The Biggest Mystery
Posted on | October 4, 2006 at 11:06 pm | 6 Comments
…on tonight’s third season premiere of Lost (minor spoilers):
How did Petula Clark’s recording of the song Downtown end up on a CD of the Talking Heads Speaking In Tongues? And not just any CD. I could tell from the disc label that it was the DualDisc version from the Brick box set that was released last year. Interesting to know that The Others are getting all the latest music (and book?) releases there on the island. Do they have a surround system and can they truly appreciate 5.1 multichannel DVD-Audio high resolution sound? Probably not, since she was playing the CD side. Well, and it wasn’t playing the right music anyway. Maybe she was just imagining that the Petula Clark song was playing while Burning Down The House was actually coming out of the speakers.
And since this is all still happening in 2004, supposedly, that box set wasn’t even released yet.
It just makes me wonder if the producers planned it that way and there’s some significance to it, or if they just grabbed the first CD they could find for the visual and hoped that no one would notice/care. It seemed pretty blatant to me, but I’m an obsessive audiophile/music listener. Maybe the back cover artwork and disc label were only identifiable on the HDTV version, and most people won’t see them. I dunno. I just know it bugged me, so I hope it was intentional.
Latre.
Update: I was wrong about it being the DualDisc version (see comments below). Also, if it was the disc from the Brick set, it should’ve had a white jewel case.
Comments
6 Responses to “The Biggest Mystery”
October 5th, 2006 @ 4:15 am
I’ve never seen Lost, but I do have MANY memories from decades past of details like sound effects for video games being incorrect on TV shows – how many times did we see someone playing an arcade game labeled “Asteroids”, and the visual was the Atari 2600 Pacman, and the sound effects were from something like Donkey Kong?
Maybe the people responsible for shoddy research and fact-checking did not lose their jobs in disgrace, as we all hoped, but instead are drawing big salaries on the production staff of top-rated network dramas today? I mean, Trek:TNG had an actual, employed physicist as their ’science consultant’ and still couldn’t get their made-up tech-ese consistent from scene to scene.
(P.S. in a karmic twist of fate, while writing this very post, I saw a scene from “My Name is Earl” on the TV where a character is playing a home video game – the sound effects were from the arcade “Defender”, and the controller was from a Colecovision…)
(yeah, they’re airing TV shows just about a year behind the U.S. here – the ‘05 season is starting all over – except for Brit TV like Doc Who, we get that quicker)
October 5th, 2006 @ 10:35 am
From trolling through the blogosphere this morning, it appears to me that a lot of people besides myself noticed this apparent gaff. Which makes me think it was intentional after all. There were a lot of weird things about that scene, like how Juliet suddenly had different clothes on.
I’ve noticed a few gaffs in “Earl” myself, but that can be more easily accepted in a comedy. Lost lives or dies by its complicated mythology.
October 5th, 2006 @ 8:50 pm
As Brian Eno fans know, “Talking Heads” anagrams to “King’s Lead Hat.” “Petula Clark Downtown” anagrams to “lard town: pack own lute.” The conclusion is, of course, obvious.
October 7th, 2006 @ 9:31 am
Someone else noticed: http://www.thetailsection.com/lost_news/post_3.php
This makes two of ya.
October 7th, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
Jeff: You kid, but knowing the Losties, there’s probably something to your idea.
Ben: A casual perusal of Technorati and other places makes it clear I was far from the only one to have noticed this apparent glitch. The guy you sited said that the disc itself was a Son Volt CD. I have to admit I was wrong about it being the DualDisc version of Speaking In Tongues, since I just looked at mine and it was very different. It does look like a DualDisc of some kind though.
The fact that this “glitch” was so obvious to so many viewers makes me think it was another easter egg or whatever that they did on purpose. Maybe it will have meaning later on and maybe it won’t.
October 10th, 2006 @ 6:25 pm
Sorry I’m late to this party, but I noticed it as well. I figure they shot the scene prior to securing the rights to the song. Maybe David Byrne wanted too much money or whatever, so they swapped out the song. I wouldn’t read too much into it. Listen to Damon and Carlton’s podcast – if it’s an easter egg, they’ll probably make mention of it (if only to further obfuscate the meaning).