(click on the song titles to hear the music directly off my server)
It was John Hughes‘ 1991 Thanksgiving road movie Dutch that introduced me to one of my favorite bands of all time, Yello, a Swiss electronica duo comprised primarily of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank. They are most well known in North America for “Oh Yeah,” which was featured in Hughes’ 1980s classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“chika-chikaaaah!”).
Back then I had no clue as to who John Hughes was. I also didn’t have ready access to a music store of any kind, and was ordering my cassette tapes through a mail-order catalog. I looked at the album titles under Yello, and chose two at random – Stella and One Second - hoping to heaven that the song I wanted was on one of them. Thankfully, it was, and ”Oh Yeah” was on both.
“Desire” is probably the sexiest driving-at-night song ever, and was perfect for the scene when Dutch and Doyle hitched a late-night ride with two beautiful topless dancers. Immediately after that scene plays the beginning of Yello’s “Otto di Catania” (this link goes to YouTube) as the group pulls into a diner/gas station complex early in the morning. Mostly, however, Dutch features “Tied Up” whenever we see the deck of racy playing cards, and particularly during the end credits.
Hughes used Yello’s music in yet another one of his films, this one also a Thanksgiving road trip story. You guessed it: Planes, Trains & Automobiles. One of the most hysterical sequences is when Neal and Del are forced to share a queen-sized motel bed for the night (particularly when they wake up the next morning). When the two enter the motel room and realize in horror that there’s only one bed, we hear the opening measures to Yello’s “Lost Again,” a perfect song title considering this film’s storyline.
Most of my favorite Yello songs aren’t included in John Hughes movies, but there are two of them here, to give you a further sampling of their music and to encourage you to look into them. The One Second album includes two of my favorites: ”Call It Love” (which inspires wistful daydreams of driving a convertible along the nighttime Florida coastline with the warm wind whipping through my hair) and is then followed up with the equally exotic and romantic “Moon On Ice” (link goes to YouTube). Give Yello a chance . . . you’ll be glad you did.
really liked this post.i have bookmarked it in my digg and stumble accounts.