "Raised, The Go-Go's "Speeding," and the contagious film-ending "Goodbye, Goodbye," by Oingo Boingo.

Some may see this diverse song collection and think that there is no way that it's any different than many of today's marketing-focused soundtracks, but the difference is that these songs were all an integral part of the movie and their diversity is based not only on what the movie needed, but also due to the different most influences that were still around from the late 1970s as well as a new-wave tidal wave that would soon sweep the musical charts. This is one collection that periodically keeps coming back to my CD player and I wanted to share the wealth with fans who may not remember how good this release was.

This is a great soundtrack to the best 80's movie. But I find it hard to believe that they could leave out the opening number by the Go Go's titled We got the beat. How could they leave out the opening song! I also believe that some other material is missing here but maybe some of it was a little to heavy metal for a movie soundtrack like this. Also heard some music on here that I do not remember hearing in the movie like there is a song by the go go's on this cd I don't remember that song. But still a great soundtrack.

I was in my twenties and an engineering officer on a Dutch cruise ship that went from New York to Bermuda every week. At one point I heard , between the crazy Eddy commercials, a new record of Jackson Browne (very up tempo, normally he was contemplating suicide) so I went out to buy his new album because I had most of his old ones and wanted to impress my friends at home. Then I found out there was no new Jackson Browne album but this was only a song from the soundtrack of some kind of obscure movie so on impulse I bought it. I went back to my cabin, put in the tape.....and listened to some of the best music I ever heard !!!! Most of these tracks must have collectors value because they were never released on regular albums. By the way, I still haven't seen the movie