Trainspotting soundtrack

There is a handful of films where the soundtracks are made up of clever use of already released or maybe rediscovered songs, where the songs just work really well with the visuals but they also are great listening as albums in their own right.

George Lucas started it with American Graffitti and Scorcese always had great soundtracks. I even found myself completely out of character out of enjoying Layla at the end of Goodfellas…. (That's the magic of cinema, folks. I normally only enjoy the very end of Layla, when I know it's finished and isn't coming back).

The soundtracks for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are my favourite in this respect. They're put together with a real and obvious love and the songs are a great mixture of the popular, the forgotten and the obscure…As the joke goes…A man is tied to a chair in a disused warehouse, he's been tortured, doused in petrol and had his ear cut off. …And that is the only way that the A & R man would listen to Louise's version of Stuck In The Middle With You.

The makers of Trainspotting had definitely been paying attention and the soundtrack is a stormer, matching the film scenes cleverly but standing up as a great listen in it's own right. The opening track Iggy Pop's Lust for life has since become film makers first choice to accompany any form of running…and it's an absolute lesson in how to keep things simple musically. Hunt and Tony Sales on bass and drums play with the absolute confidence that lets you know they could do absolutely anything they wanted with the riff…but aren't going to because it doesn't need it and they have nothing to prove.

A useful game to try at home or work, to pass the time or to make life-changing decisions is when confronted with a choice just think "What would Iggy Pop do?" And then you can put you trousers back on and turn off the drug hoover.

Iggy Pop is a bit of a recurring theme throughout Trainspotting the novel. Quite right too. My favourite Iggy Pop line in a song is "Jesus, this is Iggy". My favourite Iggy Pop line in an interview though is his response to the question of how he relaxed. "I like to garden"

I saw him in Birmingham at the Hummingbird in about 1990. He ran on stage just wearing jeans and a leopard skin waistcoat. The waistcoat stayed on for one song. That's meticulous stagecraft and the kind of costume changes Madonna is still working towards.

By the end of the gig there may have been technical problems with his microphone…. at least I assumed that was why he took out the spare microphone he'd kept in his jeans…at least I think it was a microphone.

Connoisseurs of Channel 4's post pub kebab of a show The Word may also remember the collective look of alarm as the front row of the audience realised that Iggy Pop was careering towards them wearing a pair of transparent plastic trousers…spare microphone and all.

The other Iggy Pop song on the album is Nightclubbing. Obviously it sounds fantastic but what jumped out at me this time round is that it is a blue print for the early Human League sound, a fact not missed by the Human League who covered it

The revelation for me on the album though is Blur's Sing. It's a perfectly judged song for the film, woozy, disorientating and down right scary. The guitars are reverbed beyond recognition and the bass and drums are hammering on the walls. Amazingly it's from their first album when they were supposed to be little baggy popsters.

Damon Albarn has a solo track included, Closet Romantic. It's veers between a novelty hat seaside romp and deranged fairground organ and brass band. You just know he was trying to get some feeling of menace and thinking about Brighton Rock.

I can't remember if there is a scene in the film with New Orders Temptation…but no excuses are needed to include it. I always take New Order for granted a bit but Temptation is immediately and unmistakably them. It's got the little sequencer riffs, mechanised drumming and you can almost hear Hooky's motorcycle boots. The song's begins like an ending, as it fades in with Barneys' jiggly guitar and Wo hoo vocals. When it first came out there was an unfeasibly long 12inch version that is still playing on a forgotten turntable somewhere.

Indie Pop Pinups (and I would) Elastica and Sleeper both have tracks on the album. Elastica's 2:1 sounds great but sadly Sleeper's song is a very close but very dire version of Atomic…Hamster cheeked Louise Wener vocal style was always based on using breathiness to cover for up for lack of range…. but the ways she sings the actual line "Atomic" is somewhere between hammy Hammer Horror and the little girl who has raided the dressing up box trying to be scary. Not only is it very bad, it's also very long. A nightmare combination.

Underworld's Born Slippy sounds huge. It's lager lager chorus may have got sung too raucously and too often at too many clubs that are best avoided, but as a listener you still get sucked into the song. Is there something going on there or is he just shouting at traffic?

Always good to hear Lou Reed's Perfect Day but the way it's used in the overdose scene just makes it even more bizarre that anyone connected with the Children in need celebrity cover version thought it would be a good thing to do. Wasn't it always obviously one of Lou Reeds drug songs? Why not just do a medley of Heroin and Waiting For The Man possibly with Julian Cope's Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed thrown in.

Will Elton John be covering the complete works of Spiritualized?

Mile End by Pulp another song about slumming, a Lo-Fi alternative Common People. This time without the choice. Musically jaunty but lyrically it's all piss and car theft. Perfect

I've been playing the soundtrack quite a lot, especially on a recent holiday in Wales where my packing had been touched by the spirit of Iggy. I'd managed to pack music, but no trousers. I remembered my bucket and spade though.