Movie music is huge when a small indie film can inspire two separate discs of soundtrack music. Air did the score; now comes the Music from the Motion Picture, a somewhat dicier proposition. This soundtrack seeks to replicate the feel of mainstream mid-'70s radio, and to that end, it's a wild success. I was there and this is what it sounded like-- from the banal pop of 10cc to the raw (okay, medium-rare) power of Heart to the epic romanticism of Styx. Forget disco, CBGB's, punk, and new wave. That stuff didn't play in Peoria until much later. For a real taste of what a suburban kid playing "Space Invaders" was likely to hear pumping over the arcade sound system, this collection is the real thing. The problem is, no one ever said mainstream '70s radio was particularly good. It was like the mainstream radio of any other time, with a few true innovators, a glut of imitators, and a handful of the truly awful. All are represented here in their proper proportions.

The innovators are pretty much limited to Al Green (who contributes the quintessential "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart") and Todd Rundgren (whose "Hello It's Me" and "A Dream Goes on Forever" influenced sophisticated pop revivalists like the Aluminum Group and the High Llamas). The imitators, naturally, are more numerous. For faux-Zep riffery, few could touch Heart, and they contribute two of their best anthems: "Magic Man" (heard frequently in 1978 in my hometown of East Lansing, Michigan, in tribute to local hero Earvin "Magic" Johnson) and "Crazy on You." Sloan's "Everything You've Done Wrong" is, of course, from the '90s, but it fits in just fine here, sounding like a bouncy slice of pre-disco Bee Gees, and Air's two tracks ("Ce Matin La," off Moon Safari, and a remix of "Playground Love," from The Virgin Suicides score) also sport convincing period camouflage.

After that, it gets a bit worse. The Hollies are way past their '60s peak on "The Air That I Breathe," a corny ballad I always thought was by Air Supply, probably because it had "air" in its title. Similarly puny and insipid is 10cc's "I'm Not in Love," guaranteed to induce headaches in anyone born before 1970. Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again" is an undistinguished McCartney rip-off, and things really bottom out on the album closer, "Come Sail Away" by Styx. It's all coming back to me now: except for disco, which only came at the end, '70s radio sucked. No wonder those virgins committed suicide.

-Mark Richard-San