Film Score Friday 10/8/99

by Lukas Kendall

Varese Sarabande will release three CDs of library music used in The Adventures of Superman (the original '50s TV show) next year; the first volume will be out in February. Bruce Kimmel is overseeing the project. People have wanted these tracks forever. The sound quality is reportedly fantastic.

Danny Elfman is Artist of the Month at www.emu.com (click on artist lounge). There is an interview with him as well as an equipment list for his studio.

Who the Composers of The Insider Are

From: "Jon A. Bell" <joanjon@sirius.com>

"...Pieter Bourke and Lisa Gerrard with Original Music (the Internet Movie Database's listing confirms this). Who Bourke and Gerrard are is anyone's guess..."

I'm surprised that Andy Dursin didn't do just a smidgeon of research to find out who they are. Gerrard is one of the founding members of the group Dead Can Dance, which mixes ancient "world" or tribal-sounding music with techno beats. Pieter Bourke is Gerrard's longtime collaborator. Dead Can Dance was the inspiration for Enigma, as well.

I highly recommend the DCD album "Passage in Time," a sort of "greatest hits" album that I think would appeal to quite a few soundtrack fans. It's dark, moody, mysterious, and beautiful.

John Bender on the Air

From: Jimmy Aquino <jim@aquino.com>

FSM's John Bender will be heard on the next edition of my radio program, A Fistful of Soundtracks, this Saturday, October 9, 12PM PST at http://www.webradio.com/kzsc.

He made Clint Eastwood synonymous with a coyote cry. He's Ennio Morricone, and he's the focus of the next Fistful of Soundtracks. Morricone, my favorite film composer (and whose Fistful of Dollars overture opens each and every edition of A Fistful of Soundtracks), turns 71 on Monday, October 11. Whenever it's Il Maestro's birthday, A Fistful of Soundtracks devotes an entire show to Morricone's music, and so this weekend, the program presents its third annual Morricone birthday tribute, "Mondo Morricone '99."

This time out, we'll hear selections from DRG's recently released Thriller Collection and Gangster Collection and the 1996 German compilation More Mondo Morricone, as well as the usual favorites. The first hour will center on Morricone's spaghetti western themes, while the second hour will spotlight 10 of my favorite Morricone themes from '60s and '70s foreign films you won't find at the local Blockbuster. Finally, the show will close with cues from two scores considered by Morricone to be his personal favorite: The Devil is a Woman (aka The Smile of the Great Temptress) and The Mission. In between the music, there'll be commentary about Morricone's scores, from Bender and Didier C. Deutsch, the veteran soundtrack producer and author of the upcoming MusicHound Guide to Soundtracks. Bender, a European film-music expert, has written the liner notes for several of DRG's Morricone and Italian film-music compilations, while Deutsch provided the liner notes and produced for RCA's Ennio Morricone: The Legendary Italian Westerns.

Again, the show airs Saturday 12PM PST at http://www.webradio.com/kzsc.

Help Identifying

We get questions like these from time to time -- three of them came in this week. Since all I watch anymore is "Sportscenter" I can't help, but please write the interested parties if you know.

From: Mark5760@aol.com

During NBC's coverage of the Ryder Cup, a dominant driving theme was used during the presentation of the leader board and before every commercial break, does anyone have any information of the source of this music. Thanks for your efforts.

From: lausek@bgnet.bgsu.edu (kevin m. lause)

I have what is probably an unanswerable question for you---but, here goes! My wife absolutely LOVES a piece of classical choral music which was played during the CBS PROMOS for their telemovie THE LAST DON. The music did NOT appear in the film per se but played only during the 30 and 60 second ads for the film. I've played the music for several "experts" and I've always received a kind of "Oh, that's so familiar, but I can't quite...." response. Can you help? I'd like to get a copy of the piece to present to my wife for our upcoming anniversary, so this isn't merely some idle inquiry!

Any help---answers, suggestions, or otherwise---is most appreciated!

From: User502703@aol.com

I am looking for a piece of music in the film "The Evening Star" staring Shirley McLean(?) and Jack Nicholson. Near the end of the film, when Shirley is teaching her grandchild the piano, this wonderful music comes out at the background. I thought it was from Peter Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" ballet music and checked my CD collections and Tower Records music store, but in vain. I wish you or your friends are more knowledgeable about film music and can tell me what it is and where I can buy it (There is no OST released on this movie in USA.) Or if you know some web site where I can find related info, please send me an e-mail.

What Would You Pick?

From: "bill cooke" <bill_cooke@hotmail.com>

I teach a media arts class on the aesthetics of sound at the University of South Carolina where we spend half the semester studying the scores to five films: KING KONG, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, SUNSET BOULEVARD, PSYCHO and PLANET OF THE APES. The beginning of each semester brings no small amount of anxiety because most of my students have never even thought about film music before -- now they're having to write papers on the work of Steiner, Herrmann and Goldsmith! Despite the grumbling I have to endure, it's been an interesting experiment in trying to shape young people's minds to appreciate an art form that previously they've only been responding to subconsciously. Last semester, the course actually inspired a young man with musical aspirations to learn to read and write music. That, in itself, has made it all worthwhile.

What I've noted about this generation:

* They have a hard time seeing the genius behind KING KONG. All they see is "cheesy effects." If the University paid me a dollar every time I had to read the word "cheese," I'd be a rich man.

* They have the hardest time understanding the music in SUNSET BOULEVARD, yet they think the story of Salome is pretty cool. One student copied his paper entirely from Christopher Palmer's The Composer in Hollywood.

* A good number of students have a hard time with the concept that the composer and the sound designer are separate artists.

* They LOVE PSYCHO!

Considering that music is the least understood of the art forms, I'm actually amazed at how good and insightful some of these papers are.

But why am I telling you all this? I was wondering, out of curiosity, if you were teaching this course and had to pick five film scores to represent the art, what would they be? Might be a good topic for a reader poll, too!

This is an interesting idea and I'd encourage readers to do my work for me in preparing these columns by sending in copious letters.

Guy McKone Tribute

Longtime FSM reader and soundtrack junkie Guy McKone passed away some weeks ago, and Howard Liverance has written a "tribute" play (a take-off on a Twilight Zone episode, among other things), now serialized on our message board. Here are the links:

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002263.html (part 1)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002264.html (part 2)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002265.html (part 3)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002301.html (part 4)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002300.html (part 5)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002317.html (part 6)

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messageboard_html/Forum1/HTML/002316.html (finale)

Guy was always quick to write us about obscure Neal Hefti covers and weird stuff. He clearly loved film music and it was sad to hear of his passing.

If you are in a part of the country where autumn actually feels like autumn, please enjoy it for me, since I'm in L.A. and it's been 90 degrees.

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