VA - Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack "The Big Chill" (1984)

Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill was one of Hollywood's first forays into baby-boomer navel-gazing, an examination of 60's idealism gone sour during the subsequent selfish excesses of the Me Decade and Go-Go 80's. It's Motown classics-dominated score became both a commercial sensation and generational touchstone, facets that often overlooked its status as one of the most artistically skillful pop song scores ever set to a film. This deluxe two CD edition won't defuse any of the often overweening nostalgia that's been its hallmark. Indeed, this slip-cased, expanded set (which includes the 1983 album's complete original track listing, as well as that of its 1984 sequel, More Songs From the Big Chill) often seems to relish in them on the new classic-rock dominated second disc, Bigger Chill: Music of a Generation. The second disc's tracks (which span more Motown, and a gamut from James Brown to Lesley Gore) are "inspired" by the film and not in it, but should more than please those enthralled by the original collection. Also included are previously unavailable instrumental versions of the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," Bert Kaempfert's "Strangers in the Night" and the mock TV "J.T. Lancer" theme, tracks that were the film's only "traditional" scoring touches. --Jerry McCulley