It goes like hey-o! or weigh-o! no I'm not gonna hum it

August 9, 2006 9:16 AM

Looking for a song from the movie Human Traffic

Towards the end of the party movie Human Traffic there is a scene where Moff is caught masturbating in his room by his mother. There's a very catchy tune playing through this scene that has gotten regularly stuck in my head for several years. I know the soundtrack is available but I'm not sure I really want to own the whole thing, and of course with soundtracks there's no guarantee you'll get all the songs that are in the movie. So I'm hoping someone who happens to be familiar with the movie and the song in question will just happen by and enlighten me.

Bonus points for answering the question, what happened to Justin Kerrigan, writer and director of that film? I thought it was a very promising first effort (uneven, to be sure, but entertaining) but that was in '99 and he seems to have just dropped off the face of the earth.

posted by nanojath to media & arts (10 comments total)

Did you start with a look at the Human Traffic soundtrack listing?
posted by jca at 9:59 AM on August 9, 2006

#1 - can't remember.
#2 - don't know.

extraneous: If you liked HT, you'll also probably like Loved Up, a kind of "prequel" from the first half of the decade. Danny Dyer, who played "Moff" in HT, was also in that one.

This is a good, but dated, Kerrigan interview.

His father?
posted by meehawl at 12:03 PM on August 9, 2006

jca - I did but there's like 40 songs and I don't recognize hardly any of them, nothing to indicate which might be which and they're not even in order so I can't narrow it down at all. I can't find anywhere I can preview the songs as a group (I'd have to try to look them up singly). I mean yeah, I'm not sure I care THAT much.

meehawl, interesting, I'll check out that movie. I did read that interview a while ago, it seems nothing past the original press stuff around Traffic exists (at least on the internet). I even emailed a couple of people associated with his old production company a couple of years ago in a fit of curiosity but no replies. That memorial, I believe it probably is to his father, is interesting - I seem to recall reading somewhere he was working on a script based on his father's life. Oh well, what's life without mysteries.
posted by nanojath at 2:00 PM on August 9, 2006

All song previews...
posted by rom1 at 2:11 PM on August 9, 2006

Appreciate the effort but it doesn't seem to be among them, rom1... I'm pretty sure anyway, the song has a long high hatty sort of intro that I could have missed because all these freaking dancey trancey songs have long freaking high hat intros and the previews give out before they get into the distinctive part... plus there are like 45 tracks listed in the IMDB soundtracks link but only 40 on the soundtrack album, so I could proceed by process of elimination, though what I've looked up so far has largely been obscure UK vinyl generally described as "hard to find..." Yeah, I think I've spent enough time on this now. Failure was more definitive before the damn internet.
posted by nanojath at 9:11 PM on August 9, 2006

I still have much of the music from the soundtrack on vinyl, and have seen the film (a long time ago). If you can give me any descriptive hints at all about what it sounded like (vocals / no vocals, major key / minor key) etc. then I might be able to help.

Age of Love has a very German trancey long hihat intro, and a looooooong breathy female vocal breakdown. Closest one to "catchy" that I can think of from the soundtrack list Rom1 posted.
posted by bifter at 5:24 AM on August 10, 2006

bifter, I emailed you a 712 kb clip I used a digital microrecorder to pull off an ancient VHS copy of the tape. You can give it a listen if you like. I don't really have anything together to host audio files online or I'd put it up for all to see but I'm pretty sure nobody much is getting back to this question anyway but if anyone else wants to take a crack at it drop me an email, see my profile for the address. Thanks all for trying to crack it.
posted by nanojath at 2:22 PM on August 10, 2006

Check your email. :-)
posted by bifter at 3:28 AM on August 11, 2006

bifter gets the best answer for identifying it as "Black Shaolin" by Carl Cox. Apparently my mistake was not coming up with the search phrase "Moff's Wank Tune." Thanks!
posted by nanojath at 8:06 AM on August 11, 2006

Yes, well of course I'm a research professional, so you mustn't blame yourself...
posted by bifter at 8:10 AM on August 11, 2006