Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Repo Man (MCA, 1984)

The freshest forgotten albums of yesteryear. Not the usual fawned over suspects but albums that ‘net-trawlers and second hand record shop aficionados may come across and should snap up now.

“Ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. Repo man spends his time getting into ‘em.”

‘Repo Man’ was the first commercially realised film to be directed by Alex Cox and is one of a slew of highly entertaining punk-rock flicks that were released in the mid-eighties. It is also one of those films that have reward numerous viewings to appreciate all the in-jokes and one-liners. However, when it was first let loose on an unsuspecting public, I was a suburban teenager with punk-rock leanings, so that was fine by me and it soon became required viewing, at some point, during most weekends.

The plot, while somewhat convoluted, concerns Otto (Emilio Estevez), an alienated young punk living in mid-80s Los Angeles. After getting fired from a shelf-stacking job in a supermarket, he discovers that his pot-head parents have donated his entire savings to a fundamentalist TV evangelist. Leaving home broke, he catches his girlfriend in the sack with one of his friends, and falls into a job with the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, a small automobile repossession agency. Here he is mentored by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) a veteran repo man, who shows him the ropes of a dangerous trade (“Only an asshole gets killed for a car”).

Soon, Bud, Otto and numerous repo men all over town are searching for a 1964 Chevy Malibu from New Mexico, that is ludicrously overvalued at $20,000. It is overvalued for a reason and contains something strange and dangerous in its boot. Consequently, the FBI, represented by the distinctly odd Agent Rogers (Susan Barnes) and her team are also in hot pursuit. The film draws on the experiences of former Los Angeles repo man (and friend of Alex Cox), Mark Lewis. However, it soon wanders off into any number of surreal set-ups involving aliens, the CIA, incompetent punk-rocker smash’n’grab thieves, Otto’s new girlfriend, Leila (Olivia Barash), the ‘United Fruitcake Outlet’ and countless other improbable individuals and situations, punctuated by a number of running gags and unlikely coincidences.
Like many independently produced films, ‘Repo Man’ had a somewhat laboured birth and was almost lost without a trace, due to distribution company politics. Alex Cox’s response was to take out an advert in Variety, which reprinted a good review, as a challenge to Universal Pictures to get the film into cinemas. Universal’s response was to lean on the head of public relations at Pan Am (once a major international airline, now long-gone), Dick Barkle, to release a statement, which claimed “I hope they don’t show this film in Russia”.

The theatrical life of the film was, in fact, prolonged by a lone-voice at Universal, Kelly Neal, who went out of his way to support the film. Another major promotional success for the film was an LP of the soundtrack, very much a snapshot of the Los Angeles hardcore punk scene of the mid-eighties, taking in the usual suspects, such as Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies and Fear. That said, it’s not all screaming, yelling and relentless, high-speed tempos, as one of the Circle Jerks’ tunes is an acoustic version of ‘When The Shit Hits The Fan’, which is excellent.

There are some seriously rare jewels here as well as Henry Rollins and Keith Morris and their mobs. First among these is Iggy Pop’s theme tune ‘Repo Man’, which features a band that includes former Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, and couple of members of Blondie. It is the best song that he recorded in the whole of the ‘80s by several miles. In addition, there is the Burning Sensations’ cover of Jonathan Richmond’s classic number, ‘Pablo Picasso’ and three tunes from the fantastic Chicano punk band The Plugz, the best of which is their Spanish-language version of Johnny Rivers’ ‘Secret Agent Man’, renamed ‘Hombre Secreto’. Apparently The Plugz also released two extremely hard-to-find albums, ‘Electrify Me’ and ‘Better Luck’, during their short existence, which I’ve been seekin in vain for aeons.

Within a couple of years of the release of Repo Man, the American hardcore punk scene had largely retreated back to obscurity. It had been commercially eclipsed by the likes of the Pixies, with their watered-down version of the sound, and major figures like Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra had become as focused on other interests, such as spoken word, as they were on making music. This album, however, remains a storming representation of a musically aggressive, but largely humorous, scene and a cracking film.

Filed under: Great Lost Albums, Music by Flexmaster Nylon
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