Big Chill

By combining the ten songs from the original Big Chill soundtrack album with all but one song from The Big Chill: More Songs From the Original Soundtrack; three instrumental songs from the film; and 15 classic '60s rock and soul tracks that didn't appear on either of those soundtracks (or the film itself), Hip-O managed to fashion a two-CD, 38-song deluxe edition of the Big Chill soundtrack. It's big enough that some of the content is rather speciously related to the original film or soundtrack concept; as a phrase on the cover says, it's more "music from and inspired by The Big Chill" than it is an expanded version of the actual soundtrack. Regardless of how strongly particular tracks tie in to the movie that inspired all this packaging, it's amply stuffed with classic '60s music. Motown does form a bigger piece of the pie than anything else, with 14 of the tracks coming from the company's vaults. But it doesn't actually dominate: there's plenty of other stuff, including great hits by the Rascals, Aretha Franklin, Procol Harum, Percy Sledge, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys, the Spencer Davis Group, Lesley Gore, the Mamas & the Papas, Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders, James Brown, and the Zombies. True, there's not much that doesn't get played to death on oldies radio anyway, with Howard Tate's "Get It While You Can" and the Supremes B-side "Ask Any Girl" about the only exceptions. Because of that, there's little reason for collectors to pick it up, other than to get something for their significant other that they can stand listening to together. For a general public divorced from the snobbish record-collecting community, however, it's an excellent and varied scoop of classics from the era, to be filed right next to the two-CD edition of the Forrest Gump soundtrack no doubt. Note, however, that one of the songs from The Big Chill: More Songs From the Original Soundtrack -- the Steve Miller Band's "Quicksilver Girl" -- has been omitted from this deluxe edition, for reasons unexplained. Richie Unterberger.