True Blood’s Music Will Have You Licking Your Lips Too

I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t had TV for years, and am ironically more interested in watching TV commercials than the shows that they interrupt, but occasionally, when a few friends recommend something rabidly enough, I break down and watch it on line if I can, or borrow, rent, or torrent it if I can’t. Which is how I ended up watching all three seasons of True Blood in three weeks recently. Yes, I fell for the implausible but irresistible plot-twisting cliffhangers, and even endured the episodes where the plotline went all wacky and Dionysian and sort of became the “History of Mythology with Mary Ann Forrester” show. I think actress Michelle Forbes is carving out a great niche for herself; her character in Battlestar Galactica performed the same “appear as a heroine, derail the series, and turn out to be a nasty villain and die” function as her character in True Blood did. But in spite of any humorous criticism I have of the show, it’s been fun so far, and there’s no arguing that it’s another well-crafted piece of entertainment from HBO. And for me the most lasting element of what has made the series so watchable is the excellent selection of soundtrack and closing title songs. Which range from the alt-country of Todd Snider’s Back to the Crossroads to the industrial/techno of Ashtrayhead’s tune Ashtrayhead. I already picked up the True Blood: Music From The HBO Original Series collection, now I’m trying to figure out how to round up the remaining few dozen songs without going broke. Lucky for me, there’s a True Blood wiki that lists every song used in every episode, and conveniently presents them in a Grooveshark player so you can preview each song in its entirety. I wish HBO would just bundle them all in some kind of collection, but it’ll be fun all the same rounding up the tunes separately. True Blood’s music supervisor Gary Calamar is a genius, and apparently has a book out called Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again which I think I just may have to check out.