Friday, April 28, 2006

Darth Sincerity

EXPERIMENT #86
"DARTH SINCERITY"


FILM

Star Wars (1995 "Faces" VHS).

ALBUM

The Gray Race, Bad Religion's eleventh record and their first without founding member Brett Gurewitz (who would eventually return after his label Epitaph was no longer the "it" record company). Contains the semi-hit "A Walk." First Bad Religion album I ever heard, and the only one I listen to on a consistent basis. Features wacky packaging, with tons of black and white photos of people completely unrelated to the band.

SYNCHS

- "Them and Us" begins at the exact moment the Tantive IV flies onscreen, being chased by the much larger star destroyer.

- The line "it fills us all with trepidation" in "Them and Us" coincides with the Rebel soldiers in the Tantive IV reacting to the frightening noises outside the ship as it is captured by the star destroyer.

- The breakdown in "Them and Us" coincides with the explosion of the Tantive IV door; the lines "we can take them all" are repeated as the stormtroopers enter the ship.

- The first two lines of "A Walk" ("I'm going for a walk, not the after dinner kind") coincide with the shot of R2-D2 receiving the Death Star plans from Princess Leia (you could say that Artoo was "going for a walk" to deliver the plans to Obi-Wan Kenobi).

- When the two lines mentioned above are heard for the second time, we see Rebel soldiers being marched through the Tantive IV corridor.

- The line "all alone I'll be an empire" in "A Walk" is heard as we see Darth Vader choking the Rebel soldier.

- The lines "I'm going for a walk and there's nothing you can do, 'cause I don't have to live like you" are heard in "A Walk" as Artoo makes his way into the escape pod, ignoring C-3PO's verbal warnings.

- The slow part in the beginning of "Parallel" coincides with the escape pod's flight to Tatooine; the fast part begins the moment the film cuts to Princess Leia being lead to Vader.

- The lyric "our lives are parallel" in "Parallel" is heard as Artoo and Threepio are seen walking out of the escape pod.

- The phrase "independent trajectories" in "Parallel" coincides with Threepio kicking Artoo and deciding to go a different way on Tatooine.

- The line "have you been to the desert?" is heard in "Punk Rock Song" as Threepio walks through the Tatooine desert.

- The camera is on Artoo, who is looking around the canyon on Tatooine, when the line "there's so many other fuckin' robots out there" is heard in "Punk Rock Song."

- The stormtrooper holds up the piece of Threepio he finds in the desert just as the line "everything you find" is heard in "Empty Causes."

- The line "hey mister, don't point at me" in "Nobody Listens" coincides with the Jawa pointing his gun at Threepio aboard the sandcrawler.

- As R5-D4 explodes, the phrase "suffering, decay" is heard in "Pity the Dead."

- "Spirit Shine" begins the moment Princess Leia's hologram appears in Luke's room; the song ends moments after her hologram disappears.

- The phrase "bald dismay" is heard in "Streets of America" as Luke gets up from the table, disgusted with his Uncle's rules.

- Right after the scream in the middle of "Ten in 2010," Luke and Threepio look around as if they heard it.

- The line "scared shitless 'cause evil abounds" in "Come Join Us" coincides with Luke's horrified reaction to Obi-Wan's story about his father's death.

- The chorus to "Come Join Us" ("come join us") is heard as Obi-Wan tries to convince Luke to come to Alderaan with him.

- The line "what was once is reduced to remembrance" in "Cease" coincides with Admiral Motti's remarks about Vader's "sad devotion" to an "ancient religion."

NOTES

Although I wasn't expecting much success with this experiment, I can't say I'm surprised by the results. This may sound strange, but I've always associated The Gray Race with Star Wars. I was listening to it constantly around the time the news broke about the Special Editions in late '96. Maybe that's some kind of sign. Maybe I should do an entire week of records that were out and popular during the late nineties Star Wars resurgence.

Hey, yeah, I like that idea! Actually, I could do one week of records that were on the charts between May and December of 1977 (the first peak of Star Wars hysteria), and the next week, all the big ones from January to March of 1997 (when the SEs were out). I think I'd be into that. Let me do a little research and see what I could possibly hook up. I'm excited!

I'm considering a second playthrough with Bad Religion here. What do you think? Yay? Nay? Could be interesting. Aw hell, I'll do it, just because I know I'll have thirty-eight minutes to burn sometime this weekend.

If anyone out there knows Greg Graffin's or Greg Hetson's e-mail address, why don't you go ahead and send them a link to this? They might get a kick out of it. Thanks in advance!

2 Comments:

Blogger Mike said...

Give The Empire Strikes First a shot maybe?

12:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ouch, my brain hurts.

3:57 PM  

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