3. Bugsy Malone Original Soundtrack
Again, aren’t we the product of our parents? My mother loves musicals. Just in passing, I’ve seen West Side Story 946 times. And also Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. I don’t know if you’ve ever borne witness to Seven Brides For Seven Brothers but it would be fair to say that it was the product of a simpler time. Whatever you think about the relative benefits of political correctness – I’m largely in favour myself – it would be fair to say that the gender relationships illustrated in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers have moved on since. There’s a certain normalisation of the woman’s role on a burgeoning farming community and also a normalisation of what I can only describe as kidnap.
You get drawn into Bugsy Malone as a kid because of the porridge guns or whatever the hell they are. It’s got some genuinely incredible songs in it. Early on in Future Of The Left, we were always trying to cover ‘Bad Guys’ but nothing we could do made it more ridiculous than the original. There’s something amazing about ‘So You Wanna Be A Boxer’. It sounds like the Bronx. You’ve got ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’ which I suppose sounds like The Afghan Whigs. It’s the kind of song Greg Dulli would write for a lady to sing like ‘My Curse’ off Gentlemen. It’s got that earthy atmosphere to it. I absolutely love it. And the end when they have the reprise of ‘We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be’ and there’s the big porridge gun. I don’t know what it is. Porridge? Some kind of edible quasi-spunk that they’re flinging at each other. It’s a romp. Say it’s a romp. I want you to write romp. Not in inverted commas. Romp.

