Some songs have fame thrust upon them through strategic placement in films. This is certainly true of Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck In The Middle With You, a 1973 hit for the band which was started by Baker Street writer Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan. What started off as a parody of Bob Dylan’s music and style went on to become a huge hit for the band, but it is from its inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature Reservoir Dogs that it received a new lease of life.
That scene – where a captive police officer has his ear cut off by Michael Madsen’s Mr Blonde, has passed into popular culture not for what the scene shows you, but from what it doesn’t. At the key moment the camera pans away so you don’t actually see anything – a very powerful piece of cinema simply because it puts the act in the audience’s imagination – something the modern crop of horror directors could learn a lot from, ironically.
But this shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the song in its own right. The band may not have had widespread success and only released three albums between 1972 and 1975, but it doesn’t stop the track from being a highlight from both a music and a movie standpoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DohRa9lsx0Q
