AND ANOTHER THING!

I also stopped blogging, because I was both disappointed in the shallow quality of my film music criticism, expressed in this blog, and the fear I might be found out as a fraud.

(the photo, harbinger of spring and renewal, are of the first dafs, taken on the 8th of F'IN' FEBRUARY already, in my Paris garden, although I am back in Santa Monica now)

Some very impressive and good people had linked to this blog, including the now celebrated Alex Ross, and I felt in danger. Even that young fellow at the coolly named, Tears of a Clownsilly (easily young enough to be my son) writes better and is amazingly more erudite then I could ever be (hey, his music is kind of likable too!). Then there is always the fine writing of Jonathan and Phil to intimidate me into silence (and also young compared to my 55 years). I only came to this academic life after many years as a money and beauty driven practitioner. My new academic self was best described by Kafka:

He runs after facts like a beginner learning to skate, who is furthermore practising somewhere where it is forbidden.

My study is too much that of a dilettante, I have very little discipline. I read (non-fiction) with a hopeful resentment, that something will solve my problem quickly. I only make mental notes, which quickly drain out of my ears onto my pillow when I sleep at night, waking to have completely forgotten the exciting new something I had found just the night before. Sometimes I stumble upon a dog-ear pointing towards a no longer graspable "eureka!" moment.

I like to collect though, books and journal articles, thesis and private pressings, CDs, DVDs I want them all, and search them out like a Columbo, zig-zagging ("serpentine, serpentine") through footnotes and bibliographies. But possessing a book that one has skimmed, formed an opinion of and put on a shelf for some future date, is not knowledge.

I AM on to something though, but I will probably spin in my sufic shroud until someone, coming from another direction, says it better then I ever could. Right now I have Marc Leman's book shining a great big light on my back, like a bus load of tourists following a guide down a cave, surprising a lonely spelunker who imagined he had found an unknown chamber. We are both following after a legendary fellow named Gibson, who plumbed these parts with his eyes, a while ago, now.

So there so

My name is Peter (theOther)

... and I am a blogaholic. In my last post, I started dealing with some self-honesty issues, that, and a "nudge from the judge" in the form of Stu's posting, has opened my eyes. I can not afford to distract myself with blogging until my dissertation is finished. I am going to have to quit cold turkey, my friends and fellow bloggers, I will miss your work and thoughts, but I have to do this. For the twenty or so, a day, who come by here google searching for "how to cum like a porn star", or even "giant tits of love and death", I am sure you will find what you are looking for. Somewhere, about a year from now, I may well return. I will also leave Freighter Trip up, and Film Music Cognition Bibliography will be ongoing too.

Boston Catz

In the city of Boston, Massachusetts, there must be, between Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Longy School of Music, music majors at Boston College, Boston University, M.I.T., Harvard University, Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts, Tufts University etc., and etc., at least 10,000 music majors of various sorts. This represents more then the entire population of professional musicians in the US at this time. Now start adding in all the other schools in the US!

The Wisdom of Bill Conti

(In case you don't know, Conti is a film composer, most noted for the first few Rocky films)

Many decades ago, I heard Conti say, "You are what you do. If you drive a cab five days a week, and play music on the week-end, you are not a musician, you are a cab driver who plays music". I found the refreshing honesty, a challenge. Us baby boomers enshrined the idea that you can be whatever you want to be, if you just wish it hard enough or had enough money to help others agree with you. The magic act of saying something three times making it true (which our 40th president didn't invent) was practised all over, like children, "I am a ballet dancer, I am a ballet dancer, I am a ballet dancer." This is where the right-wing Ayn Rand selfishness reached over and kissed the left wing self-realization nuts, firmly on the lips, with Walt Disney sprinkling pixie dust on the wedding. In this world where wanabees out numbered actual artists by great measure, whole industries grew up to feed the perpetuating lies. Bill Conti's clear eyed honesty, which is also the route to motivation if one wants to "become" something, requires practice. They don't have those "practice rooms" at today's music schools. There is several orders of magnitude more people teaching composition, today, then make a living at it. Making a living means that the money you are paid as commission, and subsequent royalties on sales and performance of the music, is enough to pay your mortgage/rent, your groceries, your health, home and car insurance etc. Whenever I bring this up, all sorts of teachers who imagine themselves composers/musicians get bent out of shape, after all, who am I to say what they are? How dare I measure things in such a capitalistic way? But I wonder, what is wrong with being a teacher, what is the ego-investment in a label that would make an otherwise intelligent person go all tinker bell? Are they embarrassed that at a late age, they still aspire to become something different from what they are? Charles Ives was an amateur, does that make him any worse? Then again, I sure wish that nincompoop sax player, Alan Greenspan, had been foolish enough to try to keep on making music his living. Anyway, one is free to self-label, and what other people think is their business.

I don't mean to propose a change, nor to put an end to this curious academic fairyland, anymore then I would want to put an end to Societies of Poodle Skirt Wearers, although they are, both, endangered by their own anachronisms. Someday, a generation or two from now, after the 103rd dissertation on Hildegard Von Bingen's left eyebrow and the note Bb has been excepted, someone will turn off the light and close the door, and walk off into that brave new world where they might have to confront the existence of themselves amongst many living and breathing humans who are immersed in a musical behavior much more measurable, understandable and pertinent simply by the fact that it exists concurrently.

When I was in Boston music schools, during the early seventies, I was lucky enough to maintain a professional life that consisted of some long stints at local night clubs. The usual six month gig consisted of five-six nights a week, and sometimes a matinee on Sunday. Each night was usually five sets between 9pm-2am, forty minutes on and twenty off. That meant three hours of actual playing with a group in front of an audience, and this, many times after an hour or two practice at home. To paraphrase, the muscular strength this gave to my... hands, and by this I mean both strength and muscle knowledge, made all the difference (added to the great teacher's pointers at NEC). These opportunities were already anachronisms then, they don't exist anymore, a "musician" proudly talks about his "gig" where he goes and plays for an hour a week, for less money then would cover his half-price drinks and transportation (and if he were like me, his strings). If I was Berklee, I would reopen ten bars on that stretch of Mass Ave. that was hot in the fifties (south of Gainsborough etc.) and make the students play a similar schedule, no cover charge, cheap drinks and cutting contests attracting all sorts to the excitement. Of course, ten bars could only suffice for, say, seventy musicians, and Berklee is training 3,500!. As long as I am kind of ranting, I just thought I'd say something about all the idiots about these days, who would think nothing of spending $15.00 for a martini, and yet could not fathom paying a "cover" charge (to pay musicians). Oh that's right, drinking kills, smoking kills, don't go out without a helmet and a liability lawyer attached. See, it is not just "classical" music that is going down the tubes in live performance! Greg Sandow seemed to think I was nuts when I suggested this, but I still bet it is accurate: one symphony orchestra, take the BSO, means there are more musicians, people who make a living playing music in the classical music field of Boston, then all the other musical genres in Boston, combined.

By the way, I thought I would mention in case anyone cared about my thinly veiled "anonymity" at this blog, as I am a recovering alcoholic/drug addict, and this blog started as mostly a personal purge where I sometimes exposed that fact, I am trying to maintain the traditions of the association that has helped me to stay clean and sober. My name and even my email is available if one wants to look about, carefully.

It was BMO who got me all riled up for the new year, I am hoping to pass it on. If this gets you riled up, say something. Just don't get lazy with a, "there are many papers being published about contemporary music" whine. IT IS NOT TRUE! I have kept a careful eye on the AMS and other outfits, papers and book publishing, contemporary subjects are still a minority.

Ah, why bother, Yanks are just afraid that they will lose the money they have and not get what they think they need, otherwise they would have practised a national strike about this war a long time ago. They can manage that in other countries, even though they have the same fears, here it is, "I can't, I have to go in, it is contractual, but you don't understand, I have a wife and kids, responsibilities, I have a husband and kids, I, I, I, I. aye, aye, aye..... fuck those middle easterners, let 'em die with bombs and bullets that our kids will pay for.

Happy gnu deer, boy, I feel better :-)

Why is he soooo good?

I don't want to become just another Jerry Goldsmith acolyte, but the man was damn good. Seconds (1966), like many films of the sixties, left more room for music, dropping the diegetic sound in places so as to allow the mind to accept the music as the provider of information (our ears scream for information to support and direct the visual). The sixties also had a fascination with altered states and a cold war, Kafkaesque view of the social condition which allows for a certain liberty, such as this film being shot in black & white to add a noir quality. Well shot and with a strong turn by Rock Hudson, the film should be good, but its pacing seems odd, which the score works overtime to correct. The choice of a pipe organ creates a Gothic effect, reminding us that this really is a Frankenstein plot, along with some very curious baroque trills in the strangest places. It is a fine score, considering, and considering that in the same year Goldsmith did The Blue Max, The Sand Pebbles (which he supposedly had almost four months to work on), Our Man Flint,... and... and others.... how, how I say, did the guy do it?

Papillon (1973) gets a jaw droppingly good score from Goldsmith and Morton (orchestration), from a bunch of set pieces, once again the diegetic sound is often dropped in favor of the score. There is no underscore until twenty minutes in when the protagonists reach the place of the story (I am assuming you know the story). Many people love this film, I am not so hot on any of it but the score, mainly because I see marks of "the Hollywood jerk" all over it. There are plenty of these Hollywood jerks, I have worked for some, they are the self believing experts of such great, natural low intelligence (and a shoe, like Kruschov's, to bang on a table) that they keep the films in reach of your basic idiot. It is a Hollywood jerk who probably said, "so why ain't dere no moosique in da' foist twendy minutes?". The director or someone says, "I don't think it needs it". Hollywood jerk then says, "den youse gotta ADR sumtin' over der wen day is comin' on da boat, nobuddy says nuttin'!". And so you have really bad ADR (automatic dialogue replacement), some guy who happens to be in the office that days, is recorded saying "hey you!", "go there" which is not even aurally put in the space we are seeing, standing out like a hand growing out of a forehead. Then the Hollywood jerk says, "I'm paying dat McQueenie guy millions of smackers, I don't care if hes locked up for a hundred years in da pickcha, he's gonna' have a nice shave and a haircut, da' goils like it". Then there is a the topless native girl section, talk about gratuitous? But I would watch a neorealist take on a day-in-the-life of a Hollywood jerk with a score like this.

A western triple feature

I have a soft spot for Jimmy Stewart for reasons I blogged about last year, so sitting through a couple of his westerns is not the worst thing. Night Passage (1957) is a reasonable film, and Stewart turns in a good piece of acting, particularly at the sad finale. But that is where ol' Dimitri Tiomkin lets the film down. His patently wonderful, western musical suit, right down to a hoped for (but far from) "hit song" theme, has a hard time making that musical style take a more emotional turn. But it is only for a moment in the film, so otherwise, a nice film and score.

By The Rare Breed (1966) the genre and Stewart are both getting a goodly bit long in the tooth, but there is still some action worth watching. Better still, a score by one Johnny Williams, and it is a nice sounding thing. I keep finding the main theme very close to the American Airlines Something Special In The Air campaign which came some decades later (written by the late Thomas Dawes and his wife).

By The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) everything had changed. A Man and a Woman (1966), Bonnie & Clyde (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), The Graduate (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)(and many others) had broken open many of the old forms in narrative and music usage. Instead of the orchestra singing the song of the great lands going off as far as the eye can see, a smaller more eclectic group (including an autoharp, I think, and plenty o' harmonica) played to the close, intimate human relations. Jerry Goldsmith does a good job, although the, still in place, tradition of an opening song (in a western) falls a bit short, songwriting not being a Goldsmith strong point. The whole sixties, sweetness and openness (nudity and swearing) and characters who appear a little more like contemporary hippies then turn of the century desert rats, includes several earnest and sweet folk songs, so typical of the late sixties early seventies, by one Richard Gillis, and also sung by the stars. It is a sweet film (by Sam Peckinpah?!) whose score is mostly interesting from only a historical perspective.

Hugo's turn to shine

I don't remember having seen The Bishop's Wife (1947) before, although as a Christmas perennial it seems I must have. It is a completely charming film, and I must be having a lucky week, after those great Goldsmith scores in the last few days, this must be my all time favorite Hugo Friedhofer score (Oscar nominated)! Maybe it is the combination of Friedhofer and Jerome Moross (later famous for the score to The Big Country (1958)) orchestrating. Throw in Emil Newman (another brother) conducting. The treatment of the spiritual is kept to such a pleasantly dull roar, that it works much better then Alfred Newman's constant angel singing, or even the same team's later work on Joan of Arc (1948). I guess I like the sense of humor. How could anyone not love the ice skating scene, which flies on the wings of the music. That is three scores, this week, all close to the possible tops of my ratings, maybe Christmas is making me sentimental ;-) Merry Christmas to all.

Pretty Amazing

My friend Hans is a huge fan of Jerry Goldsmith (he wrote his thesis on Goldsmith's use of counterpoint). I like to kid him that Goldsmith was just another hack, trying to do a job, sometimes pointing out the one chase scene in Basic Instinct where the underscore is just not really happening (the only mediocre/bad cue in the film). But DAMN! the guy is REALLY the stuff! In 1965-66 he was batting amazingly high. In the last few days, besides Von Ryan's Express (1965), which I write about a post or two ago, I have seen Morituri (1965) and The Blue Max (1966), which I first saw in 1966 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

It seems that, in these two films, all the elements, the composition, orchestrating (Arthur Morton, who is in the photo with Goldsmith, gets the orchestration credit on Morituri, but no one does on The Blue Max), recording and conducting (Lionel Newman, the department head's brother, on Morituri and Goldsmith on The Blue Max) work to meld the musical element with the dramatic. Morituri shows its most original color in the main titles and opening sequences (when dodging sounding Hollywood "oriental") and settles down to good action and suspense. The Blue Max score is exhilarating, the whole tone harmonic steps and suspensions feeling like the suspense of gravity's will being broken and lifting off, the trilling violins a ululation of excitement which brings alive the more static truth of planes flying in the sky.

On the 7s

I have commented on my enjoyment of Judge Parker's Locust St. blog and his recent review of the twentieth century from the seventh year of each decade, but as he gets to the 80s, I find I am losing interest, which says something about my own age. But he has inspired me to think about the 7th years, and it seems I have a natural affection towards odd years, and 7s have marked some interesting points in my life. In 1977, having, for all intents and purposes, finished up at New England Conservatory, I left Boston for good, coming to Los Angeles where I had reconnoitered (going to UCLA summer school) the two summers previous. In 1987 I was on line, at 300 baud using a Microware OS9 telenet software on my Fairlight Series III. I was online to Perry Leopold's PAN (Performing Artists Network), on whose boards I made friends that are still friends today. I soon thereafter switched to Microphone on my Mac Plus. 1997 was a year of solid work, good union work, too busy to spend the money, and the flow didn't stop until I came back from a six month job in Paris, in 1998, and found that out of town was out of sight, dead, and it took a little time to start things back up again.

But 1967 brought The Prisoner, which might have not gotten to Boston until 1968. I remember Friday nights, and if I got back early enough (I remember it playing at 11:30pm) from The Boston Tea Party, The Psychedelic Supermarket, The Unicorn or other Boston music clubs, I would catch The Prisoner, which usually agreed with the chemical state of my mind. Like Twin Peaks (1990), in spite of the wonderful conceptual depth of the show, its influence, on immediately following television, seems to have been little. It was very "counter-cultural", and at that time, contrary to our rewritten history, the vast majority were not counter anything (too busy becoming counters of money). But popular culture, in general, took it to heart, some ten years later, after the Vietnam war stopped being an issue.

Unlike Angelo Badalementi's groundbreaking score for Twin Peaks (a wonderful twisting of cliché, soap opera music), The Prisoner's score is a very thought out, functional score. The use of "pop" and folk tunes weave ironic and comic moments into No. 6's (the protagonist) world, literally pop as in Pop Goes The Weasel. The Beatles' All You Need Is Love is maybe ironic and maybe not, but that license must have cost a pretty penny. Ron Grainer's main title music (theme) is striking and contemporary, but perhaps a bit too choppy to settle into much of a melody. Still, any theme heard repeatedly, connected to a much loved show, has a resonance all its own. The underscore, by Grainer and Albert Elms, is very expertly woven, using many variations of instrument pairing from a smallish group.

Somehow, forty years on, I still find it a fresh and fun show, if sometimes quaint. I guess the 7s are as a good a year as any.

Two odd musicals

Thank goodness I started with Buñuel's Gran Casino (1947), a Mexican film made with the skills of a full fledged film industry. Yes it might be a very predictable and typical plot, but there is a richness to its tapestry I find very enjoyable. The songs appearance and the curious sets make it surreal enough for Buñuel's reputation, inspite of some harsh reviews.

The Kentuckian (1955) is a film of so much fuddleheadedness in its story and pacing, that Bernard Herrmann, in a genre he seems completely at sea in (Americana), is kept to a dull roar. The musical numbers are so glued on and curious that it is also surreal. Still, suffering through the film itself is worthwhile, for Herrmann's take at the genre brings some interesting variations on the old clichés.

Von Goldsmith

I have little doubt that the late Jerry Goldsmith was one of the best film composers of the last forty years, and watching the new Fox DVD of Von Ryan's Express (1966), with their new policy of isolated film score tracks, simply confirms it. His music is always wonderfully rich in instrumental texture. His lack of stylistic dogma allows him to use a twangy electric, baritone guitar right along with very contemporary percussion styles, even if it is 1940's Italy. The largest part of the 27 minutes of music is about dramatic and cinematic clock and kinetic alignment. But like the oil derricks in Long Beach Harbor, dressed up as apartment buildings, he dresses his technical, narrative business up as music. Right from the start, there is a military drum visual instrumental, but he adds a wood block to keep the dramatic pulse right. Although his orchestra is equipped with a mandolin (so evocative of Italy), it seems they were short an accordion, so he uses some kind of accordion emulation, with synthesizers (also apparent in several places in the film, a WWII movie) or organ. What a pro. What great sounding music. The main thematic element is a march that sounds very close to the Hogan's Heroes March by Jerry Fielding (the first four notes are the same), which came onto television some weeks after the film was released (who stole from whom? Ahhh, there are only twelve notes, and as military music is for mentally challenged folks with short hair, they use even less.). To be particularly relished, the sophistication and accuracy apparent in a somewhat broad, comedy cue (right down to the brass waaah, waaah).

Fan-Tastic Voyage!

In 1966, with a bunch of giggling classmates hot with the idea of catching a glimpse of the new bombshell, Raquel Welch, we made our way to a friday night showing at the Cleveland Circle cinema. We not only enjoyed Ms. Welch but the film, Fantastic Voyage (1966), was a special effects, sci-fi gasser too. Seeing it again 41 years later, although the effects are greatly reduced in estimation, and a with a lack of appreciation for the cold-war, religious undertones (a godless commie is the bad guy, natch), the score more then makes up for it. And Fox does a great job with an isolated score track where someone took the initiative to fade up the regular track between cues (makes listening much more enjoyable, I wish that Universal had done that on Mary Queen of Scots with John Barry's score).

Leonard Rosenman (whom I keep confusing with Laurence Rosenthal) had four months to compose the very modern score, and 86 pieces! Time and money wonderfully spent, the score elevates the film and is worth hearing in isolation, the beautiful images like a light show. I just wish the talking heads doing the commentary on the score, were not such bobble headed train-spotters that they laugh and make fun at the original idea of using jazz (that Rosenman talked the director out of) as it only reveals their lack of imagination. Orchestral film music train spotters have a warped lack of jazz exposure. Like my father, to whom the word jazz meant dixieland, these fellows must have a similar ignorance. There could be a fine jazz score to this film. But this one is worth hearing too.

Ferde Grofé on the moon

When I was growing up, Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite was a regular staple of Boston's classical world. The composer's name always made me imagine an immigrant, accent and all, but no, he was born in New York like my dad! Years later, on my settling down in Santa Monica, I would hear of his having lived nearby. Having heard some people tout one of his few, film scores, Rocketship X-M (1950), I settled down for a look see. X-M, by the way, is a highly technical term, if you were of enough grey matter, after long pondering, you might grok that it means EXPEDITION MOON!!! Unforeseen forces takes the moon out of the picture, they end up on Mars, battling with Martians. Trust me, it ends in tears.

The score is wonderfully orchestrated (as might be expected of the famous arranger/orchestrator) and serviceable in portraying the general emotional tenor. It has some fun use of theremin, but generally sticks to a constant exploration of chromatic steps up and down, enough to make ya' seasick, I say! Well, to give the guy credit, he makes a lot of reasonable noise on such a simple idea. As a score, no great shakes, as music, I leave that to those more qualified to judge. I would say I greatly prefer Leith Stevens score for Destination Moon (1950), and I would point out that in that film they actually get there (truth in advertising) and even won some awards for it! For those interested in Leith Stevens, an undermentioned but important figure in Hollywood film music, you might check out the special edition on the guy, in The Journal of Film Music.

A couple of years ago...

... I blogged about my old friend Johnny Warman and his band, The Mods, well here they show up on YouTube!

As long as I'm writing about Paul Williams

Over at 2'23", in a review of the new Todd Haynes, Bob Dylan film, there is a pointer to his earlier film about Karen Carpenter. An unabashed, fans film, it reminded me how those songs were a part of everyday, standard repertoire throughout the seventies. I had to play them hundreds of times, behind all kinds of singers. Although my first reaction to The Carpenters was a distaste for their Richard Nixon, Los Angeles suburb straightness, that was quickly replaced by an admiration for the material, the voice, and the arranging and production of the records. Paul Williams (whom I castigate in my post on Cinderella Liberty) wrote many of their big hits (and also Leon Russell). As songs, they had a post-standard sophistication, broken free from the constant II-V7 formulas that were the backbone of the jazz era. Credit goes to Beatles, Bacharach, Legrand, Jobim along with many others throughout the sixties. It seems as if that stream was very separate from the blues based rock that was happening at the same time.

What waaaas he thinkun'?

I suppose it has to be this bad, Hundra (1983) when men try to make a women's lib barbarian film. Very good production values for a B film, shot in Spain with mostly Spanish crew. It is so horrible... ol' "I'll score anything that'll pay for an orchestra", Ennio Morricone, doesn't even help. Why a barbarian world, set somewhere, perhaps thousands of years ago, has to have a classical (and by that I am referring to the actual style) score... makes no sense? And it works even less. It is constantly reminding you how long the boring shots are, and feeling like a complete pastiche, cliché, but not even the right cliché for the genre. What was anybody thinking? The orchestra sounds good, that is about the only thing one can say for it, but I'm not opinionated (no sirree!!). I just bet some Hollywood wisenheimer is going to get it in his mind to redo this one (this is tonight's nightmare).

The lens of time

I am awakening to the amazing importance of historic time in relation to when I see a movie, meaning if I see and analyse a film at the time of its initial release, or many years later. In 1973, when Cinderella Liberty came out, I was busy playing guitar with R&B bands on the New England chitlin' circuit. I have vague memories of it being released, but I think I might confuse it with The Last Detail (1973), a similar film from the same era. I would not have been interested anyway, it is a film about Navy sailors, and Vietnam was still going on and I was still too soon after escaping the draft to have any interest in anything or anybody military. My taste also ran towards arthouse and foreign films in those years.

I finally watched it last night, on account of the John Williams score. Vietnam was curiously nonexistant, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean were the only places mentioned as possible naval destinations, but that "lie" helped to keep the focus on the simple human movie that just happened to take place in a naval situation. I thought the film was very good (and I hate everything), most particularly the Marsha Mason character, which felt very realistic and un-judged by the filmmakers. A prostitute that even drinks whilst pregnant, today's USA moral codes would demand she be treated as a monster. And James Caan's sailor happily deserts at the end (this would not be allowed in today's mainstream US cinema, a deserter during the time of an unmentioned war is even worse then a drinking pregnant woman, and both would have to be shown a terribly painful death).

John Williams score was a most charming pastiche of the French sound popularised by Francis Lai in A Man and a Woman (1966) and Michel Legrand in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and already pastiched by Burt Bacharach in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Toots Thielmans does his chromatic harmonica stuff... really sweet. The only fizzle in my book, is the main title "song", with lyrics and vocals by Paul Williams who should just swear to never pretend to be a blues singer again. The song is just awful. Typical of its time, there is not very much underscore, but it is great when there is. This film is three years before the very mediocre Midway score by Williams, three years when he was busy doing Irwin Allen disaster films and such, but William's 1977 output, Star Wars and Close Encounter of the Third Kind must be as important and influential film scores as any in the short history of film music.