Chariots Of Fire

December 6, 2017 10:56 PM

Vangelis, 1981 [YT playlist] Side A: Chariots Of Fire; Five Circles; Abraham's Theme; Eric's Theme; 100 Metres [which on the album runs directly into] Jerusalem.

Side B: Chariots Of Fire

posted by hippybear (15 comments total)

Let's just say Side B is more of an emotional meditation on something (maybe the arc of the film?) than anything else. And it's brilliant. [Ed. note: yes.]
posted by hippybear at 11:10 PM on December 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Vangelis' soundtrack for the original Blade Runner is another emotional and evocative musical creation. Like the film, it has a complicated release history, but here is one recent attempt at a complete version.
posted by fairmettle at 12:53 AM on December 7, 2017 [6 favorites]

Few soundtrack composers could match the early 80s output of peak Vangelis, between Cosmos (even if ir rehashed a lot of his 70s releases), Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner and Opera Sauvage.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:47 AM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

dun dundun dun dun DUUUUUUH. dun dundun dun DUH. dun dundun dun dun duh. dun dun dun DUN dun.
posted by lalochezia at 2:51 AM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love Vangelis, didn't realize this score was by them, and in fact have never seen the film. Thank you for this post! (I was just thinking yesterday that, based on how much I loved the synth-heavy Thor: Ragnarok soundtrack, I clearly need to be listening to more 80s synth.)
posted by brainwane at 3:48 AM on December 7, 2017

It’s a good flick. It’s actually about something. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
posted by Melismata at 4:05 AM on December 7, 2017

This was the first album I ever bought -- on cassette tape -- when I was twelve.
posted by Slothrup at 4:38 AM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

My cassette tape of this got worn out before 1988
posted by infini at 4:51 AM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

This was the first album I ever bought -- on cassette tape -- when I was twelve.

I don't think it was my first, but it was definitely one of my first 5. I loved the movie, too, because when I was 12 I had lived with my dad in Cambridge while he was on sabbatical. The Cambridge bits were shot on location in places I knew well and missed terribly once we came back home.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:06 AM on December 7, 2017

Thanks for posting this.
The title song was EVERYWHERE after the movie came out. It's nice to just listen to it again in the context of the music, because in the years after the movie, I feel like the track sort of became this iconic thing that was used for tons of stuff; it became the go-to soundtrack for training montages or hard-won inspirational victories and then it was parodied to death, kind of like the Jaws theme.

Personal anecdote: my dad was a sprinter in his youth and when this movie came out he DRAGGED us all to see it because it was about running and there was some family connection to Eric Liddell or something and I was 13 and dreading this long movie about the Olympics in 1924 or something. I think he also brought my grandparents to make it even more fun. Anyway it turns out that I really liked the film. And now I've become one of those dads who forces my kids to watch films that I think are "important" or good for them to see.
posted by chococat at 8:46 AM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

When the LP came out, I was 12-13 and just getting into meditation... Side B and musk incense! I went deep!
posted by pt68 at 9:48 AM on December 7, 2017

Now my earworms are playing in exaggerated slow motion.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:01 AM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Two summers ago I stood on the beach at St. Andrews in Scotland and listened to the entire score of Chariots of Fire. The city was in the distance, it was windy, and the ocean was appropriately Scottish. It was an emotional moment. Chariots of Fire was the first "serious" movie I had seen as a kid and one of the first albums I listened to religiously throughout my younger years.

And Side B is a masterpiece.

(I didn't run along the sand but I did scurry across the first tee like the runners did at the end of the opening sequence.)
posted by Quaversalis at 1:46 PM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of my favorite childhood memories is of listening to side B while riding through the San Bernardino mountains in the backseat of our family car.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:22 PM on December 7, 2017

I love this soundtrack. In many ways, it is one of the major soundtracks of my childhood, as my parents played it quite often in our home.

Thanks, hippybear. Your posts lately have really taken me down some nostalgic paths in my memories.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:24 PM on December 8, 2017