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| This is a comments thread about FSM CD: The Subterraneans |
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Posted: |
Jan 31, 2012 - 9:55 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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The cue "Leo and Mardou" captures the mood of Kerouac's novel. Well, that and "Guido's Blackhawk" and "Red Drum Blues"...and quite a few others. Thank the Bop Gods for allowing the actual jazz players on these sessions. I can recognize them easily.
The main title is just way too brash and melodramatic, but I enjoy it in a "Susan Hayward Sure Was Hot!" sort of way. I'd hoped for muted tones from Previn, which we do get in the aforementioned cues. For this film, I've always imagined a Samuel Fuller-style budget and chalky black and white bleakness for a movie like The Subterraneans, not the glossy color of MGM. Plus, whitewashing (pun not intended but indeed accepted) of the interracial love story destroys this thing before it even gets started. Whatever the case, someone get this out on On Demand DVD.
I had the Sony Special Products version of The Subterraneans back around '94 and loved Carmen McRae's "Coffee Time", as my long-ago friends and I used to amuse ourselves with our approximations of Le Carmen's voice.
A hipster's snap of the fingers appreciation to Lukas for once again pleasing this small circle of friends within that small circle of friends with this release. 
More thoughts later, because I know this thread will sink like a stone, man.  I'll probably have to bump the Johnny Staccato thread, too...
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Does this have album and film tracks? Is it still available?
The record tracks WERE the film tracks - the CD contains the album contents plus much, much more!
And yes, it is still available.
Lukas
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Posted: |
Jan 31, 2012 - 12:31 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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"So there we were at the Red Drum, a tableful of beers a few that is and all the gangs cutting in and out, paying a dollar quarter at the door, the little hip-pretending weasel there taking tickets, Paddy Cordavan floating in as prophesied (a big tall blond brakeman type subterranean from Eastern Washington cowboy-looking in jeans coming in to a wild generation party all smoky and mad and I yelled, "Paddy Cordavan?" and "Yeah?" and he'd come over)--all sitting together, interesting groups at various tables, Julien, Roxanne (a woman of 25 prophesying the future style of America with short almost crewcut but with curls black snaky hair, snaky walk, pale pale junky anemic face and we say junky when once Dostoevski would have said what? if not ascetic but saintly? but not in the least? but the cold pale booster face of the cold blue girl and wearing a man's white shirt but with the cuffs undone untied at the buttons so I remember her leaning over talking to someone after having been slinked across the floor with flowing propelled shoulders, bending to talk with her hand holding a short butt and the neat little flick she was giving to knock ashes but repeatedly with long long fingernails an inch long and also orient and snake-like)--groups of all kinds, and Ross Wallenstein, the crowd, and up on the stand Bird Parker with solemn eyes who'd been busted fairly recently and had now returned to a kind of bop dead Frisco but had just discovered or been told about the Red Drum, the great new generation gang wailing and gathering there, so here he was on the stand, examining them with his eyes as he blew his now-settled-down-into-regulated-design "crazy" notes--the booming drums, the high ceiling--Adam for my sake dutifully cutting out at about 11 o'clock so he could go to bed and get to work in the morning, after a brief cutout with Paddy and myself for a quick ten-cent beer at roaring Pantera's, where Paddy and I in our first talk and laughter together pulled wrists--now Mardou cut out with me, glee eyed, between sets, for quick beers, but at her insistence at the Mask instead where they were fifteen cents, but she had a few pennies herself and we went there and began earnestly talking and getting hightingled on the beer and now it was the beginning--returning to the Red Drum for sets, to hear Bird, whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if I was really the great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos--not a challenging look but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging his eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work, his eyes separate and interested and humane, the kindest jazz musician there could be while being and therefore naturally the greatest--watching Mardou and me in the infancy of our love..."
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This is a great record. I strongly recommend it to any Previn fans. The first half of the album is the original record, the second is additional music from the film. Both are fantastic.
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Posted: |
Jan 31, 2012 - 5:19 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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The thing is, I generally don't care for Andre Previn, but I may make an exception for this album.
If anything, get it for the Jazzers galore who play on it.
"Gerry Mulligan (who also acted in the film), Carmen McRae, Shelly Manne, Red Mitchell, Buddy Clark, Dave Bailey, Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Bill Perkins, Bob Enevoldsen, and Jack Sheldon."
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I had a few copies of that dud years ago, i didn't like it and i had trouble selling to customers i think i put it in my discount section and sold it for a buck, to each one's own.
"Dud" of course is in the ear of the beholder. Like it or not (which I do, immensely) it is certainly no dud from an artistic standpoint. Don't know what the sales were like, but since it's still available, maybe a dud in that way. Highly recommended! One of my favorite FSM releases.
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D'oh! double post
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