32 Sept 12th-Sept 18th, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Duke in the film, remembers the recording session this way: “I have imprinted fond memories of being in the studio with Iggy Pop, Steve Jones, Nigel Harrison and Clem. I heard them jam around until they came up with the title track. I even have a recording of Iggy singing about me. It is always a profound experience when you create art that inspires others to create their art in contribution. Especially when you are a huge fan of the artist. In this case, these guys had been real heroes for me, so getting to sit in on and give rise to their music was a dream come true.” After Pop’s song, Black Flag kicks down with “TV Party” from its 1981 album “Damaged.” “The only song which appeared in the script was ‘TV Party,’ which Otto sings in a moment of existential sadness on the rail- road tracks,” Cox explains. Suicidal Tendencies provided “Institutionalized” from their self-titled 1983 debut, followed by Circle Jerks’s “Coup d’Etat” from 1983’s “Golden Shower of Hits.” Zander Schloss was an actor in the film portraying Kevin the Nerd, but after making connections during the film, he took over for Roger Rogerson as the Circle Jerks’s bassist. “I was walking down the street counting pennies for a burrito and a couple of people from the cast of ‘Repo Man’ pulled up and said, ‘Hey man, the Circle Jerks are looking for a bass player.’ So, I said, ‘Why are you telling me that?’ and they said, ‘You look like you could use a gig,’” Schloss recalled during an unrelated interview with New Times in 2016. The first of three Plugz tracks, and the only not made specifically for the film, rounds out Side A. The Larriva-penned tune “E Clavo Y La Cruz,” which translates to “The Nail and the Cross,” is also on the band’s 1981 album, “Better Luck.” It’s featured when the arch-nemeses of the repo men, the Rodriguez Brothers, make their first appearance. Another L.A. band, Burning Sensations, kicks off the B side with a righteous cover of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso.” The New Wave version sounds tough yet smarmy. With some attitude, it punctuates a classic scene when Estevez’s character Otto, a newly christened repo man, drives around town in a car he just repossessed. The hardest-sounding song on the soundtrack is Fear’s “Let’s Have a War.” By adding Fear to the mix, Cox gave a huge nod to the harder edges of early L.A. punk rock that helped create a tone that was somewhere between chaos and tightly controlled self-destruction. “When the Shit Hits the Fan” is a Circle Jerks song that was reworked for the film and the band even performs it in a laid-back lounge style in the background of a scene in the film. Its inclusion articulates the running battle that Otto has with himself over whether or not he can hold onto the things he loved when he was younger. His line “I can’t believe I used to like these guys” exem- plifies Cox’s irreverence. The Plugz recorded an outstanding version of “Secret Agent Man” that was reimagined as “Hombre Secreto” for the movie, providing the excellent instru- mental tracks that score the film’s most memorable scenes. According to Hufsteter, this track was done specifically for the film and ended up being very cool for another reason. “The ‘Secret Agent Man’ theme was a long enough cue that they had the great idea of using it as the B side of Iggy’s theme song,” says Hufsteter, who played in both The Plugz and The Dickies at the time. Juicy Bananas was a funk band and Schloss’s first gig after moving to L.A. The act’s track “Bad Man” provides some of the more tongue-in-cheek moments on the soundtrack with a super funky, soulful riff. “Before the Circle Jerks, I had a career in jazz and funk and R&B,” Schloss recalls. The final track is The Plugz’s “Reel 10,” the only piece of actual score, according to Hufsteter, on the soundtrack. “Dozens of film score labels have come to me begging to put out a soundtrack of all the other cues (parts of scores recorded specifically for certain scenes). The instrumental cues are quite phenomenal, but we can’t find or get the cooperation of Universal (Pictures) to find the actual multitrack tapes,” says Hufsteter. Cox had even more to say about Universal’s noncooperation. “Universal hated the film and didn’t want to release it, but their parent company was MCA, and when the (soundtrack) started selling well, the head of MCA Records called his opposite number at Universal and inquired, in menacing tones, ‘Is there a movie which goes with this?’” he says. As Tracey Walter’s hilariously philo- sophical character Miller said in the film, “The life of a repo man is always intense.” Intense, just like the soundtrack. Hollywood Record from p 30 Here’s something you don’t see every day, a Repo Man movie poster from Ghana. (Photo courtesy of Alex Cox)
