Various Artists

Cecil B. Demented Soundtrack

The soundtrack for John Watersı new movie Cecil B. Demented lacks any sort of unity among tracks and contains only one standout song. However, the album succeeds in conveying Watersı distaste for corporate Hollywood.

The only memorable song on the record is Mobyıs "Opening Credit Theme." On this track, the performer delivers an interesting update of the John Williams genre of film scoring, adding heavy electric bass and pounding drum samples to the old symphony orchestra record, Music for the Movies. Certainly it's contrived, but unlike anything on Mobyıs last album, a Dj-lite and a 21st Century Coon show combined, it works in raising the listenerıs pulse a beat.

The recordıs most interesting tracks are DJ Class and Teflon the Bullıs "Bankable Bitch" and DJ Class and Mayo's "No Budget." Both songs were co-written by John Waters, and include lines like "Ainıt nobody putting us in turnaround, motherfucker," and "No fucking call sheets, yo." The point Waters attempts to make with these songs, and its a good one, is that Hip-Hop artists, in the age of Wu Wear and Street Teams, have become as business-savvy as any Beverly Hills M.B.A., and richer too.

This fact is not a matter of great concern for Waters, and one gets the feeling that the director gets a kick out of rappers with more gold rings than gold records. When he closes the record with two versions of the standard "Ciao," one performed by Liberace and the other by hardcore singer Jerome Dillon, the listener might start to believe that Waters is making something of a concept album with this record, his point being that all entertainment genres have given up any revolutionary roots it once had and settled for a mansion on a hill.

It's as if the world of bad taste that Waters so actively promoted in his early films has reappeared in a crasser if less dog-pooplike way in mainstream entertainment. Don't buy the Cecil B. Demented Sountrack. The songs aren't very good. But to his credit, Waters, an unlikely messenger, raises some interesting issues about what we watch and listen to.