A Kind Of Love Story
My Mixtape’s A Masterpiece is a weekly feature in which a guest compiles a playlist around some theme. This week, Brad Milne assembles 15 songs to soundtrack a love story. Read Brad’s thoughts on each song and listen along to the Spotify playlist on top and/or the YouTube playlist at the bottom of the post.
For this playlist, I have decided to try something a little different. One of my earlier playlists, I chose songs for a horror movie that didn’t exist and thought it wasn’t a bad idea. So, in the spirit of that, I thought I would try do the same thing, but this time the movie’s a kind of love story—but not a romance, if that makes sense.
The leads of this melodrama are Paul Garrity and Toby Weeks. Toby is the spunky charismatic fetching frontwoman for Grease Monkeys, a festival headliner. Paul is what passes for a journalist these days when the very word has almost no value left, obviously nowhere near the level of celebrity of Toby. The pair were old friends, who became bedfellows but never had the pleasure of sharing each other. They both come to the valley with the intention of reunion, but she detonates the music world with a declaration during the closing set of the band’s opening night.
When the story begins, the pair are on opposite ends. The song that opens the film is “Though I Hear You Calling, I Will Not Answer” by The White Stripes. Toby is calling her oldest friend who sleeps soundly, half a world away in his makeshift loft in a cabin he and his old man built the summer before cancer took his father. Eventually through sleepy eyes he answers.
We next see the leads heading towards a valley in the sun-soaked California desert. They both are gazing out the windows of their respective planes. She enjoys all the first luxury of an enormous airliner, while Paul is comfortably cramped against his window seat next to a manspreader and his wallflower girlfriend. Cliche as I am sure it is, Phantom Planet’s “California” plays over the moment.
The meet-cute happens at the luggage carousel at LAX, where he waits for her, all the longing of the years spent without one another in their lives builds, until they see each other; her coming down an escalator surrounded by bandmates, him standing stoic by the carousel waiting to embrace her. “This Year’s Love” by David Gray accompanies the pair finally swallowing each other up in a warm embrace.
Next, the pair are comfortably sharing silence with one another. Both soaking up the contentment in each other’s presence from years as friends, the moment fraught with a “will they won’t they” tension. The city of Los Angeles whizzes by through the windows as “Ride” by The Vines plays loudly.
As the first night comes to an end, the duo manages to keep their love unrequited and unspoken as they fall asleep in each other’s arms, Sheryl Crow’s “I Shall Believe” in the background.
The next morning, the two friends race in a prearranged Uber Lincoln Town-car, passing a joint back and forth, while Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” plays. The couple watches lazily out the window as the California coast flies by in the background.
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ “It’ll All Work Out” accompanies Paul as he watches from the side of the enormous stage while the band blows through their set in sound check, the amazing and enormous venue shot from a drone.
“Interstate Love Song” by Stone TemplePilots is on in the background as Paul and Toby wander around the expansive polo grounds. The two are just enjoying one another’s company away from the rest of the band, trying to disappear into the anonymity of the crowd and dodge her enthusiastic fans. To just have a moment of the two of them before the chaos of the weekend swallows them.
The next day the pair spends almost entirely together, testing out their beginning of something. Wanting to see if it is real, as they visit the highlights the state has to offer. The song “Sunday Shining” by Finley Quaye plays loud and louder over a montage of their day.
It’s the day before the band’s concert and it ends with Toby and Paul enjoying karaoke at a dive bar she used to haunt when Grease Monkeys first started getting booked. The pair each sing a tune—“And When I Die” by Blood, Sweat, & Tears for Paul, and “Date With The Night” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for Toby.
The night ends with pair falling into bed with one another joined by “Finally” by CeCe Peniston, before the pair makes love for the first time. It’s a tender moment between the two, but the camera fades before anything scandalous is revealed.
Finally, after the concert where Toby shocks the music world announcing that the band’s concert will be their last, “The Sound Of Silence” by Disturbed plays while the band and Paul accompany Toby for the last time. None of her bandmates are happy with her, and even Paul is distant, unsure of what he is even doing there.
When Paul wakes the next morning, it is alone. Toby has left, leaving a note behind. The Kills’ “The Last Goodbye” plays as Paul reads his “Dear John” letter where she tells him the truth. Her last moments on screen are her arriving at a building that could only be a medical clinic. The last we see of Paul he is getting on a plane to return home.
As the screen fades to black and the end credits roll, “Can’t Keep” by Eddie Vedder plays—a melancholy tune for a melancholy ending.
