You might not know it by name but there’s a wonderful piece of music called Sleep Walk, originally by an act called Santo and Johnny. It’s a haunting, beautiful tune played with a guitar and a Hawaiian slide guitar that manages to blend a 50s-flavoured surfing mood with sweet, melancholy overtones.
The reason it might be familiar is because it provided the music for a dream sequence in 1987’s La Bamba. Ritchie Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips) lost a close pal when two planes collided in the sky over his school, the falling wreckage killing several kids. Instead of being at school the day it happened, Ritchie was at his father’s funeral, and he has a recurring nightmare where he shows up to find the charred body of his friend lying under the burning metal.
If you were one of the five people worldwide who saw Johnny Depp’s one and only directorial effort The Brave, you’d have heard Sleep Walk again. Raphael (Depp) hears it drifting up from a nearby valley, climbing down to find his sinister benefactor (Starship Troopers and Total Recall’s Marshall Bell) sunning himself to the song over the radio.