Friday, March 27, 2026

CHAPTER 24


Don't Box Me In - Wikipedia 
Rumble Fish Review | Movie - Empire
 
#77: STEWART COPELAND & STAN RIDGWAY:

"Don't Box Me In"

from the album Rumble Fish (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Released: November 1983
 
 
Was it really that long ago? I had it in my head that this was early '85. But no, it comes from that weirdly snowy liminal period over winter '83-4 where nothing was really settled and most unattributed pop records were...foreboding.


Naturally it would make complete sense for this to seep from the back door of Synchronicity. Hadn't Copeland semi-joked that they should kick Sting out of the band and replace him with the guy from Wall Of Voodoo? This is how such a mongrelisation would sound and it certainly remains considerably more bearable than "King Of Pain" if less superficially explicable. The song, as such, plays out over the closing credits of Rumble Fish, just after Matt Dillon is eyeing the Pacific and experiencing the glorious post-nothingness that evaded the Motorcycle Boy. It is basically the Police but with pop's Martian Jimmy Stewart on vocals and oblique harmonica. It disturbs, it irrupts, why is it here?
 
10 Things I Learned: Rumble Fish | Current | The Criterion Collection 


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