Bond Under Covers

(Note: We are happy to bring another guest post from  the pseudonymous Historian and Professor Mortis, a dead film resuscitator, conversational flaneur, and all-around master of media. Enjoy. And pray he writes again!)

 

I grew up in a house full of James Bond fans.  My older brother was the most fanatical, but we would go as a family to see the new ones in the theater, and we watched them together when they aired on TV.  Before I saw the films, I heard all the theme songs.  How?  My brother owned an LP of Bond themes.  A cherished childhood memory is dancing along to From Russia with Love in my parents living room, misinterpreting the lyrics as “the masher with love” (imaging a henchman with a potato masher instead of a hand, like Jaws had steel teeth).  I still love Bond movies, and I still love their theme songs, and their covers.  That’s right, covers (and you believed TheElderJ when he said that I hate covers, didn’t you?).

Paper Route Playlist

A Note from the Elder J: Today we bring you a guest post  (the first of a series) from our friend Professor Mortis who by day plies his trade with information and books and by night terrorizes the world by bringing the dead (movies) back to life (he has a great blog, if you don’t read it, you should). He has appeared in blog posts before as the Historian and he made an indelible (and at times uncleanable) impression on my life when we were roommates as young cubs. And, besides, Who doesn’t love cross-over episodes?

When the elder and younger js started this blog, the elderj offered me the chance to do a guest post or two.  I think we both assumed it would be a crossover post.  I write about movies, he writes about music, so wouldn’t a post about great film soundtracks, or great uses of popular music in film, or even, hell, a list of the best Bond theme songs be perfect?  I thought of reviving an old post that I started for my blog, “Music to Kick Ass to”, about songs that ran through my head during matches when I all too briefly took up Judo again a few years back.  I was walking one day, and a couple of songs came up on my phone that pulled me immediately back to my days as a paper boy.  A completely different idea occurred to me, which took root in my consciousness and demanded to be written.