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FM – The Movie

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Intrigued by the fact that the Dan did the theme song (FM (No Static) to a movie about a radio station, I bought the movie in question on Bluray recently.

Things went wrong immediately when I noticed that the main character (the ‘hero’ of the piece) was played by Dempsey from Dempsey & Makepeace (or was he Makepeace?). Well, have you ever seen him another movie? It then descended in to a cliched tale of fighting ‘the man’ that would put an episode of Citizen Smith to shame. The performances were also very annoying, almost to a man/woman, with the guy playing the DJ Eric Swan being particularly annoying.

The final insult was the ending (yes, I hung around until then,mouth agape) – like something from the Childrens Film Foundation or a Scooby Doo episode. Truly excruciating.

Oh and the worse thing? Watch how those DJs handle those records! Eurghhhhh.

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Comments

  1. It’s a rum old business. I imagine Walter and Donald as fairly keen cinephiles, who could tell the difference between a masterpiece and a turkey even before the cameras started rolling.

    Writing the theme song for a movie must have earnt them some cash and would have gained them some kudos if it hadn’t been so dreadful.

    I imagine that Danfans have discussed this on the various Steely websites.

    Off piste…I once chatted with singer Sara Isaksson about the wonderful album of Dan covers she did with Rebecka Törnqvist and asked her why they had never played the songs live. By way of answering, she mentioned visiting some of these SD fora. Rather over-populated by bampots by the sound of things.

    • I’m a fairly minor Steely Dan fan, so I don’t frequent those sites, Kaisfatdad. But have you ever watched this abomination? Surely nobody can defend either it or the Dan attaching their name to it?

  2. My Dad had… no has! the album, which he mainly procured because of the mighty Life’s Been Good, which to this day gets a regular blast chez Pere Moose. I’ve always looked at the album and wondered what the film is like. Well, mainly I was looking at the picture of Linda Ronstadt of course…

    Even apart from the Dan song, that album is absolute AW catnip – it might be from 1978 but there is nary a short back and sides or a straight trouser leg to offend the eye.

  3. I remember seeing it and thinking it was a bit corney. Tom Petty makes a cameo appearance doesn’t he, playing himself? I don’t remember it being terrible but I wasn’t very discerning back then.

  4. This wiki page provides a lot of background info.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_(No_Static_at_All)

    This quote is interesting.:

    “Fagen felt the song could have been a bigger hit if the movie had been more successful. “The song was a hit, but I think we should have seen the movie before we committed ourselves,” he said in 2007. “As you know, it wasn’t a very successful movie.” At the time he claimed neither he nor Becker had seen it,[5] but seven years later, at a 2014 concert in Erie, Pennsylvania, called it “a rotten movie.”[19]

    Fagen nevertheless remains satisfied with the song. “I feel like we didn’t compromise on the song at all to make it program music,” he said in Reelin’ in the Years. “I enjoyed doing it, and I thought it was a very successful piece of movie music.”[5] “The ultimate irony,” concludes Breithaupt, “was that FM radio, champion of the long-playing record, had as its anthem a one-off single.”[4]”

    • Am I right there are two mixes of FM, one with a sax solo and one with a Becker guitar solo?@tigerlion talked about it on the AW podcast on Walter Becker I think.

      • Yes. In fact four official versions exist.
        The original version from the Soundtrack album and 12″ single is 4’50” and ends with Water Becker’s guitar solo.
        The 7″ single is a radio edit and shortens the solo. It lasts 3’49” and has an instrumental version “FM Reprise” on the B side, where the guitar solo is replaced by an extended version of Chris Gottlieb’s tenor sax solo.
        The song’s first appearance on a Dan album was on the original version of the “Gold” compilation, where the same version as the movie soundtrack and 12″ single was used. Later compilations “A Decade Of Steely Dan” and “The Definitive Collection” use that version too.
        A fourth version was created by removing the guitar solo from the end of the original version and replacing it with the sax solo from “FM Reprise”, giving a running time of 5’06”. This version appears on “Gold (Expanded Edition)” as well as the “Citizen Steely Dan” box set and “Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story 1972-1980”

        There was also a completely unauthorized version, used on American AM radio stations, that had an “A” spliced in from “Aja” replacing the “F” of “FM”, so that the song chorus no longer said “FM”.
        I’m sure I have also heard an extended mashup someone created, where both the full Becker guitar solo and the long sax solo are present.

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