Give My Regards to Broadstreet (1984) 


 


  1. No More Lonely Nights
  2. Good Day Sunshine/Corridor Music
  3. Yesterday
  4. Here, There and Everywhere
  5. Wanderlust
  6. Ballroom Dancing
  7. Silly Love Songs
  8. Not Such a Bad Boy
  9. So Bad
  10.No Values/No More Lonely Nights
  11.For No One
  12.Eleanor Rigby/Eleanor's Dream
  13.The Long and Winding Road
  14.No More Lonely Nights
  15.Good Night Princess

 

During the sixties, The Beatles made a string of goofy movies. Some were well received, others were not, but they were mostly made with the idea of "fun" in mind. I'm guessing that McCartney was kind of trying to do the same thing here. I don't really know since I never saw the movie. I heard it wasn't that good, and the movie never "made it" to the city where I was living at the time (a pretty large city of about 500,000 people). Not surprisingly, no one really missed it.

A lightweight approach was taken for the film, and the same thing could be said for the music here. With the exception of a few songs, everything here has been released before - either by Paul as a solo artist or from The Beatles' days. I will say this, hearing all of the older songs newly recorded, if anything, is at least interesting. With the exception of So Bad (ironically the "newest" thing here, just being released on his last album Pipes of Peace), all of the songs are good songs, and he does justice, somewhat, to all of them here.

Listening to the album, though, you really have to wonder who would ever put this album on and really want to listen to the whole thing front to back. Sure, it's kind of cool to hear the new versions of some of these older songs, but it doesn't really warrant any time of devoted attention. Especially when most people probably never saw the film, nor can really relate to what they're listening to in the first place. To be fair though, most "soundtrack" albums are a bit like this. Other than the few "good" songs, these kind of albums tend to be without focus, sometime trying to replicate something in the actual film that only makes sense when watching the movie.

As mentioned, most of the new material here is quite good. It's very sporadic, and somewhat buried, so most people would never find such pleasant pieces as No Values or Not Such a Bad Boy. One wishes he may have reserved these songs for one of his "regular" albums around this time. Lord knows those records could have used some decent songs. Goodnight Princess is a throw-off tribute to the ballroom days of yesteryear. An instrumental that serves its purpose, even though it doesn't really add any substance. The one "hit" song here, is the very pleasing No More Lonely Nights, which is aided by a killer guitar solo by none other than Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. For some reason, there are multiple versions of the track on the album, depending on which "bonus version" of the cd you have. Differences are small, and all the versions of the same song tend to wear one down. This is pretty much a throwaway album. But it can be a pleasant listen in places.

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