Songs Inspired by Movies or Books

Face First – The Dukes

Free music - The Dukes

“I had a girlfriend,

A triscuit.

She said a triscuit,

A biscuit.”

If this song conjures up images of fortune teller booths and playing music on giant pianos with your feet at FAO Schwartz then you’ve probably got the movie where this song comes from. That’d be “Big” with Tom Hanks. The fortune teller robot, Zoltan turned a 13 year old kid into an adult rejected by his parents because they didn’t recognize this strange person. Of course he ends up getting a job, a chick and a totally swanky apartment. It just goes to show you that you don’t necessarily need an education to make it.

The lyrics in the song tell the whole story of the movie and even has a sample sound bite in the beginning directly from the movie. It’s a double hit of nostalgia with “Big” being such a classic growing up movie and then, there’s the whole ska thing which didn’t last for too long but peaked somewhere around the time “Baseketball” was made.

Noah and the Whale – Jocasta

“When the baby’s born,

Let’s turn it to the wolves,

So that ice will surely grow,

Over weak and brittle bone”

This song has been the folksiest telling of the Story of Oedipus Rex that I’ve heard. The violin combined with the acoustic guitar with Charlie Fink’s rough voice that is vaguely reminiscent of a mix between David Byrne and Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel. Instead of focusing on the story’s particulars, it focuses more on the idea of fate versus free will. The song talks about how the moon controls the tide but what about the decisions that people make? That’s the whole crux of the story in Oedipus Rex. The gods knew of Oedipus’ fate even before he was born. His parents tried to overcome the fate that was dispensed to them but ultimately succumbed to it.