Panel from Will Eisner's The Spirit comic strip, September 29, 1940
From what I can tell, DC art-rock band Shudder to Think was on the verge of falling to pieces by the time they did the First Live, Last Rites soundtrack in 1998. After a string of well-regarded albums, they'd released the underwhelming (if not-so-bad in retrospect) 20,000 BC album the previous year, and guitarist Nate Larson was on the verge of leaving the band. Regardless, First Live, Last Rites is a pretty cool idea, with the band writing a variety of retro-tinged songs to be sung by some of their favorite vocalists. They came up with some inspiring combinations, like having Jeff Buckley sing the soaring soul song "I Want Someone Badly", putting Cheap Trick's Robin Zander's vocals over the goofy power-pop of "Automatic Soup", or giving Mimi and Alan from Low the Spector-ish duet "Just Really Want to See You".
And then there's "When I Was Born, I Was Bored", a shrill, pointless, angst-ridden exercise in aping the then-current style of Smashing Pumpkins - in case you missed what they were going for, they went ahead and put Billy Corgan's singing on the track. It's under two minutes long, but it almost negates the argument that the rest of the soundtrack makes - that Shudder to Think could strip away their eccentricities and focus on pure songcraft with a set of rewarding genre exercises. The melody is just annoying throughout, and then it ends with a repeated line about a werewolf for some reason. One interesting footnote about this song - the drums are played by Kevin March, formerly of the Dambuilders and shortly hereafter recruited to play in one of the later incarnations of Guided By Voices. So there's that, I guess.
"When I Was Born, I Was Bored" by Shudder to Think (ft. Billy Corgan)
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