Recently Heard: Streets of Fire

Streets Of Fire: A Rock & Roll Fable (1984 Film Soundtrack)

You know, there's just something about Jim Steinman's music. It doesn't matter if his name's only in fine print under the name of the guy who sings lead, sort of like this: "Songs by Jim Steinman" appearing like a bat out hell under the immense and weighty name of a dinner meat. Mix. Thing. It's more than that - his style is identifiable even if all you have to go off of is "Fire, Inc." Slow the credits down, though, once DVDs are invented, and you can clearly read the fine print and see where the song came from.

Of course, it's often easier to just listen to the tune. That didn't help me when I first watched Streets of Fire: A Rock & Roll Fable, as I hadn't been overly interested in my first exposure to Jim's tunes, although that other album grew on me over time. The songs in Streets of Fire caught me right off the bat: the whole attitude, most extremely 80's, but with huge doses of a fantasy 50's or 60's blended in, and the two Steinman songs were the biggest draw. I can recall back in the day, my brother and I trying to figure out who this Fire, Inc. be, knowing it was likely just a band name cobbled together for the film. Certainly, we knew Diane Lane most likely didn't take the lead vocals. Actually, I'm not even sure if we could discern the credits on HBO - that might have waited until the fuzzy pause on the VCR came into being. And then, unfortunately recently, I began to put 2 and 2 together, and suddenly I was picking Jim Steinman songs in non-Loafy places.

The soundtrack has some other great tunes on it. Although I recognized the Dan Hartman tune and Countdown to Love for what they represented in the film, I often resented the fact that MTV spent all its cycles on Dream About You instead of the Steinman tunes. I appreciate them a lot more now, ditto for the Ry Cooder tune and the two Blasters tunes. Always kind of liked the Fixx tune, which stands as a shining example of 80's (over?)production, even as it remains a strong tune to this day.

As with another Michael Paré film of the era - Eddie and the Cruisers - and several others, such as The Lost Boys, Streets of Fire is a movie that is intertwined deeply with its soundtrack, yet the soundtrack stands on its own as an excellent album to listen to. Often a song used in a film is only strong through its association with the imagery, and, perhaps more often, a scene in a film is only held aloft because of the music behind it, but these three - and, from the 90's, The Crow comes to mind - exert their power of association in both directions, each medium capable of wooing and winning its own fan base.