Music Arcades: Various: Zabriskie Point (soundtrack)

At last, a Pink Floyd soundtrack for a film I've actually seen. Though I hadn't seen it when I bought this record. I'd read somewhere, sometime that this soundtrack was both a rarity and something special.

Whoever wrote that was just having a laugh. (Apart from the 'something special', I see now that my copy is the reissue from 1986, just a couple of years before I bought it: reissues are the blight of rarity status.)

Somewhere else I'm sure I read that Pink Floyd came to the conclusion that Sr Antonioni was not really interested in the new material he commissioned from them; the only reason he'd authorised the commission was to ensure he could get his hands on Careful With That Axe, Eugene, presented here in a re-recorded version in a different key, and retitled Come in Number 51, Your Time Is Up.

I think I eventually saw the film on TV, back in the days when the early morning hours on BBC2 and Channel 4 was something of a haven for cineastes. I can't remember much about the film aside from the celebrated closing sequence for which Come in Number 51… provides the accompaniment. (As with all Antonioni material, you need to be patient.)

Current editions of the Zabriskie Point soundtrack have a second disc with extra music from Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia, presumably not included in the film. Mine is just the single LP, less than 40 minutes. It's a real mixed bag, lacking any kind of coherence — as soundtracks go, the John Barry compilation sounds much more like an album than this does.

My favourite original track (i.e. not counting Come in Number 51…) is Jerry Garcia's Love Scene. The little I've heard of Garcia's stuff, either with the Dead or solo, has never really appealed before, but Love Scene reminds me of the fluid lyricism of Popol Vuh at their best.

And that leads me to another clip from the film, evidently almost as celebrated, though I'd forgotten it (there's a sad and convoluted story about the real life romance and off-screen careers of the couple that feature in this scene and on the album cover):

That's what YouTube was invented for, right? Reprising the good bits from Antonioni films, stripped away from the many longueurs. So, gratuitously, here's a couple more.