|
|
|
|
|
|
One of the oddest appearances of a Live song can be found on the 1999 American widescreen "Collector's Edition" DVD release of Kevin Smith's Mallrats. For years, Live fans and collectors have been puzzled at the appearance of the unreleased Throwing Copper outtake called Lift Me Up which can be heard for a number of seconds during a very short deleted scene found in the bonus section of this DVD. Until recently, nobody had bothered doing any research into how Kevin Smith and View Askew Productions got ahold of the song. In the mid-'90s, there was a demo cassette of Throwing Copper-era material passed through the mail in the form of a cassette bootleg. Among the songs on this cassette was a low-quality version of the song which grew on most every fan at the time, and has continued to be an unreleased favourite in the Live community. The band never mentioned any plans to release the song through any means, which only added to the mystery of why it was apparently going to be in the Mallrats movie, and possibly even on the soundtrack in high quality sound. For 8 years this went unquestioned...until I decided to do some investigating.
I recently had an opportunity to bring up this issue with Mallrats director Kevin Smith himself, and I have to say that I got a pretty satisfactory answer. Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited only to obscure names of record industry personnel:
John Benson:
Dear View Askew crew (sorry),
It's a bit long, but please hear me out.
My name is John Benson and I am an avid collector of the band Live (in fact I have over 800 releases which contain the band in some fashion or another). I mention this in part because I know that Kevin collected (or still collects) comics, and also because my View Askew-related question involves the band Live. I believe I may have a question you have not been asked yet. People must say that all the time, I'm sure. But, this particular question deals with a very short bit of deleted footage that was made available on the original Mallrats DVD from 1999, but not on the 10th anniversary re-release. The piece I'm referring to is an 11-second clip running from 55:56 - 56:07 in the deleted scenes section of the original Mallrats DVD. It's the scene where we see La Fours rising out of the easter basket during sex with Trish (although Vincent Pereira comments that it's actually Claire Forlani's hand we see reaching up to pull La Fours back down into the basket). On the upper right corner of the screen during this scene is a timer which runs from 07:02:12 - 07:02:23 (in case that helps you track original source material, which it likely doesn't).
So, what am I getting at? Well, during this deleted scene you hear the beginning 11 seconds of an unreleased song by Live called Lift Me Up. The only lyrics you hear is the first line of the song ("Hold me up in the palm of your hand"). This is a song which was recorded for Live's 1994 album Throwing Copper but never made the final cut of the record. Recording and production of this song would have taken place around the same time much of the filming for Mallrats was being done. The full song was leaked to fans of the band by way of cassettes traded in the mail, but the sound quality was horrible - almost unlistenable. Thirteen years later, and fans of Live have still not been able to track down a quality recording of this song. In fact, the version we all got on dubbed tape back in the day remains the only version to have surfaced. Yet, somehow this song appears in this deleted scene with MUCH clearer sound quality than the one passed among fans.
Anyway, the scene got cut, and so did the song from the movie. So, my question to Kevin (or Vincent or anyone else who might be qualified to answer it) is: How did the View Askew team get in possession of a high-quality version of Live's unreleased song Lift Me Up? Furthermore, is there any way for me to convince View Askew to dig this track up from the vaults and make the full thing available to me? If lining up all the male crew members and blowing them one by one is the way, then I suppose that's what I'll have to do. But, keep in mind that while I have all the time in the world for such activities, your schedules might not work with mine.
Kevin Smith:
Ah, that song...
[name obscured], who was then our exec at MCA Music (later to become Universal Music), gave us the Live track Lift Me Up mixed in with a pile of music for soundtrack consideration. I loved it immediately - especially because it just... fit that wrap-up section of the movie. But a month later, when we were locking picture, we got word that Live wanted to hold onto that track. As much as I begged for Lift Me Up, the band's reps said they wanted to put it on their next album. So out of the movie it came.
Cut to circa... '99? 2000? Whenever that first Mallrats DVD came out. When we were putting it together, the only "long cut" of the movie I had was on this grainy-ass VHS (and maybe a BetaCam version, too - I can't recall how good that footage looked) - with picture and all tracks married together. but we didn't have the rights to use Lift Me Up. We'd re-approached Live about licensing the track for just that DVD release, hoping that since it'd never surfaced, that maybe they didn't feel as precious about the song any longer. But the word came back that they were still holding onto Lift Me Up - this time for a possible "Greatest Hits" collection. This meant we couldn't showcase the cut scenes the way we wanted to: the desire was to show go from that Trish/LaFours shot all the way to the credits, because there was cut stuff sprinkled throughout. Problem was Lift Me Up started with that Trish shot, then went all the way through to the "Where Are They Now" credits, when the Suzanne song kicked in. Without the rights to use the song, including that entire last seven-to-ten minutes of the flick was no longer an option. After much back-and-forth with MCA, they opted to let us include the Trish Easter Basket shot - even though it included a piece of Lift Me Up. It was a mightly nice thing for them to do, considering, technically, they didn't have the rights to include much more than six bars of the song. It didn't matter, though, as ultimately, the DVD came out, and no stink was made about the few seconds of Lift Me Up that was in there.
Cut to 2005? When the Mallrats 10th anniversary DVD came out. Since we'd re-inserted all that cut footage into the flick, the piece of Lift Me Up went away (the Belly song, as it was in the theatrical cut, scores that section).
Sadly, I lost the cassette that held Lift Me Up years ago. I have no copy of it. It's a shame, because it's a great song - and one they still haven't released/licensed. Every once in awhile, I go looking for it online, but to no avail. I wish they'd finally put it out there.
Interesting side note: we re-approached Live when we were cutting Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and asked them if we could use Lift Me Up in that flick, but the band declined to let it go once again. Even six years after Mallrats, they were still waiting for what their reps called "the right moment" to release it as a single. How crazy is that?
Although, for all I know, maybe the band reps were just being political and Live just hated both Mallrats and "Strike Back" and were waiting for a better movie to request this little-heard gem.
Hope all that info helped.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIDEO APPEARANCES
Mallrats (1999)
Collector's Edition - Widescreen | 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |
Front |
Spine |
DVD |
Matrix |
Back |
FORMAT:
PACKAGING:
CATALOG #:
BARCODE #:
ISBN #:
MATRIX #: | DVD
Standard DVD case
20019
0 2519-20019-2 5
0-7832-1965-2
Outer Ring: IFPI LL07 B01J2348 BB-200191 PEMC 21
Inner Ring: IFPI LL07 B01J2545 BB-200191 PEMC 01 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
