Streets of Fire OST -or- Dan Hartman's Undeserved Moment in the Sun

Raise your hands if you remember this movie. Hm? Didn't think so. It was quite the 80's block of cheese. Streets of Fire: A Rock and Roll Fable!!! Yeah... uh.. right.

The soundtrack did sell though. Why? A little tune called 'I can Dream About You' drove this soundtrack right up the charts. You remember the song, I'm sure... it's a nice little funky Lionel Richie-ish diddy done up in typical mid 80's top-20 sheen. It's chorus was quite infectious, and it was featured prominently towards the end of the aforementioned movie. Quite a stroke of genius to pull this particular song as a single, it was.

Genius. Yeah. To the fans of songwriter-producer extrordinare Jim Steinman, it was blasphemy. The opening theme of the movie, 'Nowhere Fast', and the unabashed, melodramatic epic 'Tonight is What it Means to be Young' got about as much recognition as that OTHER song by The Knack.

What makes these songs stand above the rest of the forgotten soundtrack, which included cuts by such STARS as Ry Cooder and The Fixx? Simple. It seemed every artist who contributed to the soundtrack was aiming for top 40 success. Jim Steinman was interested in making some damn powerful music that would fit in with the movie AND pound people's emotional cores with a sledgehammer. With both of his contributions he succeeded admirably.

The opening theme of the movie, Nowhere Fast, starts off with a frantic, uptempo drum beat and a pounding piano riff that is loosely recycled from Jim Steinman's 4-minute classical tour-de-force, The Storm, from his solo Bad for Good album. The vocals come on strong, 2 men, one female, singing in a beautiful harmony, never missing a beat together. The chrous is almost a mantra for any fed-up-with-life teenager..

"You and me, we're going nowhere slowly/
And we gotta get away from the past.../
There's nothing wrong with goin nowhere baby/
But we should be going nowhere fast/"

Steinman has a knack for making his mantra-like choruses the absolute catchiest things you'll ever hear, and this is no exception, wrapped up in a delectable harmony with the piano and incessant drum beat powering to the front of the mix.

Nowhere Fast switches gears midway through (Something Jim Steinman can do at the drop of a hat), leaving all commercial pretensions behind and entering a church-hymn-on-steriods passasge of 'God Speeeed.. God speeeedd... God speeed... Speed us awayyyyyyyy'. A fan of The Jim recognizes this part as being lifted straight from the title track of his Bad for Good LP, but no one can explicitly borrow from himself and make it appear this fresh and new like Jim Steinman can (And he's done it many a time throughout his career).

(At this point I'd like to say that the 'band' performing Steinman's two songs is called 'Fire Inc.', which really, isn't a real band at all, they're the backup musicians Steinman uses on all his projects, minus a vocalist a la Meat Loaf or Bonnie Tyler or himself. He had to market an actual band in order for this music to see the light of day, I guess. The lineup for Fire Inc is as follows...

Piano: Roy Bittan (Yes, Springsteen's Roy Bittan)
Guitar: Eddie Martinez
Bass: Steve Buslowe
Drums and Programming: Jim Bralower
Male vocals: Rory Dodd and Eric Troyer
Lead female vocal on Nowhere Fast: Laurie Seargent
Lead female vocal on Tonight...: Holly Sherwood

Upon hearing Holly Sherwood's voice, I've been known to orgasm on the spot. But I digress)

Steinman's other contribution to the soundtrack, Tonight is What it Means to Be Young, is another beast entirely. This is a full-on epic of the kind only Jim Steinman can write (often imitated by such hacks as Diane Warren). A beautiful, haunting piano melody coupled with an attention-grabbing thunderclap starts the song off and Holly Sherwood carries the early part with her magnificent voice. After her introductory verse, a motorcycle effect much like that in the song 'Bat out of Hell' kicks the tune into an uptempo, harmony-drenched overdrive, with Rory Dodd and Eric Troyer backing up Ms. Sherwood with authority. The song builds upon itself into a feverish climax with three overdubbed verses meshing in perfect harmony. It really is a great song that has often been hailed as Steinman's best (even though that's not my personal opinion).

Wait, oh yeah, there is the rest of the soundtrack.. but it is fairly unremarkable... with average tunes contributed by The Fixx, Ry Cooder, a couple of nameless 80's would-be one hit wonders, etc. Everything else on this soundtrack is dead-mediocre compared to the two Jim Steinman monsterpeices, and that includes Dan Hartman's moment of glory, 'I can Dream About You'.

So in short, the Streets of Fire soundtrack is a lost gem for fans of the work of Jim Steinman (For a bit of background, let's just say if you like Meat Loaf or Total Eclipse of the Heart, you will LOVE this. Steinman was behind it all. Check your album's liner notes). It really doesn't have much bearing on the movie itself, which was, let's face it, fairly crappy, and the filler material has no staying power whatsoever. The two Steinman songs bring this otherwise mediocre soundtrack up to three stars, but as much as I adore the work of the man, I can't rate this soundtrack higher on basis of two songs alone.