Pulp Fiction Featuring The Tarantinos @ Adelaide Festival Summerhouse, Elder Park, Adelaide 9/3/2021
At the Adelaide Festival, 2021 outdoor live music venue Summerhouse we were presented with a screening of the coolest of cool films, Pulp Fiction, which is still is an incredible film after more than 25 years. The film has no incidental soundtrack except for a compilation of songs that director Quentin Tarantino had chosen especially for the film and those songs are tonight brilliantly performed live by a band suitably calling themselves The Tarantinos. This very diverse selection of songs that makes up the soundtrack ranges from surf music including the now-iconic Mirsirlou (Dick Dale), Bustin Surfboards (The Tornadoes) to 50s pop-rock of Lonesome Town (Ricky Nelson), the funk of Jungle Boogie (Kool and the Gang) and the soul of Son of a Preacher Man (Dusty Springfield) and Let’s Stay Together (Al Green) The band was able to play these diverse songs brilliantly.
I know very little about The Tarantinos except that they are from Melbourne and perform regularly there. I was impressed by their faithful performance and would be very interested in seeing them if they came back to Adelaide to play the songs from this soundtrack again as well as all the other ultra-cool songs from other Quentin Tarantino films.
During the iconic Jack Rabbit Slims scene with Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), I was impressed by the selection of songs that The Tarantinos played and this included songs not released on the official soundtrack. During Butch’s (Bruce Willis) boxing and escape scenes there was no music so the band was able to depart the stage for a while.
Pulp Fiction is a seminal film with many memorable scenes and lines and lines including when Butch (Bruce Willis) saves Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) from the soon-to-be-getting medieval on their asses hillbillies, the opening and later restaurant scenes and the Adrenalin syringe delivered directly into Mia’s (Uma Thurman) heart still made the audience gasp.
I praise Adelaide Festival for having such a diverse array of shows that includes something like this for their audiences. It felt like we were witnessing a new style something further on from the old practice of silent films being screened with live music and in an environment not unlike being at a drive-in. I hope we continue to have something similar in years to come.
Adelaide Festival Review By Richard De Pizzol