Concept albums that would make good films.

After reading about the Scorsese Sinatra biopic, I can't help but think how much more I'd want a film of Watertown - which was originally intended to have a complementary TV-movie-of-sorts - and, I don't know, are there any others?

i used to think this about the soft bulletin

That new Mastodon album would make a batshit crazy Rasputin movie of some kind.

First person to say Tarkus should get a punch in the fucking face.

the wall lol

Please never ever The Lamb Lies Down.

Fever Ray. I'm not sure if it's really a concept album, but the two music videos made me wish someone would make a whole movie based on them.

Tuomas OTM !

Exodus would be awesome.

http://www.onlyfunk.com/Affiches/Stevie%20Wonder/Oeuvre/Journey%20Through%20the%20Secret%20Life%20of%20Plants.jpg

ziggy stardust ?
Smile would be... interesting !

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qV5ALmqtL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

ha

http://www.residents.com/historical/page0/page7/files/page7_1.jpg

Velvet Goldmine is kind of a Ziggy Stardust movie anyway. I can't imagine Bowie(TM) coming up with anything better, though apparently he refused to let Haynes use any of his songs on the grounds that he might want to make it into a stage musical. Like We Will Rock You.

There should be Magma movies though. With really excessive old-school special effects, stop-motion monsters and giant plywood starships.

A Grand Don't Come For Free seems tailor made for Mike Leigh...

Tentative use of 'concept' album but...

http://pisforprops.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/raekwon_only.jpg

xxxpost

I don't really remember velvet goldmine but I don't think there were the sci-fi/space cadet/apocalyptic aspects of ziggy stardust, were there ?

That said, it would propably be awful anyway !

They Were Wrong So We Drowned done in the style similar to Begotten

http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Bruce-Springsteen-Nebraska.jpg

(I mean, there's already The Indian Runner, but there's the rest too.)

http://intothemusic.ca/images/uploads/covers/Aphrodites_Child-666.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/3130484155_3952a66075.jpg?v=0

Not an album, but "Where Are They Now? (80s mix)" makes me wish for a 24 Hour Party People/Velvet Goldmine type movie about the early days of rap in nyc.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/08/b3/fa93793509a093726f883110.L.jpg

https://www.insideoutshop.de/images/EloyPassion.jpg

Wherein some stoner kraut dude goes back in time to the middle ages and teaches this medieval babe to smoke weed, before getting chased out of town by the king and befriending some wizard who happens to have a time machine too and gets him back home. Sorry, did I spoil the end?

I was thinking the other day that Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) would make a good stage musical, a la "Mamma Mia". It probably would work okay as a film too.

^That actually happened in my town. There's a film of it. Worked out pretty well. I don't think that anyone who was in the program will ever want to listen to Arthur ever again, though.

Wow - that's cool. I suppose there aren't any clips of this on YouTube.

Doesn't look like it.

DULL CLASSIC ROCK FAN FACT FOLLOWS

Arthur actually started out as a screenplay for a television thing for which the Kinks were to provide the soundtrack

Anyone seen "Percy" with Hywell Bennett? I ran across it on late night TV, and realised "Hey, these are all Kinks songs" after about twenty minutes. Pretty toe-curling seventies nonsense, as far as I remember: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067568/

Toe-curling puts it mildly.

http://hollywoodgothique.com/myPictures/waroftheworlds1978.jpg

Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger and Phases & Stages discs could work

none of them

Snrub bringing the hard facts here.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2163/2524627362_dcef9dbcb1.jpg?v=0

http://static.boomkat.com/images/140624/333.jpg

"Tales From Topographic Oceans" would be an interesting movie among the same demography who went bananas about "Lord Of The Rings".

http://www.thewho.com/images/media/albums_large/03-67-the_who_sell_out.jpg

Imagine a crazy psychedelic mod/pop movie with really fast paced edits, silly skits, tons of music videos, and the 1967 Who wreaking havoc on the world with an anti-materialist message.

xpost Thought about posting Tales from as a gag but c'mon Geir, whatever one thinks about Lord of the Rings it does actually have a plot.

Am I really the first to say 2112? It'd be worth it if only for some final scene of total galactic obliteration accompanied by "We have assumed control, we have assumed control, we have assumed control."

I guess "Nebraska" would have to be a black & white dogma film then....

http://vmeste.org/yes/pict/olias.jpg

I listened to this for the first time in ages last weekend, it's like all the pastoral sections from Yes songs woven togther, I wonder if Animal Collective know this record.

From Wiki.

Olias of Sunhillow is a progressive rock concept album by Jon Anderson, the lead singer of the band Yes. Released in 1976, it was his first solo album.

The album tells the story of an alien race and their journey to a new world due to catastrophe. Olias, the title character, is the chosen architect of the glider Moorglade, which will be used to fly his people to their new home. Ranyart is the navigator for the glider, and QoQuaq is the leader who unites the four tribes of Sunhillow to partake in the exodus.

The album's concept may have been partly inspired by the cover art for the 1972 Yes album Fragile, which depicts a tiny planet breaking apart and a glider escaping into space. Another link to Fragile lies in the fact that both albums have pieces (Fragile's "We Have Heaven") consisting of multiple vocal parts, with Anderson singing all of them. Anderson has stated that works by J.R.R. Tolkien were also an influence, underlying the epic scope of the narrative compressed into the album.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/0/00/20051007035203!Bat_out_of_Hell.jpg

Ted Mills at AMG talking about Resident's Eskimo says it is an album of "icy atmospheres, poetic electronics, and imaginary landscapes, concocted around a loose narrative"

The loose narrative and atmospheric part of that album seems to make for a totally different listening experience. It is an album to take in one chunk, and as described in the liner notes, maybe under a blanket.

What other concept albums push in this loosely narrative direction?

Of course a few other Residents albums are like this.
I think Outside by Bowie also gives this feel in part (but is maybe too song oriented)

First person to say Tarkus should get a punch in the fucking face.

― ambience chaser (S-), Friday, May 15, 2009 4:06 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tarkus. Come at me

Bobcat Goldthwaite has mentioned in interviews that he's been collaborating with Ray Davies on turning Schoolboys in Disgrace into a movie

Who's Next was originally conceived of as a film/concept double album, but the stress of prophesying the internet got to them, so it came out as a single non-concept album.