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| This is a comments thread about FSM CD: TV Omnibus: Volume One (1962-1976) |
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Those were the colors in the stylized main title for "The Men," the umbrella program under which many of the "Assignment: Vienna" episodes aired:
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Simple. Just change browsers and download and install new software. Yet at Intrada, I can "play all" without doing any of that.
There is also a FoxyTunes add-on for IE:
http://www.foxytunes.com/ie/download/
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Mine arrived yesterday, though I didn't have a chance to listen to it until today. So I'm only about 3/4 of the way through the first disc now. So far -- home run! Early "Johnny" Williams score from an episode of the Kildare spin-off "The Eleventh Hour". The sound on this one may not please the audiophiles, but the music is excellent, including a beautiful piano theme for the main character (a troubled young girl played by Elizabeth Montgomery). The sound quality of the Leonard Rosenman tracks for the 1974 "Phantom of Hollywood" is remarkable however, as the growling brass and orchestral color just leap right out at you. If the rest is, and sounds, this good, this set will be getting quite a lot of play over the next few weeks.
It's Rosenman, alright - after listening to it you have "bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp" going on in your head for ages! (But I love it!).
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Disc One: The gorgeous stereo version of the Goldsmith-Rugolo song "Three Stars Will Shine Tonight," adapted from the "Dr. Kildare" series theme, is what first attracted me to this set. Jerry rules. (Everybody needs to get the incomparable FSM issues of "Dr. Kildare" and "Cain's Hundred." Don't you realize how fortunate we are to have these early-sixties gems?) The Johnny Williams music for "The Eleventh Hour" series episode gives us another relatively rare listen at early-sixties scoring. Marvelous tunes, actual melodies. Rosenman's well-remembered "The Phantom of Hollywood" disappointed a bit, rather a sameness running through it, not unlike loud-loud-loud "Prophesy," which also was something of a letdown. Harsh without much letup, but well recorded. The Don Ellis "The Deadly Tower" was a letdown, too, rather similar to the Rosenman and lacking a lot of the jazz-funk flavor of Ellis's movie scores. It tends to drone (shades of today's scoring). The George Romanis jazz for "Assignment: Munich" is pretty much a throwaway.
Disc Two: Not so the Grusin for "Assignment: Vienna." I haven't been collecting this composer; I'll have to reevaluate that decision. This swings and has effective sequencing from longer straight-ahead jazz cuts to shorter dramatic cues, many full flavored with funk-rock vibes. Wow, this outdoes even Frontiere. Lengthy and probably the best thing in the whole "Omnibus" (read grab bag).
Disc Three: Can't honestly claim that the John Parker music for the same series is even faintly on the same level, more like "Cimbalom CHiPs." That Austro-Hungarian instrument is used to far greater effect by Grusin. Parker just drags it in peripherally from time to time. Grusin uses this, along with electric harpsichord and the like, to give the series vital local color as effective as Earl Hagen's in "I Spy." Parker always seems merely to be visiting the whole AfAm thing, Grusin sounds like the actuality. The Parker scores are brilliantly played, spot one, at fast tempos, slick, slick, slick, but everything has a glassy glare and an undoubtedly unintended insincerity. The beloved Parker cheesiness just sounds glib here. The Grusin better bears repetition and closer examination. Would that TV scoring only aspire to such heights today! Don't trash Fielding for using the overexposed Harlem Globetrotters whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" in his score for the even-now-remembered "Shirts/Skins" TV movie. He probably was required to use it. He usually gets it out of the way fast, following with his own superior funky variations. Has any other comedy score ever started so stentorially as Fielding's snare drum assault? A great accompaniment to the recent limited edition of his "The Black Bird" comedy score.
Disc Four: "Then Came Bronson," and, with "BIG screen"-style scoring like Duning's, we're not likely to forget it. Motorcycle-driving star Michael Parks, the much-touted Adam in the Toshiro Mayuzumi-scored "The Bible," discovered in an allegedly-long worldwide search, a sort of latter-day James Dean substitute, may have mumbled his way through Bronson's scenic series, but Duning doesn't. In a box set in which more Euro-oriented orchestral stylings jostle cheek to jowl with funkified big band, the Duning-scored TV movie pilot and subsequent episode scores provide the most orchestral sound on offer. At first, I found the title theme to be sectional and under-characterized. That was before I heard seemingly-endless clever variation upon variation, proving that the composer knew exactly what he was doing by providing a theme that seemingly goes off in at least three different directions one phrase after the other. Now, no one surpasses me as a Gil Melle fan, but his contribution to "Bronson" appears to have preceded his greater experimentation and comes across as under-detailed and quotidian in comparison to the superior mastery of the Hollywood veteran Duning. There are passages in Duning's score for the pilot that easily could pass for ones in "Picnic" and "Bell, Book, and Candle." That's high praise for TV music, and, boy, does the Duning MOVE, real road trip stuff, the Melle not so much so.
Disc Five: What a disappointment! I at first wondered why FSM would dump this Schifrin here, rather than use it in their first, wonderful Schifrin box or save it for a second volume. After some forty minutes of the relentlessly-alternating drones and ostinati of "Earth II," which so sadly predict our current state of scoring, hardly relieved by the wan funkifications of the opening and closing credits, with their insipid and poorly produced electronic inserts, I was anxious to bail out of this expensive-for-its-day and, according to the reports, boring space opera. "Earth II" would have stunk up the first Schifrin box. For me, this composer is a supreme mimic with a variable output, and I wouldn't have chosen this particular score. With Schifrin, you have to be a little selective. I developed a strong curiosity about Billy Goldenberg from his score in one of the "Amazing Stories" boxes. This one for the "High Risk" TV pilot-cum-movie doesn't come off as immediately distinctive as that one, but, still, when there is so little of this composer's always-interesting work available, one shouldn't carp.
All and all, a valuable TV grab-bag Volume One (1962-1976) and something of a bargain on the basis of per-disc cost, showing the sometimes greater jazz-funk-rock-pop vein in TV as compared with some theatrical movies of the time. Hope Volume Two doesn't start with 1977 but, rather, goes backward for more sixties and, maybe, even fifties goodness. Predicting a deserved sellout in the near future
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Loved that, Lester! Just as well I ordered it before I read your review! Looking forward especially to Gil Mellé's "quotidian" tracks!
I'll get back with my own ramblings when this finally arrives.
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Just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading the comments about the different scores on this set!
Lukas
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