Soundtrack “Performance” (1970)

Even if you haven’t seen the film — and heck, if you haven’t, why not? — this is a remarkably satisfying soundtrack album, put together by Jack Nitzsche and featuring Ry Cooder on guitar. (In places this sounds extremely close to Cooder’s own scores, such as for Paris, Texas.) Randy Newman sings “Gone Dead Train” in a much more urgent style than anything on his own early albums, while Mick Jagger’s version of “Memo from Turner” — with Cooder on guitar and members of Traffic — is a gloriously sleazy blues that should be in any Stones fan’s collection. (If you’ve only heard the Stones’ own fumbled version on Metamorphosis — according to legend, deliberately sabotaged by Keith as revenge for Mick screwing Anita Pallenberg on set — you really haven’t heard the song at all.) And how can you pass up a soundtrack that has the good sense to include the Last Poets’ “Wake Up Niggers”? (The first “rap” I’d ever heard.) –Brad