Almost Famous Original Soundtrack

Almost Famous is one of my all time favorite movies, a love song to music, the 1970s and to the innocence and wonder of youth. Based on Writer/Director Cameron Crowe's experiences as a teenaged music journalist for Creem and Rolling Stone Magazines. This is the movie that Crowe had been wanting to make all his life. I once did a video conference with Crowe and he explained that everything in the movie is based on some real event, even the sequence on the airplane happened to his wife Nancy Wilson's band Heart. I am so glad he used the clout he gained with Jerry Maguire to create this film, it is his finest film to date and so far the last good film he has made (Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown were lukewarm at best), this film also won him an Oscar for Best Screenplay.

Crowe, much like John Hughes and Richard Linklater, has always been able to use popular music on his soundtracks to excellent advantage (Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is forever linked to the image of John Cusack holding a boom box above his head from Crowe's film Say Anything). Almost Famous is filled to the brim with wonderful 1970s music and there is no way this soundtrack album could include every song (especially since it is only a single disc). It is also very expensive to include certain songs on soundtrack albums. This soundtrack, however, contains a nice sampling of songs from the movie and also a good sampling of, often obscure, songs from the 1970s era. There are big name musicians like Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys and Elton John yet the songs featured here are not obvious hits for instance "Feel Flows" is an excellent song from The Beach Boys forgotten 1971 album Surf's Up. There are also some lesser known artists such as The Seeds, Clarence Carter and Yes. Many of the songs on this soundtrack are also not really obviously in the movie I can't remember Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story" in the film at all. The one thing I wish the soundtrack had more of is the songs performed by the film's fictional band Stillwater, when I saw the film I thought Stillwater was a real group and went searching for their albums. Original songs were written for the band to perform in the movie but only one, "Fever Dog," is contained on this soundtrack.

Overall this is a great companion to a wonderful film, that can be enjoyed with or without the pictures. Much like the main character of the film this soundtrack will help you discover lost gems and the sheer wonder of music.