Drumroll please: indy mike's pick ONE tune per hour tune of the week: movie music

Hello! Snow day today, I stay home and play! Guess it's time to park the garage thread and move on to a new topic. Let's veer towards a wide open topic this week: music at the movies. Man, we oughta get some wild choices here - pick a musical type and it's probably been used in a soundtrack. I'm a cartoon fiend, so I'll start there: I'm a major nut for Warner Brother's animated shorts, and Powerhouse by Raymond Scott shows up whenever machinery or heavy labor is depicted - you know the tune, even if you don't recognize the name - "da da da, dada dada da da, da da da dada dada da" - blaring horns punch that little ditty out. Next.....

 

Morning, Indy! Doing your mailman bit, I see...any excuse for a day off! Well, you've earned it. The garage thread, after a few tweaks, should be ready for the archives. We pretty much took it as far as it could go...quite enjoyable.

For my first movie pick, Henry Mancini's score for TOUCH OF EVIL. Mancini was still a year away from PETER GUNN, the score that really made his name; the rest is history, with more great scores to come. But this 1958 effort is among his most creative, a mix of faux everything: faux mexican; faux salsa; faux groove'n'grind R&B; and, out of a transistor radio, faux rock'n'roll. A great noir B-film with a skewed moral and visual landscape, Mancini's music perfectly stays in tune with a world out of balance where good and evil are equally in shadow.

ED

 

I think we need to exorcise the ghost of the snow and am plumping for Mike Oldfields Tubular Bells - always gets my head spinning

All the best - Andrew

 

Friends,

My first choice:

The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard and his Band

From the movie of the same title. Ah, I can still see a rather robust Jayne Mansfield now!

Bob

 

Rush put that into La Villa Stranagiato. Love the cartoon where that cat used to scream "Not happy birthday" every time that music played.

I think I own every version, remix, mastering, special edition of the Star Wars soundtracks ever released. Obsessive? Hmm.

I also loved the music for That Thing You Do. Everything from a Mitch Miller/ Ray Conniff copy to British invasion to Capt'n Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters.

 

Yes, Jayne was quite 'robust' ...somebody already put her on the "Ed's next avatar' list, as if I were compling one, which I'm not I'm happy with the lady that's pictured, I think she'll stay there a while. Well, might as well get the obvious out of the way:

THE BEATLES & GEORGE MARTIN "A Hard Day's Night"

Not just the one song, which is great enough; the whole soundtrack has a lot going for it, and that include's Martin's incidental renderings of "This Boy" and "I Should Have Known Better," etc. Great films tend to have great scores, so this one's a gimme. A shame EMI and Apple Corps didn't come up with a special soundtrack CD to accompany the DVD reissue, as was done for YELLOW SUB; too taxing dragging out the stereo masters, I guess.

ED

 

Ahhh, the Queen of Rock and Roll in Technicolor - wunnerful, wunnerful!!!

 

My son loves the Jungle Book - King Louie aka Louie Prima steals the show with I Wanna Be Like You (youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu)...

 

My first thought was the Pink Panther Theme. Then, I saw the mention of Touch Of Evil which reminded me of another favorite, the wonderful zither music of the Third Man.

 

I say we take a second to crown the king of soundtrack music... Kenny Loggins.

Footloose, Over The Top, Caddyshack, Top Gun, Caddyshack II, Access All Areas, One Fine Day and others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

 

Warning, spoiler included!

Randy Newman's soundtrack for The Natural, it took moments that were dramatic enough on their own, and put them totally over the top into the near surreal category, i.e., the striking out of the Whammer on three pitches, the home run to win the playoffs, knocking the cover off the ball....
I just can't imagine that flick without that exact soundtrack ( or for that matter, without Redford's craggy. world weary face, perfect casting for the character, although I've heard Malamud's Roy Hobbs in the book was considerably darker and less heroic than the movie's take on him) .

 

Friends,

My next choice:

(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley & his Comets

From the movie "The Blackboard Jungle."

Bob

 

I'm a fan of scores from classic musicals such as Oklahoma, Sound of Music, etc. plus Pat Boone's April Love from the movie of the same name, Neil Diamond's Jazz Singer soundtrack, Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Urban Cowboy.

 

"The Hall of the Mountain King" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, as whistled by Peter Lorre in M.

 

The ORIGINAL Planet of the Apes soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. An outstanding avant garde score with echoes of Stravinsky, Varese and Bartok. Quite a fun movie as well.

Thom

 

It's been snowing here too, but it never snows enough to shut things down. Wild choices you say? Sure. I can do that.

1. My first pick is for the film soundtrack to the long out-of-print Alejandro Jodorowsky cult classic, EL TOPO. Why is the film long out of print you ask?
That's easy. Three reasons:
1. Allen Klein
2. Apple
3. ABKCO
The story I read a few years ago on the Web says that Klein has absolutely no interest in re-releasing, remastering the movie.

Here is a quote from a review of the movie:
"...On John Lennon’s word, Beatles manager Allen Klein bought the distribution rights to the film (the soundtrack was released on the Apple Records label). Curiously, Klein booked the film for several successful screenings, and has since refused to release the film in any form..."

Fortunately for me I've seen the film, although it was almost 30 years ago, and I have a near mint soundtrack on Apple that I purchased brand new some 30 years ago. It's only been played a couple of times. When my soundcard and software are upgraded the El Topo sndtrk. will be one of the first vinyl mastering projects.

PLOT SUMMARY: The gunfighter El Topo ("The Mole") and his young son ride through a desert to a village, whose inhabitants have been massacred. Bandits are nearby, torturing and killing the survivors. El Topo rescues a woman (Mara), who leads him on a mission to find and defeat the four master gunmen of the desert. Alexandro Jodorowsky wore seveal hats on this film as screenwriter, director, and soundtrack composer.

2. 37°2 le matin / aka Betty Blue - Jean-Jacques Beineix's third movie from 1986 for me is one of those desert island DVDs. Great movie, great soundtrack music provided by long time French TV and film composer Gabriel Yared.

 

Another easy one:

ENNIO MORRICONE: "Once Upon A Time In The West"

Beautiful, evocative score, a summation of every 'spaghetti western' he ever did. Though the Eastwood movies are better remembered, Morricone never got better than this.

ED

 

What's the story on Paul McCartney's score he did for a movie. I've only heard the four seconds they play in the Anthology. Sounded interesting.

 

Great music centered film High Fidelity starts out with the perfect mood setting piece: The 13th Floor Elevator's spooky classic garage growler You're Gonna Miss me (too bad it sounds like on the soundtrack it's slightly rechanneled - I'da used the source Rhino had for the Nuggets box - what the hell is up with International Artists catalog enneeway???) When the needle drops and those twangin' guitar notes spill out you know the film has just gotta be goooooood.......

 

Most of my picks will be Mancini-related.

Yesterday, I was listening to the soundtrack for the movie Arabesque. Mancini scored a lot of this film with Arabic-themed music. There are even some "dream sequence" tracks that feature piano strings being struck with hammers and swirling violins. This is one CD I'll listen to more than a couple of times through in one sitting. It has some haunting musical moments--I can hear this CD once, and the music will be in my head for the rest of the day. There are not very many "happy" moments on the soundtrack. Overall it is a bit dark and foreboding...really a favorite of mine. #24 in the CD changer--I just now turned it on before heading out on my errands.

Movie music trivia question (this is a tough one): just last week, one of my server "neighbors" at my web hosting company and I got into a discussion about music. (He's a composer, and also hosts and produces a radio show of "non-pop" music in the Vermont area). Got on the subject of Mancini, and he asked me a question that stumped me: in the film "Charade", there is a scene where Audrey Hepburn returns to the empty apartment. There is a musical cue playing in the background. What is unusual about this cue? (It is not on the soundtrack CD.) This same musical characteristic is also used on the Arabesque soundtrack. Anyone?

 

This time not really a single movie but almost a genre of it's own. The Nino Rota soundtracks for Fellini.

 

-A Fistful of Dollars soundtrack by Ennio Morricone
-A Hard Days Night - The Beatles
-Saturday Night Fever soundtrack
-About A Boy - Badly Drawn Boy

 

Scott Joplin's wonderful piano rags, reworked by Marvin Hamlisch in The Sting.

And who could forget the "Dueling Banjos" in Deliverance?

 

Friends,

My next choice:

In The Heat Of The Night - Ray Charles (as mastered by Steve)

From the movie of the same title.

Bob

 

The Family Way

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=11:02:19|AM&sql=Awjjv7i3jg72r

You might have to copy and paste the link as it's doing something funny or:

www.allmusic.com then search for The Family Way (click on album).