Digimon: The Movie
Music From the Motion Picture
Maverick
Being the proud father of a beautiful four-month old baby girl means that I’m no longer allowed to sleep in on weekend mornings. As a result, I’ve rediscovered Saturday morning cartoons in a big way, and one of the ones that’s caught my eye (though not nearly as much as Static Shock or Batman Beyond) is Digimon, a fairly harmless action/adventure cartoon that involves six kids that master “digital monsters.” Basically, it’s Pokemon in cyber-drag for older kids. I’ve already given this much more explaination than most people are interested in. Anyway, the inevitable movie has come out (no, I haven’t seen it – yet), and with it, the inevitable soundtrack. It’s almost worth the idea of seeing the movie to try to figure out how the hell they put this mostly harmless Japanese import to the tune of recent pop hits by the likes of Smash Mouth, Fatboy Slim, Barenaked Ladies, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and most curiously of all, Less Than Jake’s “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads.” There’s also the by-now requisite for any soundtrack ’80s cover on here, as Len take on Kim Wilde’s oft-covered “Kids In America,” plus a few songs from the TV show. Basically, it’s wholly unremarkable as a soundtrack. So why waste time on it? Well, there are a few interesting curiosities here. First, the show’s infernally catchy theme song appears in two versions, an extended version that appears as a hidden track (more on that later), and most hilariously, in a rap version called “Digi Rap.” Back to the hidden tracks, in addition to the extended Digimon theme, there are four more that seem to have little or no relation to anything else on the record. The last three are decent pop-punk confections, and with titles like “It’s Getting Stranger in Bed,” seem a bit out of place (I should note that these tracks are not listed anywhere on the CD). Weird. But in any event, this CD seems about as harmless as the show itself – it’s decent as a collection of recent pop hits, but other than the few kid-friendly tunes from the show, has little connection to those loveable digital monsters – or anything resembling reality, for that matter.
Maverick Recording Company, 9348 Civic Center Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210; http://www.maverickrc.com
