John Barry Plays 007

Where Norman
Has Gone Before

John Barry Plays 007
by Geoff Leonard & Pete Walker
No visible ISBN
Windmill Books

A very quick shout out of a review to an interesting book a friend bought me for Christmas last year, John Barry Plays 007. The book was published in 2022 and has no ISBN. I’d not heard of it before and so am assuming my friend, who is always in the know about John Barry stuff (and alarmingly prejudiced when it comes to discussing authorship of The James Bond Theme), probably ordered this one direct from the publishers.

It’s a pretty cool book and does what it says on the tin, by taking each of Barry’s eleven Bond scores (plus the arrangement job from Dr. No) and breaking each one down dealing with a quick summary of the content of the film (which I suspect is not needed for most readers), followed by anecdotes on how the famous songs and scores were written and recorded, along with lots of info on the releases of the various records (and cover versions) of the various Bond related music and, of course, how both the singles and albums charted in various countries.

So yeah, there’s lots of stuff you may not know along with a lot of things the casual Barry listener will probably be aware of. So you get the anecdote Michael Caine recounted at John Barry’s return concert in the late 1990s about the gestation of Goldfinger (gosh that concert went on quite a few hours too long... I remember everyone having trouble getting home from central London after that gig), the chestnut about Shirley Bassey freeing her bust to be able to sing properly on the recording of that same song, the one about Tom Jones nearly passing out in the studio while trying to hold the last note of Thunderball... and various other things which are all a part of the John Barry myth and legend.

It also gives some nice insight into why Nancy Sinatra was not at her best when attempting to record You Only Live Twice (the final recording is made up from several different takes recorded on different days), a mystery about why her dad Frank pulled out after agreeing to sing the title song for Moonraker, and mention of earlier versions of You Only Live Twice, including the one that appeared on the Rarities album a few decades back and also one I’ve never heard recorded by Julie London.

Added to all this are many photos including rare ‘behind the scenes’ shots and, in itself quite valuable, absolutely loads of pictures of the covers of all the releases of the songs, soundtracks and knock offs (although I was a bit annoyed the old Eric Winstone Plays 007 album was not included). And then there’s the elephant in the room of course...

The book starts off with what I thought was going to be a credible testimony as to why many people believe John Barry wrote The James Bond Theme, rather than just arranging it. Using testimony from court cases and other sources, the authors try to paint a picture where Barry did just that, de-emphasising the importance of Monty Norman's role in it. It’s not convincing at all however and I still believe that Monty Norman was himself responsible for the melody and its use in various scenes. Barry did an arrangement... the definitive arrangement for sure... of the theme but, nope, it seems obvious to me now that Norman wrote the tune. And here’s the thing I will say to all those naysayers who have just stopped reading... just listen for yourself to the score in the movie Dr. No. Especially towards the end, in Norman’s underscore, you can hear The James Bond Theme dynamically woven into the fabric of the music. Not only was it Norman who wrote the main score which utilises this theme, before Barry was brought on board to make it more punchy and help carry the movie (which he assuredly did)... but one of those cues was even tracked in/added to the score of From Russia With Love in the final release cut so, yeah, go and have a think about that one.

Other than that, though... John Barry Plays 007 is a lovely book and I’m glad to have it. I also have yet another, much thicker book on the music of Barry to read and review at some point soon so, yeah, look for that on here either this year or the next.

The Giallo Canvas

Laughing Windows,
Broken Blinds

The Giallo Canvas -
Art, Excess and Horror Cinema
by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
McFarland Press
ISBN: 9781476675398

Just a quick shout out to what I believe is one of the more entertaining, refreshing and illuminating books about various gialli in contemporary writing on the genre, The Giallo Canvas - Art, Excess and Horror Cinema by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Now I’ve found myself, at first accidentally, following the career of the writer over the last few years via expert inclusion on Blu Ray releases and essays in various venues such as accompanying leaflets and books. There’s even a brilliant episode of the podcast All The Colours Of The Dark which features her as the guest of honour, which is really worth a listen to (as are all the other episodes and anything hosted by Dr. Rebekah McKendry and Elric Kane). I’d not actually read an entire book by her before so I’m happy to start with one that is not only about one of my all time favourite genres of cinematic spectacle but also, in this case, approaching from a different and somewhat unique route... that of the overlap and relationship between various forms of art (mostly painting but not only limited to that) and themes and ideas that permeate a multitude of gialli.

Now, regular readers may be expecting a tirade of negativity from me in that the title itself (and some of the comments in the book) makes evident a perception that giallo is, perhaps, a sub-genre of horror cinema and, those same regular readers (I know you’re out there) will know that I don’t believe gialli are in any way an overlap of horror cinema (and neither are slasher movies for that matter)... if anything, they may be considered a sub-genre of crime films, if the point really needed to be pushed. However, I’m not going to labour that point here, specifically because Heller-Nicholas doesn’t ram that connection (or lack of) down your throat as some writers in the genre have and, mostly, because she’s easily written one of the most intelligent books on the subject going so... yeah, opinions on genre should be thrown to the side as this book is certainly one which is worthy of celebration.

Okay, so she had me right from the start with this one, literally from the first words of her introduction to the concepts she will go on to explore (in a much less formal and stuffy way than many academics go about leading a path to their imminent conclusion), by quoting an article by Virginia Woolf, writing about the first run release of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. The way that distinguished writer’s view of recognising high art and the questioning which comes as a reaction to it, seems pretty similar to Heller-Nicholas’ own discoveries of giallo and alternative cinema via Australia’s Special Broadcasting System (SBS) and numerous visits to video rental shops in her youth.

The book is set up in various sections including ‘Clues, Presence and Painting’, ‘Painters’ and ‘Other Art Forms’ and each one of these is split into chapters which explore either a specific painter (such as Vermeer), other mediums such as sculpture, music, writing, theatre/film performance and, also, movies in which characters in the stories are themselves an artist in one medium or another... and the way each of these subjects informs and illuminates the story and ideas presented in various gialli, usually taking one or two examples in each chapter as the main focus. So one chapter might mostly focus on Vermeer as seen in The Forbidden Room and The Psychic (aka Seven Notes In Noir) while another may highlight the use of Francis Bacon’s paintings in Lizard In A Woman’s Skin.

And it’s a really great book illuminating, for example, the highlighting of the visual reference created to mimic art as a metatextual element pulling the spectator out of the event... just as Godard used to try and do to his audience all the time (I guess I should also, myself, reference Brechtian theatre here as an example of this) or the way clues are missed in various films due to the main character’s failure to correctly interpret the clues in a specific piece of art (think of the painting in Argento’s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage and, of course, the tell tale mirror reflection of a painting of faces at the start of Argento’s Deep Red). There’s also some nice work done here with some really thorough interpretations of the various paintings seen (and sometimes fallen into) in The Stendhal Syndrome and similar interesting deductions and inclusions found in such gialli as The House With Laughing Windows and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. And she also looks at the links between giallo and fashion, highlighting Bava’s Blood And Black Lace as kickstarting this juxtaposition, along with the humourous observation that crimes against the victims in films such as these are also violent attacks on the ‘high price tag’ clothing they wear. I’m also glad that she takes the time to briefly name check some other good writers in the field, including the brilliant Rachael Nisbet.

I’m not going to give away too many of the fascinating pleasures which make up the minor masterpiece that is The Giallo Canvas - Art, Excess And Horror Cinema but I would certainly say that, if you are into giallo and exploitation cinema and are looking to read something different to the usual meanderings in this field, then this one is really worth a purchase. And, it also educated me in one very important point that may have escaped my attention completely if I hadn’t picked up this tome... that the mannequin on the old posters for Spasmo bears a striking resemblance to Tori Amos. Not to mention Heller-Nicholas’ conclusion section, which takes time to mull over the much overused critical phrase ‘style over substance’ and its use as a negative in relation to the genre when, in some ways, it could also be seen as a much more positive engagement with the subject. Yep, there’s some real next level observations in this book. Give it a go.

Ennio Morricone In His Own Words

 
Absolute Applications

Ennio Morricone In His Own Words
by Ennio Morricone and Alessandro De Rosa
Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780190681012

Just a brief review of a very valuable book in the annals of musical history, which I’m sure I won’t do anything like full justice to but, I hope it will give interested parties enough of a flavour to pursue this magnificent tome themselves.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Ennio Morricone conduct concerts of his works in London around five or six times in my life. They are always a treasured experience and each time I attended it just compelled me to re-explore his back catalogue of music. Alas, the great man died back in July so I won’t again have the pleasure of seeing him live ever again but, I guess I knew that anyway as his last concert tour, from a few years ago, was pretty much promoted as his farewell set of concerts.

This manuscript, Ennio Morricone In His Own words, a 2019 English translation of a 2016 book, is a wonderful exploration of the composer which is a transcription of conversations taking place between Morricone and a young composer/freelance musician named Alessandro De Rosa.

Now, I usually find “In their own words” style books to be either just a tonne of bite sized quotes organised under theme or as much about the author compiling things as it is about the subject. I’m delighted to say that neither case is true in relation to this tome. These are genuinely long transcriptions of conversations between the two men with De Rosa deliberately taking the back seat and asking the right kind of provocative questions to allow Morricone to do the lion’s share of the book... often while the two are playing chess. That’s something I learned from this book for a start... Morricone was a keen and evidently excellent chess player, even subscribing to several magazines and playing in the odd tournament. He mentions very early on in the book (possibly even on the first page) that he sees strong links between music and chess notation.

Now I’ve always found this amazing composer to be somewhat arrogant when I’ve read quotations by him in various programmes or articles over the years but, this book firmly dispels that idea (along with a lot of others). Rather than being arrogant, I gather that Morricone is merely shy (as am I and that’s often perceived as a certain aloofness in other people, although a certain ‘special’ lady friend of mine would not recognise that trait in me, for sure) and genuinely honest about himself and this can sometimes come across as an unfortunate attitude when taken out of context. Which is another reason why this book is so good. I realise that Morricone was a thoughtful man and although, as I said, honest... I sense a reluctance to tackle certain issues due to his respect for the wishes and beliefs of others.

And I learned some really interesting stuff such as, despite often being perceived as not finding value in his work with the great Sergio Leone, he regarded that relationship as very special and cherished their continual friendship both on and off the job. There’s a heartbreaking anecdote in here about when and how he heard that Leone was dead, when they were due to meet up again very soon.

One thing which I’ve been trying to find out for years was just what was the great rift, often alluded to on most writing about his work, that occurred between him and Bruno Nicolai (who made up quite a good team of composers, conducting each others works and also collaborating on compositions in Morricone’s early years). It turns out, if Morricone is to be believed and I’ve no reason not to, that Nicolai was a great friend and they didn’t have any kind of falling out at all, just decided to part ways to retain their own individual styles... or at least retain the public perception of it (if I am understanding correctly). Morricone goes on record that he misses him (Nicolai died in 1991 but he did some remarkable scores in his time).

And, of course, he talks a lot about music. The inspiration, the experimentation and the difference between what he calls applied music (music created to serve another medium such as film, theatre, ballet etc) and what he calls ‘absolute music’, which is technically free of the bounds of certain rules (and equally the special creativity which comes as part and parcel of those restrictions, I would say). I am very glad to see that he doesn’t (like many critics seem to adhere to, as a belief about music they don’t understand or get on with in the arena of film) see his applied music really as any way of lesser value than his other stuff. Indeed, his thorough experimentation with music as heard in both styles of composition and the fact that he imposes his own limits in his writing for both forms anyway, certainly shows the similarity of the DNA in terms of the fact that he was always writing for an audience... even if that audience was himself.

And, yeah, not too much more to say about Ennio Morricone In His Own Words. I said up front that this would be a brief review but the quality and thoroughness of the events, details and periods explored in these conversations is so rich and varied that, frankly, this is the closest thing you can get to a genuine autobiography by the man, I believe. As such, it’s a valuable addition to anybody interested in film music and, towards the end where the conversations get quite technical in terms of the art (it kinda lost me a little in the last fifth of the book because I have no musical training), I think it’s also has a lot of value for modern composers in relation to where Morricone’s own experiments with music took him. This one gets a big, solid recommendation from me and I was certainly as enlightened by the contents as I was entertained. A true window into the mind of one of the greatest composers of the 20th/21st century.

Coronavirus At The Movies

 
The Movies Have Got It Covid

Warning: This article gives away the endings to Wonder Woman, Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Over the last six months of pseudo lockdown, I’ve been writing and editing a monthly Pandemic newsletter which I send to a small circle of friends to help keep them occupied and smiling through these trying times. Normally I don’t repeat content from here that I’ve included there and vice versa but, I thought the following article which I wrote for inclusion in the final issue (volume 2 starts up when we hit the second wave of Covid), number 6, last week might interest some of my blog readers too so, here’s the article I wrote speculating how cinema content might be shaped in the Covid and post-Covid world. I hope you like it.

It’s been suggested to me recently that, once movie production gets going again properly, it’s doubtful that the future of film will be reflective of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic. The argument is that people will not want to see depictions of social distancing on screen and, instead, will want to see a world untouched by the disease that has been, err, plaguing us these last six months or more. Audiences go to the cinema for escape, after all.

I'd have to say that... I think it’s probably quite dependent on how long this ‘new normal’ will be with us but I don’t think that people who are working on any form of art... be it film, fiction or music (to name but three), will be necessarily falling over themselves to provide people with a Covid-free environment in their work. Also, the fact that it seems people can get reinfected just a few months after having the symptoms, possibly prompting four times a year vaccines* if, indeed, an effective one can be found, is also going to be a factor in this. I think we could be stuck in this for a while and I fully expect our films to represent this. Even those set in alternate fantasy versions of our current reality such as the DC and Marvel universes, for example.

One of the things you need to remember is that a lot of fictional creators tend to base their stories in a world of historical accuracy. Unless they’re set in the past or in some remote fantasy land such as Middle Earth or Cimmeria, they’re going to want to base their story in the real world as much as possible. Why? Well simply because conforming to a facsimile of the real world helps make the fantasy they are weaving... be it superheroes, spy stories or even romantic comedies... more believable. If the audience can buy into the physical, psychological and sociological environment in which certain characters are interacting with each other, then it makes the story they are telling more credible.

Historically there are plenty of things which buy into the time period of when they are set and in which great pains are taken to explain certain historical inaccuracies conjured up by the subject of their stories.

Take the comics of DC published during the Second World War, for example. The DC characters were so powerful that kids would wonder why they didn’t just go over to Germany and stop the war. A good point... Superman would have finished the war in one afternoon.  So the writers came up with (or is that fell back on?) the artefact which Hitler himself listed among his occult obsessions. In the DC comics, Hitler absolutely had possession of the Spear Of Destiny (the spear that allegedly pierced the body of Christ on the cross), an artefact which has been used over and over again in genre fiction and movies since... well, for a long time. Because of the strange properties of the Spear Of Destiny, the readers were told, the superheroes couldn’t go near Hitler because the Spear would negate their super powers. And so, the comics could go on publishing superhero tales without the question of quickly ending the war ever coming up. A useful side step.

And we’ve seen things using historical context time and time again at the cinema. Take the recent Wonder Woman movie, for example. This was set in the First World War and, because it was Diana’s mission to end that war by destroying her war god brother, the film-makers brilliantly made sure that the day that she does this also coincided with the day the armistice was signed. So in the real world about her, the war was over but... we flies on the wall know how it really ended... right? Wink. A nice solution to what could have been a huge fantasy versus reality problem. One which allowed the fantasy world of the character to play out in a relatively accurate historical backdrop without the two elements ever fighting one another. Nice work.

Of course, some writers and directors don’t care about historical accuracy... or so it seems at first. Look at the two Quentin Tarantino movies Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, for example...

I work in an educational establishment and I can’t even begin to tell you the horror stories of the genuine historical ignorance of a large number of the students making their way through colleges and universities across the country. It’s astonishing and I can tell you now that there are a lot of people of a certain age (and younger, now) who believe that Adolf Hitler met his death by being machine gunned down in an exploding cinema and... that’s how the Second World War ended, didn’t it? Because that’s what happens at the end of Inglourious Basterds so, it must be true, right? That was set in World War II. Now, I’m absolutely all for artists doing what they want in movies but, when something presents itself as historically accurate then I think they should just have a little warning put in at the beginning of the film saying that the outcomes of this film are in no way representative of real life. Because, you know, a lot of people think these things actually are.

Similarly, even though the ending Tarantino was going to go for was obvious even before I took my seat at the cinema to see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, there are a fair few people of, again, a certain age, who think Sharon Tate went on to have a long, prosperous career as a Hollywood actress. I guess at least some of the people who go on to explore her post-Manson body of work will hit a wall of truth when it comes to the IMDB, at least.

The thing is, though, even these flights of fancy on the parts of Tarantino are taking a lot of time to paint that fantasy into a world which is backed up by the time in which they are set. Sure, the outcome is different but all the window dressing of 1940s Germany and 1960s Hollywood is brought into play to make his fantasies credible. So, really, he’s doing exactly the same as most filmmakers do these days... setting the story in a historically accurate environment.

Which brings me back to Covid in the movies (and other art forms). If this thing truly does last less than a year then I think the virus and the distancing will, at the very least, be used to have a scene or two with ‘light hearted social distancing’ scenes used to show, say, a development through time for a romantic relationship. “Oh, look guys, now they’re in the 2020s and they’ve got that kooky social distancing going on!”

At the worst... which I’m guessing is where we are at (the news hasn’t been very encouraging of late), I think we’ll be seeing the long term effects of social distancing and coronavirus in movies for a long time to come. Because, for one thing, it demonstrates what the audience are living themselves and thus adds credibility to the story line (whether you want to see it or not) and two... because if you’re forced to film scenes in a socially distant manner then, surely, it will be easier to do that if the scenes you are doing that with are having socially distant content?

So yeah, I’m sorry to say that, in terms of the virus and its more visible side effects, I think art will be imitating life just as much as it always does in the future and, since coronavirus is such an important part of our everyday lives currently, I don’t see us escaping that anytime soon.

*has been suggested at time of writing

Face It

The Dagwood Stage

Face It
by Debbie Harry
Harper Collins ISBN: 9780008229429

I don’t read that many autobiographies. Not for any strange reason... it’s just that there are very few people I’d be interested in knowing more about and they’re usually the ones who don’t write autobiographies. However, when I found out that Debbie Harry, lead singer of the group Blondie (among other things), had just written a tome I was well on board and it went straight onto my Christmas list.

It’s funny... I was never much into pop music when I was a kid (Is it still called pop music and does Blondie’s US punk variant aesthetic apply here to pop?). I was... and still am, I guess... someone who prefers to listen to a good movie score. So I never really ‘followed’ Blondie when they were at the absolute height of their powers in the late 1970s... but their music was a frequent backdrop on all the radio stations and television shows when I was in my teens and something must have seeped in because, after I discovered pop music had more to offer than what was at face value, sometime in the mid-1980s, Blondie was one of the first groups (after The Beatles, Kate Bush and Simon & Garfunkel) who I decided to check out. Like a gazillion other people, I bought the old vinyl LP (and a little later, the CD) called The Best Of Blondie and it was, as far as I could tell, absolutely filled to the brim with some amazingly strong and melodic songs. There literally wasn’t a bad one on there (although, I admit it took me a while to get into Atomic) and seemed to me like a collection of fairly sophisticated songs. It wasn’t long before I explored some of their other albums and my favourite one, with also the best cover art, would have to be their Autoamerican album. I used to listen to that one a lot.

So here I am, having just finished Ms. Harry’s new book Face It and, as I’d kinda expected actually, it charmed the pants off me. This is a, more or less, chronological take on her life from childhood to the present but the structure, while certainly there, is a little looser and more flexible than some other autobiographies I’ve read. Debbie will think nothing of making a quick deviation here and there, jumping backwards and forwards in time to suddenly cover something which she feels needs to be... or maybe it would be more fun being... grouped together thematically with something else.

She seems to have lead an interesting life and the book is not, I’m happy to say, just a series of behind the scenes anecdotes to various concerts and recording sessions... these are here too but they take the form of ‘easy to swallow’ asides and it’s all gleefully mixed into the potpourri of her life in a way that is both jarring and complimentary 'both' at the same time. There are also little interpenetrating sections where various pieces of ‘fan art’ is showcased with introductory commentary by her and this, apparently, is where the title of this book comes in... since they mostly all depict her face.

Some of the movies she’s made such as Videodrome and Union City get a respectable amount of ink while others are sometimes just whispered in passing as she cruises past little pockets of her life which, as she says in her last chapter, leaves the audience... or readers, I guess... wanting more. I would have certainly liked to have learned something more about the making of a wonderful film she’s in called My Life Without Me so, if she writes a second volume of this anytime soon, I’ll be first in line.

So, yeah, the book is full of amazing facts and interesting attitudes to events that have happened to her in her time. For instance, the way she seems to take a rape/assault coupled with a robbery in her stride is perhaps a little telling of how comfortable and confident she is in her skin... many people would not be able to do that as seemingly lightly as she does here. There’s also a lovely moment where she reveals that she slept with actor Harry Dean Stanton a couple of times. The first word that sprang to mind when I read that little reveal was... “Legend!” Although I’m not sure if I meant that in regard to Debbie H or Harry D. On reflection... I think it pretty much meant both of them, to be honest.

There’s also the quirky and sometimes quite informative and intelligent side to her personae given room to thrive here too. For example, one chapter starts off with her explaining what she believes the phenomenon of ‘coincidence’ is actually about. Another chapter might concentrate almost totally on the usefulness of having thumbs... opposable ones at that. And, of course, sometimes what’s left almost unsaid in the book is what lingers most in the memory but, of course, as above... leave them wanting more.

Ultimately, this was a real breeze to read and, in places, quite thought provoking too. I got the feeling that the writer herself thought she was being a little too dark in places and has tried to compensate for that but, honestly, I think it’s a much lighter, fluffier book than she realises and, of course, that also makes it a very entertaining and most welcome tome to sit and ponder. Alas, my favourite song of hers, the one I always play first when I revisit her music... Here’s Looking At You... doesn’t seem to get a mention but that’s okay, the spirit of her vocals seemed to me infused into the pages so I didn’t really miss it as the writer sprayed her initials across the pavement, so to speak.

So yeah, Face It is a great read, something I’d definitely recommend to fans of Blondie and outsiders such as myself, who don’t have any idea of what its like to live in the ‘New York scene’ of various decades and who can, at least, get a flavour of what it was like there. I really enjoyed this little peek into Debbie’s world and all I can say is, I hope she gets the time and motivation to bring out a second volume some day. I’d definitely like to know a little more.

Double Life

Hold Miklós

Double Life -
The Autobiography
Of Miklós Rózsa
by Miklós Rózsa
The Baton Press ISBN: 0859361411

Miklós Rózsa is, or rather was, one of the great film music composers of Hollywood from the 1940s through to the 1980s. He was much loved by the studio system the older he got and, by the time he moved over to MGM studios and signed a contract with them, he was pretty much allowed the pick of most MGM scores he wanted... or at least that’s what I’ve heard in the past. Rózsa tells it slightly differently here in terms of receiving projects in a more hap hazard manner but, either way, his music is always brilliant and stands alone as great composition.

For me personally, while I love the scores I’ve heard by him over the years, I have to say that he’s not a composer whose style really changes as time goes by but, since the style of the movies most certainly did, he does seem to be better serving the needs of the films he wrote for on the scores he penned back in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and even some of 70s as opposed to, say, the late 70s and 80s. What I mean by that is that, while I love his later scores such as Time After Time and Last Embrace, these just look to me like 1980s films over-scored with 1940s style music. I know many would disagree with me (and one or two of the directors of these movies themselves would certainly disagree outright with that sentiment) but that’s just the way I see/hear it. That being said, he is a fantastic composer... who can forget his scores for great movies like Salvador Dali and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound or William Wyler’s Ben Hur. 

Double Life, his autobiography, is something I’ve wanted to read for many years but I’ve only just gotten around to it, thanks to finding a very cheap, second hand copy at The Cinema Museum* for the princely sum of £3.50. In this, Rózsa at the very end of his career divides the chapters of his life first into locations and, when he finally gets to America due to having to finish Korda’s famous The Thief Of Baghdad in Hollywood, it’s split into tenures at studios and so on. I’d just assumed he’d named his autobiography after his famous score to Double indemnity but, in actual fact, it derives from a film he scored called Double Life and he uses it here as a metaphor for his own double life, by which he means the two kinds of musical artist he was. So, the scores he wrote for films for the studios versus the concertos, symphonies etc that he wrote purely as musical entitles in their own right, for concert performance. This book gives a healthy balance of both and, at one point when his contract with MGM was about to expire, details the lengths he went to in order to achieve a high standard of writing for both projects.

And it’s a book chock full of little sketches of people and situations as he journey’s through his life, mostly in chronological order with the odd flash-forward or flash-back to add an appropriate commentary about something else he’s talking about. So you have things like his chance encounter with a ‘growing in popularity’ Adolf Hitler in Paris and his disbelief at how the rest of the world were just not catching on to just where that was heading when, in the places he was passing through, it was being made pretty obvious that invasion and war would soon be coming. My favourite story here is when he gets to London in the 1930s and he immediately sees a newspaper headline reading, “Great Britain Under Attack”, which promptly scares him and gives him visions of having to flee our fair isle when he’s only just arrived. He hastily bought a copy of the newspaper and read it from cover to cover, expecting the worst (which was to come but... not before he was already living in Hollywood) and then found, finally, that the headline was talking about the cricket scores. This has got to be a good demonstration of just how ‘British’ our country is and I love this... it’s just so typical, even today, of my snoozy country’s mindset.

Rózsa made the decision to try and pursue a career in films because, although a very successful and critically recognised composer, you just couldn’t make any money from composing for the concert hall. A little anecdote he tells of his time in France is very pertinent to the sentiments I see expressed almost every week on Twitter in regards to working in the arts and it’s when he asked what a composition of his would pay out for him. He was told that... “In Paris, you do it for publicity!” His response? “Well publicity is fine but it is difficult to buy groceries with it.”

The book also tells of his friendship with the famous movie making family of the Kordas, of course and how he went with them to America to finish up on The Thief Of Baghdad and ended up staying there for over 40 years. It also details some of the political intrigue and things he was asked to do or, in some cases, ways in which he pulled the wool over certain studio staff’s eyes in order to get results. Such as the way he ousted Strauss as the composer for The Thief Of Baghdad and the way he fooled William Wyler to keep the music he’d written for the famous ‘rowing speed’ scene in Ben Hur by letting him reject it and then reintroducing it as it was later in exactly the same levels and mix which, he was told, was much better.

One of his pet hates, it seems, is the use of the term ‘main titles’. This is because, as he says, it harkens back to silent movies when the opening credits and titles weren’t the only titles (or inter-titles) throughout the film and are a completely meaningless thing today. Something I’d not thought of before but I’m happy to be educated by one of the best. Another thing I learned of was his absolute dislike of the click track on a film (which is a device used in Hollywood to help composers keep time with the events of a scene) and he only ever had to use one on the odd occasion for certain scenes. He declared it a mechanical device and, therefore, anti-musical.

In fact, my biggest surprise when reading this was that... Rózsa just wasn’t into films. He sought them out to try and put bread on the table and he liked some of them and had good words to say about a few of the projects he got involved in. Most of them, though, it seems he didn’t have a great deal of respect for, including many of the ones he personally scored but, similar to more or less the same sentiment I’ve heard expressed by Bernard Herrmann on one occasion, he never did anything but his musical best for them... so at least I can take comfort to the fact that he wasn’t ‘writing down’ for his pictures. Instead, he was doing what every other score composer does, I guess... try to elevate them and make them better.

Similarly, he doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about most of the Hollywood composers of the time although, he’s always quite discreet in that he often doesn’t name names. He does, however, mention some of his film composing friends who he did have a lot of respect for so... he talks about André Previn and there’s a very typical Bernard Herrmann story in there. He also says a lot of good things about the musical writing talent Frank Skinner, who is probably not best known for writing scores to A list pictures but, frankly, is another score composer I love and I was genuinely surprised that someone like Rózsa appreciated him so much.

So there you have it... Double Life is a charmingly written autobiography, which is nothing if not polite but also very witty and conjures up a man who wasn’t afraid to tell the odd studio executive off and who carved a niche writing some very distinctive periods of styles of film music in his career (Noir, Epic etc.). He seems somewhat shy about writing of his personal life in Hollywood and you won’t hear too much, if anything, of his wife and children and although he mentions the music from The Killers being ‘acquired’, shall we say, for the TV show Dragnet, he doesn’t mention his successful law suit against it or say much of anything about certain types of problems in his life. This is not a kiss and tell book... but it does give some idea of what it was like in different countries in certain decades and, at the very least, its invaluable for this stuff. I thought it was a great read and anyone interested in both film music and any other kind of musical composition could do a lot worse than get their hands on a copy of this book and read it cover to cover. I’m glad I did and I’m not even a musician.

*Details of further stalls, screenings and events can be found at the Cinema Museum’s website here.

Patti Cake$

Rap-ture

Patti Cake$
2017 USA Directed by Geremy Jasper 
UK cinema release print.

Just took a walk down to my local flea pit,
And took in a movie where the people were writ,
With a style, a heart, a shock to the head,
The team behind this one weren’t swingin’ the lead.

There’s Danielle Macdonald, she was really that great,
She wants to be a rapper with her double best mate,
A geezah named Jheri, he brightens her day,
Played by a cool bro named Siddharth Dhananjay.

The third in the crew is a charmer named Bastard,
Mamoudou Athie plays him, you know you’ve been mastered.
And with Patti’s wheelchair nanny, providing backing vocals,
You know this crew are jamming stuff that’s too good for the locals.

In the very first five minutes, the film had my heart,
With the Walter Mitty dreamings that give Patti her art,
She walks down the street with her headphones up to there,
As she carries on walking, she floats in the air.

The movie shows the tough times with a structure clichéd,
But with details so fresh, you need to wear your eye-shade.
The hand held camera, the slow pans and the dead pans,
This movie jumps out way ahead, some others are the also rans.

The film is anchored up with an old school aesthetic,
But don't let this fool you 'cause the pacing is quite hectic.
The rhythms, the beats, the shots aren't apoplectic,
The main man, Mr. Jasper, keeps it all quite copacetic.

Performance is key and the actors do so good,
Not a bad one in the bunch, you must see it, you should.
The tension, the heartache, the camera is all over it,
Surely for this viewer, it’s a fresher sure fire hit.

The film doesn’t stumble, not once, it’s just crazy,
And the editing so good, you know it won’t get hazy,
On transitions to real life and the dreams in Patti’s mind,
A better “rap to get out” movie? That you won’t find.

The film has the highs and lows, perhaps it’s formulaic,
But the way the thing is told here doesn’t get too algebraic.
There’s pressure, there passion, my heart filled with elations,
When Patti finally gets down to some sexual relations.

But for all the genre trappings of the structure of this show,
This movie doesn’t quite get where you think it’s gonna go.
The ending scene just owns it, sheer poetry, it’s right where,
It takes out your heart and you’re dancing on air.

Director Geremy Jasper also wrote it plus the music,
Along with Jason Binnick and the beats won’t make you too sick.
This movie it rocked me, it got me writing rhyme,
So you know I must have had myself a triple real good time.

If you want something special in your cinema this week,
You really should see Patti Cake$, ‘cos this film it is so sweet.
And Patti is a honey, you know she’ll treat you right,
If you head out to watch this one, you’ll have a great night!

Einstein On The Beach

‘Really’ Of Telly-tivety

Einstein On The Beach
France/UK 2016
Opus Arte Blu Ray All Regions

Composer Philip Glass has been playing a musical backdrop to my life for almost 30 years now. His music, and also this opera in particular, was a big influence on me when I was studying for my degree. Up until then I had been listening primarily to musical scores written for movies but was also shifting into more experimental, contemporary classical stuff. I had already discovered a form of minimalism, the musical form accredited to brilliant composers like Glass and Steve Reich, to a certain extent in the ‘Ladbroke Grove sound’ perpetuated by Michael Nyman, initially through his scores for the Peter Greenaway movies and then onto all his other stuff. When I finished my General Art and Design Diploma I then studied for my degree in Graphic Design at the London College of Printing and it was here, fairly early on, that a fellow student, @thatkeithmartin introduced me to Philip Glass by way of his compositions for the documentary Northstar and the stage show 1000 Airplanes On The Roof. I was absolutely hooked from the opening notes of each and then I went into one of the HMVs in Oxford Street (I don’t believe it’s there anymore) and bought the original CBS CD set of Einstein On The Beach and, predictably, it blew me away.

And that’s the kind of stuff I was listening as a counterpoint to my degree course. A solid wall of Philip Glass in the evenings as I worked on various degree projects and his music just kind of seeped into me and, I’m sure, seeped out again in various ways in my own work on a visual level. And, on and off, I’ve never really stopped listening to him since. I’ve seen him live in concert too many times to count over the years. Watched him do live performances of Koyanisqaatsi and Powaqaatsi a number of times too and seen various operas such as Galileo Galilei and, my favourite of his works, Satyagraha. However, I’ve never had the opportunity to see his opera Einstein On The Beach and apparently, that’s because I missed it when it was in tour in 2013. Which is something I’ve only just found out and which I’m annoyed about but I have, at least, seen this new Blu Ray version of it taken from one of those 2013 productions and... I’m very much better off for having done so.

So I finally got to see what this thing was supposed to look like behind this fantastic curtain of music and... it’s the same but different.

For instance, the opening ‘Knee Play’ music which is one of my favourite all-time Philip Glass pieces and which, in the recording I have,  lasts only four minutes, is performed here in an entirety that I never knew it had... with a long, slow build up to those last few minutes which takes almost a half an hour. I would absolutely love to get a CD of this version but, heck, at least I have it on here (and you can apparently watch this section on you tube too here) and it’s absolutely incredible.

In fact, all in all I’d have to say that this production and the way this has been captured here for the home viewing market, with the director using close ups of various elements of what is often a packed out stage, is just overall incredible in general, barring a minor grumble. That grumble being the introduction, in a few sequences, of some fairly standard dancing moves... thankfully these sections don’t go on too long though and the majority of this thing is absolute bliss. And even if there are some sequences you don’t particularly like, the music is always there in the foreground so, frankly, the whole four and a half hours as featured on this quite nicely put together, two disc blu ray set, is a huge hit with me.

I’d have to say that my favourite part of the opera is the first hour and a half and the opening knee play, where the two ‘main ladies’ start saying words or phrases from the ‘get some wind for the sailboat’ lyrics and hurling out seemingly random numbers (yeah, I bet they’re not). It’s truly startling and the main choreography from original choreographer Lucinda Childs (who put it together in collaboration with Glass back in the early 1970s) is amazing as people move slowly... very slowly... around the stage space and throw out frozen expressions of joy and wonder which, frankly, cracked me up laughing in several places and which really carried me along on a wave of joy right from the word go. As this opening plays out, the chorus gradually, over the space of a quarter of an hour or more, assemble themselves in slow motion until they catch up to the ‘Knee Play' section and start the familiar counterpoint singing... One Two Three Four, One Two Three Four Five Six, One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight as a repeat phrase which then, possibly without some people even noticing, metamorphosises into One Two Three Four, One Two Three Four Five Six, Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight but still retaining the beat for the missing number. It’s just sublime.

And that’s one of main things about the music of Philip Glass that I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with and not realise over the years. It tends to take you by stealth sometimes but there’s always a lot more going on than just a repeat motif... it shifts and strays and progresses itself until it reaches a logical conclusion or change and it does it slowly. Which is another thing which I have a theory on when it comes to people who don’t really ‘get’ the music of Philip Glass. When certain people hear it they tend to hear a jumble of notes repeated very fast, over and over again. Nope, that’s not what it is... as far as I’m concerned...

Think of micropolyphany in music.

It was invented by György Ligeti and some of his music, which was accidentally appropriated by Stanley Kubrick for 2001 - A Space Odyssey without paying the composer (at first), such as Lux Aeterna, uses this invention... which is lots of short, indistinguishable notes played very fast to make up one, long even tone. Think of that concept for a moment and then think about the music of Philip Glass. It sounds fast if you listen on the surface but think about how those notes and phrases are slowly shifting and mutating and you’ll maybe come to the conclusion, as did I back in my college days, that Philip Glass doesn’t really write fast music and that his works do, in fact, incorporate ponderous melody lines. What he does, it is my belief, is write very slow music which is, itself, made up of lots of very fast repeat notes. So try listening to what the notes are saying in clusters rather than as individual notes and... you may start to get hooked on the music the same way I did all those decades ago.

And it’s great hearing this stuff and seeing the accompanying visuals for the first time. Especially with the director hand picking which parts of a composition you see on the stage at any one time so you don’t miss what he considers to be important. It’s also an absolute mind blower to try and figure out how all the performers know where to come in an go out. Glass’s music can’t be all that easy to get right and I wonder how much concentrated counting is going on in the heads of the actors, actresses and singers. My best guess, from having seen some of these singers coming in on the same cue, time after time, is that there is a complex series of clues at work here and each individual is both looking out, and listening out, for them. For instance, when person x gets to that line in the floor over there, the next person can start to move and go into their singing  which will, in turn, trigger somebody else to start their next part of the performance. That’s my best guess scenario anyway.

It must be a fairly complex set of signifiers to get the stuff right, I’m sure and not only extremely easy to screw up but fairly physically demanding... even for dancers (who are notoriously strong). There’s one sequence, for example, lasting around a half and hour or maybe longer, where a girl is strutting backwards and forwards across the stage in repeat motions while her arm is outstretched and pointing upwards at a fixed angle. I was feeling her pain... if you’ve ever tried to hold your arm steady for even a few minutes, let alone keep a beat with the music and keep within your area of a stage while moving fairly quickly... well, you can probably get some idea of what these people are accomplishing here for their art.

The whole opera is very well performed, in fact, and extremely well put together. I’ve both more and less of an idea of what I am listening to every time I reach for that album these days and I think I’m better off for it. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I’m sure, but it is truly brilliant stuff and if you’re a fan of Philip Glass, or even contemporary or historical minimalism in the first place, then you probably owe it to yourself to give this one a look. Especially since it’s clear some revisions or changes have been made to the original text. I’m feeling really grateful to Opus Arte for being able to finally see Einstein On The Beach in a presentation of some sort and I hope they keep up the good work with their Glass back catalogue and release some more of his projects, past and present, in the future. Really looking forward to seeing more of this kind of stuff out there.

Brian Tyler Live

The Brian’ Mighty

Brian Tyler Live -
Film Music for Stars,
Cars and Superheroes.
7th May - Royal Festival Hall, London

So again I found myself with the same dilemma as when I covered the Hans Zimmer concert (right here). I rarely do concert reviews and, a few weeks now after the fact seemed probably a little late. However, this was a truly great evening and, since it turns out that this was the great man’s debut concert, I figured I’d write a little appreciation of it here... plus a few minor criticisms thrown in for good measure.

Okay, so while I had a couple of Brian Tyler’s scores from before the end of the last decade, I really started to sit up, take note, and begin to enjoy the music of Brian Tyler when he scored the fourth Rambo movie, back in 2008.  I was impressed by what he did with that score and... a fair number of them after that. I’ve been steadily amassing a selection of this guy's albums since then because I feel he’s one of the truly genuine blockbuster talents of his generation. One of the relatively ‘new crowd’ like Michael Giacchino and Alexandre Desplat who are the modern day equivalents of such composers with the stature of the Herrmanns, Goldsmiths and Williams of this world.

The concert was pretty packed out and, when he came on stage and addressed the audience, I was amazed by how young he looks. He’s actually only a few years younger than myself but, trust me, he looks maybe 20 years younger than that, as I’m sure people must tell him all the time. More importantly, he seemed very laid back and friendly and he seemed to have a nice, fun working relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Choral Society, not to mention two outstanding vocalists called Tori Letzler and Yael Shoshana Cohen.

He also seemed very energetic and enthusiastic with his players, moving around a lot (almost dancing as he conducted) and generally feeling the music as he went. I usually find his music quite orchestrally dense or layered but, unlike a few of his contemporaries who tend to deviate to cacophony when using a similarly crowded palette, his works are often quite beautiful and tend towards melody in surprising ways, sometimes. He really is a great composer and I’m happy to say that he managed to get his exact ‘Brian Tyler sound’ out of his performers that night. I was sitting not far from the front and I could feel the bass notes hitting me as the band played on. I was surprised to see him wearing headphones during the conducting and what he had playing on them was clearly audible from where I was sitting... he’s the first composer I know who has taken along his own ‘click track’ to conduct to, while in concert, which I found fascinating.

In between tracks, he would take the time to regale the audience with stories of his career experiences such as the time he got the call from Sylvester Stallone and he hung up on him, thinking it was a director friend doing a bad imitation. When he told of how his agent rang up to tell him he’d just hung up on Sylvester Stallone, he got a big laugh from the audience. Of course, that phone call got him the score to Rambo IV (reviewed here) and the three movies, to date, in The Expendables franchise (Reviewed here, here and here). He also confirmed my suspicions that this was his big concert debut, and pointed out his mum and dad who were in the audience to see him. So that was pretty cool and heart warming, I have to say.

He got through a vast array of stuff and packed in quite a lot, with gallons of music from his career including Children Of Dune, Thor - The Dark World (reviewed here), Iron Man 3 (reviewed here), The Fast And The Furious, Now You See Me (reviewed here and which still, criminally, has not had a CD release), Constantine and Aliens VS Predator: Requiem... along with a whole host of others including some excerpts from his video game scores. I was annoyed that he didn’t play anything from Battle: Los Angeles (reviewed here), Bubba Ho Tep or John Dies At The End (reviewed here) but he covered a lot of ground in one sitting. He even ‘world premiered’ three tracks, two from upcoming movies... which included the stupidly titled Now You See Me 2 (Seriously? This needed to be called Now You Don’t) and a lengthy suite based on his Marvel Studios Fanfare music, which I’m really hoping he makes available on CD at some point.

Now it wouldn’t really be one of my reviews if I didn’t have a few little grumbles and so, here we are...

When it was announced that he would also be playing a ‘Tribute to John Williams’, a composer I’d seen conduct his own stuff a fair few times, I thought it was pretty unnecessary, to be honest. We were there for Brian’s music, not Johnny’s, and I would have rather he’d played just his own stuff but... well that’s his choice. As it turns out the tribute was only one track long and it was the concert version of William’s opening title march from Superman The Movie. So my first proper grumble was that I think he took the track just a little too fast and, also, that he didn’t seem to be bringing out the detail of the music like he did in his own stuff. Which was interesting but, hey, people were happy with this so I’m pretty sure I’m in a minority here.

My second criticism was the playing order of one of the pieces. He opened the concert with the main theme to Thor - The Dark World but, during the second half, he played one of the slower, more emotionally charged pieces from the film, with vocals performed, so beautifully, by the lovely Yael Shoshana Cohen. Since the track was so far removed in placement order in the concert, I wondered how many people in the audience who were less than familiar with the composers score on this one would have realised that she was singing a kind of slowed down variant of that opening melody. I know the two friends I was with had no idea that this is what she was singing so it’s a shame that this didn’t follow that opening piece, I think.

My third grumble relates to the titling of a piece. When each cue was played, the title of the film in the original typography of that movie was displayed on a big screen above the orchestra... but when Brian played his opening from Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem... the second of the two AVP movies, it was titled only Aliens Vs Predator, which is the name of the first movie with a score by someone completely different. Nothing wrong with the music, however. Tyler’s score is pretty much the only saving grace of that film, which itself plays like Aliens and Predators have been somehow caught up in a bad teenage slasher flick. Lovely, Holstian piece though and, as usual in this concert, Tyler knocked it out of the park.

My fourth grumble was the encore... there wasn’t one. Which is almost a criminal act in a UK concert venue (I don’t know what they do in the United States and, I don’t care). I know it was Tyler’s debut but we clapped an clapped and clapped while he came out four times midst standing ovations. The audience were really working hard wearing their hands out for that encore but they didn’t get one. Alas, that wasn’t great but... well the rest of the evening more than made up for that, I have to say.

All in all, I’ve seen a great number of movie concerts over the years by a great number of maestros such as Williams, Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Nyman, Glass, Morricone, Zimmer and a whole host of others I’m not going to list here. These people were/are giants and their music will enrich the minds of many generations to come. Brian Tyler came to England in his debut concert and he conquered the hearts and ears of the audience at the Royal Festival Hall (a venue I prefer much more, acoustically, to the Royal Albert Hall) and, as far as I’m concerned, he stood with the memories of these giants and more than held his own. An absolutely brilliant concert experience and all I can say is... if you get the chance to see him anytime, definitely get yourself a ticket, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema

 

















Terror Message

Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema
edited by Philip Hayward and various others
Equinox Publishing 
ISBN: 978-1845532024

So here I am again, writing about a film music related book which I was really happy about finding on the shelves in Foyles and which, truth be told, I was less happy about when I started lurking between the covers. As is the fashion with some books on a broad subject these days, this tome consists of a number of different essays by different writers, each based on a specific sub-field... or perceived sub-field by the writers and editor, at any rate... of the topic at hand. I find these kinds of books a bit hit and miss to be honest but sometimes they can hold together pretty well, as was the case of The Psychology Of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which I reviewed here and which had a similarly ‘thrown together’ kind of structure. This book... not so much but, I’ll get to that later. Alas, Terror Tracks really is the epitome of a book that’s genuinely sporadic in its luminescence and perhaps my biggest problem with it is that there are just so many errors that have crept into some of the chapters.

For instance, in the third chapter on Sound And Music In Hammer’s Vampire Films (by Michael Hannan), the writer of that particular essay claims that the first Quatermass movie, The Quatermass Xperiment (reviewed here) was based on a TV serial called Quatermass. Wrong. Quatermass was the name of the fourth serial and it wasn’t even written and produced until decades after the Hammer movies were done and dusted. The movie The Quatermass Xperiment was based on the TV serial called The Quatermass Experiment. I really get annoyed when big errors like this find their way into printed form because a lot of people tend to take statements like this at face value and don’t always know that they are being fed completely false information. Admittedly, the writers don’t always know they are doing this either but, surely, this is a bit of a basic error to have gotten in there in the first place?

The same chapter goes on to say, and I quote;

“The studio's most enduringly popular monster was the vampire, represented in sixteen separate films, beginning with The Curse Of Frankenstein and ending with the Hong Kong co-production Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.”

Wait, what? Seriously? In what corner of a parallel universe is the Frankenstein monster a Frankenstein vampire? Could the writer, perhaps, be getting The Curse Of Frankenstein, which was the first Frankenstein movie the studio put out, mixed up with the original US release title of the first Hammer Dracula movie (reviewed here), The Horror Of Dracula, released the following year? I’m guessing yes but, with this kind of hard, factual error I’m not in the position, as a reader, where I should be having to play guessing games with how the writer has managed to reach his so-called facts.

And it’s not just one writer who seems to be playing fast and loose with the truth either... Tony Mitchell, in his chapter on Prog Rock, The Horror Film and Sonic Excess: Dario Argento, Morricone and Goblin, tells us that the band Goblin were originally called Cherry Ripe. Um... nope. Their original name for commercially released work (they were called Oliver when they were working on demos) was actually Cherry Five... also the name of their first album, which is worth picking up from the Cinevox label if you’re a fan of their work, by the way. So I have no idea where Mitchell gets that from... unless it was changed by somebody else at the proofreading or typesetting stage by accident, perhaps? Either way, this glaring error has made its way into print.

Mitchell then goes on to criticise Ennio Morricone’s score for Dario Argento’s directorial debut giallo The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (which is not a horror film, by the way, and so perhaps should not be included in this book in the first place) as “bland”, some of which verges on “the banality of muzak”. Really? Many people would disagree with that, I would guess, although that’s a fair enough statement to make if you actually believe it. Why, then, would the writer then go on, later in the same article, to praise Morricone’s scores for Argento?

Worse than this, in the same chapter, we are treated to the wisdom that The Stendahl Syndrome was Morricone’s last score for Argento (another giallo too... not a horror movie as this book’s title implies). Well, all I can say about this is that, bearing in mind the composer scored Argento’s version of The Phantom Of The Opera two years after he worked on The Stendahl Syndrome, I find this statement a bit of a hard one to swallow. Yes, I agree Argento’s version of Gaston Leroux’s classic tale is probably something we’d all like to wipe from our collective memories but, just because many of us wish he hadn’t attempted it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Again... get your facts right.

Now, there are some good chapters in here too, it has to be said... although starting off with two essays by different people on Psycho really does nothing to endear me to a book which purports to be about music and sound for horror films and then starts off with two chapters about a suspense thriller instead. Psycho? Really not a horror movie, people.

However, Kyoko Koizumi’s chapter Creative Soundtrack Expression: Tôru Takemitsu’s Score for Kwaidan is extremely entertaining and Jeremy Barham’s section on Music as Context, Character and Construction in Kubrik’s The Shining is long but makes for some interesting reading. There’s even a wonderful section on what is a popularly (and perhaps inaccurately) perceived ‘modern’ trend in J-Horror in James Werzbicki’s chapter The Ghostly Noise of J-Horror: Roots and Ramifications, which also compares the timings and use of music in the original Japanese versions with their American remakes.

There are, perhaps, as many good chapters as bad and, even some of the ones I don’t agree with such as Christopher Leigh’s perception in his chapter on Music Of The Night, that human characters in modern horror are represented by pop music while the non-human characters are represented by classical styled representation... make compelling, if questionable cases. However, at the back of my mind throughout the whole book, which contains some interesting charts and illustrations of music and timings popping up in appropriate places, was the worry that... if there were so many facts glaringly wrong in some of the chapters which I was personally able to pick up on and which had been missed through all the proof versions, then surely there could be an equal number of errors in the other sections which I am not as knowledgable about to pick up on but, nevertheless, are still there, misleading me with false information.

So, yeah, Terror Tracks is a bit of a mixed bag to be honest and I’m not sure I’d recommend it to many fans of sound and film scoring, horror or otherwise. Perhaps I’d best not say too much because there are some things which are worthwhile reading here, so I'll just leave it to my friend's response when I texted him the statement about the Hammer vampire movies including The Curse Of Frankenstein. “Which book was it? I hope I do not own it.” was his quick reply.

Star Trek The Ultimate Voyage Concert Tour

Hailing Frequencies Closed

Star Trek The Ultimate Voyage Concert Tour
The Royal Albert Hall
1st November 2015

You know, I’ve been to loads of great movie music concerts over the years. Starting off when I saw John Williams at the Barbican in 1981 or 1982... where he conducted Holst’s The Planet Suite followed by music from Superman The Movie, Close Encounters, his first two Star Wars scores, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and, in an astonishing encore, the premiere UK performance of a piece of music from his up and coming film E.T. I was 13 or 14 years old and it was a great experience. I saw a few more concerts by him over the years too.

Over the remaining decades since that first time, I also saw some great concerts by the likes of Jerry Goldsmith (more times than I can remember), Michael Nyman (even more than Goldsmith), Philip Glass (again, too many times to recall), Elmer Bernstein (three times), Ennio Morricone (three or four times), John Barry (a couple of times) and Howard Shore... to name drop a few. I’ve also seen some of the new style concerts over recent years, where clips are simultaneously projected as silent montages, such as a brilliant concert by Danny Elfman for his music for the Tim Burton movies and even some full-on films where the score is played live to the projected movie, giving the audience an insight into the way the orchestra works against the images and sound on screen... such as the two recent Star Trek films at the Royal Albert Hall and Goldsmith’s Planet Of The Apes at the Royal Festival Hall. There have been a  lot of these kinds of ‘movie with music’ screenings going on in London over the last couple of years, presumably because the organisers of these things have discovered that these are really popular... and not surprising either. In this way you can see film music put into practice against the images they were composed for (a key point which will come up again in a minute) and really see the art and craft of the scoring of these movies coming alive before your eyes and ears. They can be great fun...

And, yeah... they’ve mostly been pretty good, overall, to tell the truth. You always get the odd bad one and there’s no such thing as ‘the perfect concert’ but, the number of live performances I’ve seen that I loved far exceed the number of concerts I’ve had a bad time at. I rarely review concerts because... well, they are what they are and the review is rarely going to be more than an account of the one off performance in question... which can be entertaining but less useful in terms of judging whether you should go take a look at it. That moment is usually long gone.

I am, however, making an exception in this case because the Star Trek concert I saw a few weeks ago at the Royal Albert Hall was quite badly presented and I had some real problems with it on a couple of counts. It’s also touring in 2016 and I think people should know what they’re getting into here.

Part of my problem stems from having such a brilliant orchestra, the London Philharmonic, a conductor, Justin Freer, who knew how to get the best out of them, two legendary guest conductors - composers Ron Jones and Jay Chattaway - and a play list of 29 mostly great pieces of music from 50 years of Star Trek that made the mouth water when I saw the programme... and then having a simultaneous presentation which completely, and in almost every way possible, detracted from the music for most of the time.

It started off okay with the first half of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture arrangement of Jerry Goldsmith’s famous theme, despite what it said in the printed programme, unfortunately cutting off before they got to the Klingon battle music half way through the piece. Which was a shame but I wasn’t going to complain too much... until, after a couple of pieces of music were played from other things when the second half of the track was performed as a separate suite. What the f***? That wasn’t the worst thing, however. As soon as the second piece in the concert started, an audio/visual presentation began which would last through the whole two hours of the show... and it wasn’t kind to the performance.

For starters, they had a narrator, I don’t know who (could have been Michael Dorn, I guess), starting a continual, pretentious monologue about man’s endeavours, how the characters are all noble and tough, how we all collectively strive to be better people etc, playing right over the music. This was accompanied by constantly shifting montages from all the various Star Trek films and TV series, mixed together, including full sound effects and intrusive dialogue... all played over the top of the orchestra’s hard work. The music was rarely even from the same era or show from which the clips being used were chosen from... it was ludicrous. It was like a mix and match scene and I really didn’t want to watch...say... excerpts from the exciting ‘drop’ action sequence of the 2009 Star Trek movie while I was trying to listen to James Horner’s End Titles from Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan? I also knew I didn’t want to be watching excerpts of Khan - the Montalban and Cumberbatch incarnations - whilst trying to listen past the dialogue and sound effects to the End Credits Suite from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country! 

I mean, asides from the overblown ‘connecting’ dialogue voice over, the clip montages were mostly quite good... but how could you possibly concentrate on the music? I was realising half of the pieces I was waiting for had already passed me by because I was too busy trying to shift my concentration away from the visual density and noise of the presentation. This was appalling. I remember Goldsmith saying in or before at least a couple of concerts, sometimes in a pre-concert talk, that he absolutely hated it when a piece of music he’d composed to be shown with a specific sequence of images was used to accompany a different set of images. He then went on to illustrate how Ridley Scott (Goldsmith’s scores for Alien and Legend were both treated quite badly in their final presentations too) or somebody like that had temp tracked a cut of a movie using parts of his old scores and he’d been very unhappy about it. He knew what the music was supposed to be conveying with the images and putting the music he’d composed with other images was just wrong. Imagine how he would have felt, were he alive, if he’d have seen this so-called concert, where almost all of the pieces of music on offer were put in the background to serve totally different emotional hits than what they had been composed for. I reckon, after hearing stories about the great man, that he would have been less than calm with this decision and I wonder if his departed spirit would come back and haunt the people responsible for this event at some point... Star Trek Experience - The Wrath Of Goldsmith.

Now, the concert wasn’t all bad... there were a few instances where they let the actual visuals, dialogue and effects playing on a clip with the actual score composed for that sequence play out as it did in the original, with live accompaniment... such as the stand out moment of the concert where the fight scene from the Star Trek episode Amok Time was screened, supported by Gerald Fried’s iconic action music written for that scene. Sad to say, though, that these moments were exceptionally few and far between and, for me, this one piece was the only bit of the concert that really worked. At least the music fit what was gong on and I could hear the way the score was working properly, without any distraction other than visuals which already worked in harmony with it.

As far as the rest of the concert was concerned... well... the lady I was seeing the show with was clock watching and, although she’d been really looking forward to the music, suggested we could leave during the interval if I wanted... I said we should see it through and at least wait and see what the encore was (there wasn’t one) but, she was obviously not having a great time with the concert either and, when we talked afterwards, it seemed she was having the exact same problems of a distracting and needless presentation that I was having. The organisers should have seriously ditched the screen content and noise on this one, I think.

Now, when I think back on it, it becomes clear to me that this was maybe more of a propaganda/promotional piece for Star Trek rather than a celebration of it. It kinda pains me to say this and there were certainly no “buy our DVDs and Blu Rays - in shops now” moments in the well put together presentations... it was mostly done quite tastefully. However, the lack of respect for the way the busy sound and footage detracted from actually being able to concentrate or, in actual fact, consciously register the music above all the hullabaloo, seems to me to say a lot about what the target audience was for this... certainly Star Trek fans above music fans, it seemed to me (and to the person who came with me). It seemed specifically fired up to the aim of getting everyone rushing home and watching, consuming and buying more Star Trek and I’m sure that’s the thing that most people, whether consciously or unconsciously, would have taken away from this event. I can’t imagine anybody saying... ooh, Rosenman’s opening titles from Star Trek IV was really well done because... well, could they even hear them?

The concert finished with a big disappointment for me too. The Alexander Courage theme, which I’d seen played amazingly by the same orchestra earlier in the year, was the expanded arrangement which is on the Johnny Williams and the Boston Pops album Out Of This World. It’s a version of it I’ve always hated for its deviation in spirit from the original and I can only assume they wanted to round off the concert with this extended version because they wanted to make their final montage of clips last just that little bit longer. Oh well... at least I couldn’t concentrate on that piece so much, over the visual and audio noise... which is not the kind of consolation I want to be taking away from any film music concert.

I find it increasingly strange in a growing market of soundtrack listeners worldwide, that the people who organise events like this do not seem to be listening to what the people who listen to this particular niche music like and dislike. I know people every year, on various message boards which anyone can access, complain in no uncertain terms when a record producer decides to put dialogue from a film over a musical cue. I could understand it to a certain extent, back in the days before people had access to some kind of home video system, where an argument could be made that the record release was pretty much the only souvenir of the film’s audio track available on the market... but we moved on from that back in the 1980s. People who buy scores, in the majority, don’t want their music sullied with any dialogue or sound effects... and people (including myself, I guess) can get quite vocal about it. Why then, would the organisers risk alienating their music loving concert goers by screwing up the most important part of it and tracking in dialogue, sound effects and busy visuals to pull away from that experience so intrusively?

Now, to be fair, it might be that this concert tour wasn’t aimed at a soundtrack listening audience at all. I’m sure lots of ‘trekkies’ or ‘trekkers’, or whatever the latest fashionable term for fans of this high quality science fiction franchise is, were probably there and they probably had a really good time with it. However, I was there for the music and the insult of having such a wonderful play list performed by truly brilliant people and then not being allowed to listen to it properly was purely a lesson in frustration, as far as I’m concerned. And I know the person I was with thought so too. It’s actually put us both off going to this kind of event before approaching the ticket buying process with extreme caution in future.

The programme for the event, costing an exorbitant £10 on top of the ticket, was also quite telling. Midst some writing about the orchestra and guest conductors, there was also an article on The Science of Star Trek. Really? What’s that got to do with the music? There’s a Western concert happening in March and my friend said to me that she’d quite have liked to go to that one but it looks like they’ll be playing clip montages again over the music... so count her out. Sentiments I really can’t blame her for after this fiasco and I think I may not be going either, I suspect.

The reason I’ve written this review is not specifically to have a whine, although that helps take out frustration somewhat... it’s because of this - the show is apparently touring in 2016 and, frankly, I’m hoping the organisers may have a long think about how they’re selling this to the concert going public. Maybe pitching the advertising a little to make it clearer that the music will be obscured or maybe even tweaking the presentation a little to dial it back from being such an overwhelming experience might raise this ‘experience’ to a much greater level musically. I’m sure the various orchestras involved would prefer the public to be able to hear them properly, right? Anyway... I’ve said my piece and done my bit. I’m honestly not sure if this is the worst concert I’ve been to in my time but it’s down there among the worst and, at no time, were any of the wonderful conductors or orchestra members to blame... so it’s a bit of a shame. Moving on now... and hopefully purchasing my tickets to live events with a bit more caution in future. Listen long and prosper.

Five years of NUTS4R2

Live And Let Five

Hello there.

Five years ago today I started writing this blog. 

I must have been fairly enthusiastic about it because, looking at it, I posted three articles on the first day. Five years on, it’s safe to say, I don’t post quite as many reviews as I used to but, then again, it’s swings and roundabouts when you compare what I was writing when I first started up to what I am writing now. 

And by that I mean that, in the first year or two, I was writing much shorter reviews by the looks of things. These days, the majority of them are, at the very least, twice as long as what I was writing then... which I think probably means I’m more confident in finding my voice as a writer of reviews now than I ever was before. Or, just possibly, that I’m getting more rambley and irrelevant the older I get. One of those, you decide.

Over the years, one of the things which has helped me develop a, fairly, consistent style is the fact that I seem to have a nice bunch of readers who are generally wonderful people. I’ve had the odd bad comment, to be sure, and sometimes... quite inadvertently... invited the frowning comments of writers who think I have wronged them on here (for some reason it’s usually the writers, rather than the directors, who tend to comment on here, when it comes to opening a dialogue with me). However, for the most part, I’ve generally had some pretty good feedback over the last half a decade... so that really helps me sometimes.

The reason that really helps me is because... well... life seems to get really tough sometimes. I get depressed the older I get and as opportunities diminish (the chance to have kids, raise a family, become a multi-millionaire or live on an island with a harem of appreciative women-folk... for example), I often find that writing about stuff on my blog is the only escape route I have to get away from the curveballs and general insanity that reality sometimes throws my way. I’ve felt like quitting the blog, too, on occasion but... something keeps pulling me back and part of that is because you readers have been so nice and generous with your time for me over the years.

I have to say, the reviews I write here must satisfy some part of my psychological make-up I never realised I had before getting into the whole NUTS4R2 thing. It’s almost like I’ve become addicted to writing over the years but, make no mistake, it’s not always as easy as it sounds to sit down and churn out an article or review. Even after all these years, I will still worry about certain films or books I’ve read and imagine I don’t have anything much to say about them. Luckily, once that pen hits the page... or in my case, once those fingers start pecking at the keys... something inside tends to take over and I find something I can write about. Make no mistake though, certain films cause me a lot of anxiety because, no matter how easy it is to get going, it can sometimes be quite a daunting prospect to start writring about something. 

Take, for instance, my two favourite directors, Akira Kurosawa and Andrei Tarkovsky. It seems to me that I am not worthy to even begin to cast a critical eye over what was in the minds of these two great people. That being said, it strikes me that not an awful lot of people are familiar with directors of this calibre so it’s a pleasure to sometimes be able to highlight the works of classic film directors and hopefully spark some interest in the occasional reader who will then go away and look at an example of their work (as I know has happened every now and then). So that’s all good.

Also, it’s a good way of clarifying my own thoughts and applying my own theories as to why the minds behind the movies have reached their finished product in just the way they have and, I hope, readers feel that I’ve brought a little knowledge into their lives, from time to time. Well, yes, probably not in all the articles on here but, it’s my hope at least, that some of my writing on film has met with the beginnings of enlightenment for some, when it comes to decoding those flickerings of shadow and light that dances across our collective retina and takes so much of our hard earned cash... one way or another. 

I’ve also watched some remarkably odd films which I’ve sometimes only bought with the blog review in mind (see my recent review of The Vixens Of Kung Fu here to find out what happens when this processs backfires). And, quite often, it gives me the opportunity to get away with watching some real trash cinema and some of that stuff churned out to make a quick bundle of cash has some very surprising, “way beyond competent” technical skills thrown into the mix, too.  

I must admit, though, that without you reading this now, this humble blog is nothing. I love the virtual  friends and readers I’ve made through this blog as I have promoted it on Twitter over the years and some of the minds I’ve been privileged to share ideas with. People like Katrin Jenny of Twitterland, for example, who reminded me only yesterday evening, that today is indeed my five year blog anniversary. I’d completely forgotten it this year so... thanks for that lady... I owe you some mind numbing alcohol when you are next in the country! 

So, as you can probably guess, this blog entry was completely unplanned but, hey, at least it gives me the chance to articulate my appreciation of you readers, without whose regular visits, would mean these pages and words would stack up to being considerably less than, to invoke a time honoured, classic movie legend, “a hill of beans”. So thank you readers, old and new, for sticking with me and paying my writing the occasional visit now and again. It means so much to me and helps ease the insanity of my less than tranquil life. 

All the best to you all and... stick around... if you think some of the films I’ve reviewed over the past five years have been either special, moving, thought provoking or downright odd, well... you ain’t seen nothing yet.

All the best,

NUTS4R2