Robert Plant and Green Book

[thozil]

So I just saw Green Book tonight, and saw that Robert Plant had some input into the soundtrack: 

HOW ROBERT PLANT HELPED CURATE THE ‘GREEN BOOK’ SOUNDTRACK

Robert Plant is partially responsible for the music found in Green Book, Peter Ferrelly's Academy Award-nominated movie about jazz pianist Don Shirley and his experiences with racism on tour in the early '60s. In a new interview, writer and director Peter Farrelly revealed that a dinner with Plant helped turn him on to the songs that were eventually used.

"My wife's friend was going out with Robert Plant of all people, we went out to dinner and I picked his brain," Farrelly told Forbes. "I said, 'Robert, tell me some songs that you listened to in the late '50s and early '60s that nobody plays anymore. I want to hear the cool songs to you but that you haven't heard on the radio in 50 years.'"

"It was an amazing night because I had just finished writing the script and he came to visit with his girlfriend, who was my wife's friend," he continued. "And my wife and her are both smokers, so they were outside smoking cigarettes and we were on YouTube and he was pulling up song after song after song and I was sitting there like a crazy student writing down all the stuff."

Plant put his encyclopedic knowledge of American music to the test, playing Farrelly songs like "Pretty Lil' Thing" by Sonny Boy Williamson and "Goodbye, My Lover, Goodbye" by Robert Mosley. Its soundtrack, which combines some of Plant's recommendations with Kris Bowers' original score and one of Shirley's own recordings, has received more than a million streams to date. Farrelly added that using more obscure songs had a few benefits.

"Number one is it didn't feel like Happy Days," he said, "like playing all the songs we've heard over and over. But also those songs were really inexpensive and I did not have a huge budget so I was able to come up with some sensational pop songs from the time that were long forgotten."

 

[reids]

Cool stuff. Robert should have his own limited edition radio station channel on Sirius XM named  “Percy’s picks” or something. He’s very knowledgeable and entertaining as we all know about his plantations. 

R😎

[The Only Way To Fly]

I saw RP a few years ago and you know the music they play over the PA before the show starts? I swear Plant must have had some input to what the audience heard before they went on. If not Plant, it was someone with good taste who dug really deep. I first heard a girl group called the Jaynetts singing Sally Go 'Round the Roses. I dug it so much I used my iPhone to record a snippet of the song and then used Google to ID who the group was. It's a killer track if you don't know it. 

RP having a show in Sirius would be awesome!  

[reids]

6 hours ago, The Only Way To Fly said:

I saw RP a few years ago and you know the music they play over the PA before the show starts? I swear Plant must have had some input to what the audience heard before they went on. If not Plant, it was someone with good taste who dug really deep. I first heard a girl group called the Jaynetts singing Sally Go 'Round the Roses. I dug it so much I used my iPhone to record a snippet of the song and then used Google to ID who the group was. It's a killer track if you don't know it. 

RP having a show in Sirius would be awesome!  

Exactly: from the blues, crooners, Elvis, early rock n roll, summer of love, folk,psychedelic, obscure, deep cuts,  punk, world, tribal and even some rare b-sides, Robert knows his music. You couldn’t ask for a better radio DJ or voice.

R😎👍

[Balthazor]

I just watched this movie last night. I usually stay away from Oscar films, since so often they're just dreadful. But this film was really quite good, and Viggo Mortensen was simply outstanding.

The funny thing is, watching the movie, I did at one point think that the soundtrack was exactly the kind of stuff Plant would love. I guess I was right about that.