Score baby score

In terms of graphic design, McFarland's Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979: A Critical Survey by Genre is no Album Cover Art of Soundtracks, but as an overview of the Silver Age of film and TV score music, the same era that the excellent 1997 Little, Brown coffeetable book covered via stills of LP cover art, 1950-1979 is an informative and enjoyable read. The author is Kristopher Spencer, who runs Score, Baby!, one of my favorite soundtrack review sites.

The Silver Age saw the emergence of composers like Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, John Barry, Lalo Schifrin and Quincy Jones, who managed to infuse either jazz, soul, funk or rock into their scores with aplomb and without looking desperate, like say, Frank Sinatra when he tried to rock a Nehru jacket or Ethel Merman when she cut a disco album. 1950-1979 examines their groundbreaking scores, as well as the work of actual soul or rock musicians who dabbled in film scoring (Marvin Gaye) or turned it into a full-time task (the Italian prog rock band Goblin).

Spencer has launched a blog for the purpose of posting excerpts from his book to promote it. Here are a couple of excerpts he's posted:

"[On The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three] David Shire set out to create a sound that would be 'New York jazz-oriented, hard-edged' but with a 'wise-cracking subtext to it'... The music is diabolically calculated and pulsating, yet swings like a big band from hell."

– from Chapter 1: Crime Jazz & Felonious Funk of Kristopher Spencer's Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

"The Mack, one of the legendary blaxploitation productions due to its lethal behind-the-scenes politics and its fact-as-fiction footage of the notorious Player's Ball, features one of Willie Hutch's bold blaxploitation scores. Hutch got the job when the filmmakers offered a cameo appearance to the Hutch-produced singing group Sisters of Love. The score features some of Hutch's best songs, including the affirmative soul number "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," the stirring ballad "I Choose You" and the hard-driving theme. For The Mack's home video release in 1983, the studio foolishly replaced Hutch's score with an R'n'B-lite soundtrack by Alan Silvestri that pales in comparison."

– from Chapter 1: Crime Jazz and Felonious Funk of Kristopher Spencer's Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979

Wow, I didn't know Silvestri was involved with a butchered VHS version of The Mack. That's not the only time Hutch got the short end of the stick. A terrific, must-read 1998 Robert Wilonsky profile on Hutch mentions that his work has often been overlooked by Motown history books, despite being frequently sampled (UGK, the duo of Bun B and the late Pimp C, memorably sampled "I Choose You" for their collabo with OutKast, "Int'l Players Anthem"). In the Wilonsky article, the neglected former Motown songwriter expressed his gratitude for being sampled ("... when a guy does that, he really appreciates what you did. And that helps me as an artist, as a writer, to appreciate what I've done -- the fact that someone else respects it enough to use it like that.").

Here's an excerpt Spencer hasn't posted, about the music from a movie I watched for the first time ever over the weekend:

One of the best soundtracks of 1972, and of the blaxploitation era, is Across 110th Street, featuring music by legendary jazz trombonist J.J. Johnson, and songs performed by Bobby Womack & Peace. Hit-maker Womack's theme song boasts a memorable hook, a sweeping arrangement and a lyrical message that doesn't pull punches about organized crime and the drug epidemic. Womack also contribtes a tender ballad ("If You Don't Want My Love"), an uptempo pop number ("Quicksand"), a bit of hard funky rock ("Do It Right") and raucous feel-good soul ("Hang on in There").

Selections from all three of the above soundtracks can be heard during the "Assorted Fistful" block on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.

Little-known fact: All the black guys in this scene were fathered by Anthony Quinn.

AFOS: "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" (WEB96), in which I compiled my favorite selections from scores to films that were distributed by United Artists, which turns 90 years old this May.

1. Elmer Bernstein, "The Street (Main Title)" (from Sweet Smell of Success), Crime Jazz: Music in the First Degree, Rhino
2. Adolph Deutsch, "Main Title - Theme from The Apartment," The Apartment, United Artists
3. Elmer Bernstein, "Main Title and Calvera," The Magnificent Seven, Rykodisc
4. Elmer Bernstein, "Main Title," The Great Escape: The Deluxe Edition, Varèse Sarabande
5. The London Studio Symphony Orchestra, "Theme from The Fugitive," The Fugitive, Silva Screen
6. John Barry, "Opening Titles," From Russia with Love, EMI
7. Henry Mancini, "The Pink Panther Theme," The Pink Panther, RCA
8. Ennio Morricone, "L'Estasi Dell'Oro," Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo, GDM
9. Quincy Jones, "Shag Bag, Hounds & Harvey" (from In the Heat of the Night), In the Heat of the Night/They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, Rykodisc
10. Henry Mancini featuring the Party Poops, "The Party (vocal)," The Party, RCA
11. John Barry, "Midnight Cowboy," Midnight Cowboy, EMI-Manhattan
12. Al Kooper, "Love Theme," The Landlord, United Artists
13. Bobby Womack & Peace, "Across 110th Street," Across 110th Street, Rykodisc
14. Jack Sheldon, "The Long Goodbye," Fitzwilly/The Long Goodbye, Varèse Sarabande
15. David Shire, "End Title," The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Retrograde
16. Bill Conti, "The Final Bell," Rocky, EMI-Manhattan
17. The Gap Band, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Arista
18. Mellow, "Seek You," CQ, Emperor Norton

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

New AFOS episode: "The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum"

This week, the United Artists 90th Anniversary Film Festival hits both the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and the Nuart Theatre in L.A., so the next episode of A Fistful of Soundtracks will feature my favorite selections from scores to films that were distributed by UA. "The studio without a studio" thrived during an era when rival studios couldn't keep up with their audiences--and the social changes of the period--and kept releasing dull and staid product. UA's smart and daring films during the Arthur Krim/Robert Benjamin regime and Krim and Benjamin's championing of filmmakers--they let them do their thing--are always worth celebrating. Oh yeah, and most of these flicks had terrific original music too.

"The Inmates Are Taking Over the Asylum" (WEB96) will begin streaming tomorrow (Thursday, May 1 at midnight, 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm). I've included themes from some of UA's most popular releases (The Great Escape, 007), but I also wanted to fill most of the episode with music from cult classics (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) or soundtrack albums that are out of print (The Long Goodbye).

Pelham, a thrilling caper movie with Walter Matthau at his sardonic best as a cynical transit cop who's the perfect disheveled hero for an even more disheveled New York, and The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's clever reimagining of Philip Marlowe, are two '70s UA flicks I instantly fell in love with. I first caught Pelham on TCM a few years ago and discovered The Long Goodbye on DVD last year.

Pelham composer David Shire and Long Goodbye composer John Williams achieved so much with what little they had. Shire wrote each Pelham score cue under the 12-tone method of composition to evoke "organized chaos"--in other words, the funkiest film score not written by a black dude ever.

Williams' Long Goodbye score--one of the shortest he ever wrote--is equally off-kilter. It consists of nothing but different variations on the same melody. Wherever Elliott Gould's Marlowe goes, the Long Goodbye theme follows, whether it's as bar piano music or as a doorbell ring. I don't know exactly why Altman asked Williams to write the score like that. (Jaime J. Weinman says Williams' score is a spoof of the incessant pimping of movie title songs in the '60s and '70s--an issue that caused the previously stable working relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and the less pop-minded Bernard Herrmann to fall apart during the making of Torn Curtain. The Something Old, Nothing New blogger theorizes that Williams' score could also be an homage to Roy Webb's similarly structured score during Out of the Past.) But whatever the intentions were, the Long Goodbye score nicely reflects Marlowe's sense of displacement--he's a '40s guy in a '70s world.

Whereas UA was a '70s studio in a '50s Hollywood that struggled to keep up with the '60s.

Roman Coppola's CQ

WEB96 also covers UA's recent art-house phase, before Tom Cruise took over the company. One of my favorite films to emerge from UA's art-house years is Roman Coppola's CQ, a fun little film about filmmaking in the mold of Day for Night and Ed Wood. It contains a great loungey score by the French trio Mellow, which evoked the likes of Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni and Ennio Morricone during the cues for the movie-within-the-movie Codename: Dragonfly, a mash-up of Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik (the source of Angela Lindvall's sexy rolling-around-in-cash scene).

The '70s logo

A Half-Assed History of UA's Logos

I remember the first appearance of the '90s UA logo when I saw GoldenEye in 1995. The logo actually received cheers from GoldenEye's opening weekend audience--they were just so happy to see Bond again after a six-year absence.

The '90s logo

The sadly discontinued jingle was composed by Jeff Eden Fair and Starr Parodi.

The husband-and-wife duo recalled to SoundtrackNet that "We did that with a 90-piece orchestra at the Sony Scoring Stage... Our instructions were, 'We want something that represents the past, present, and future of United Artists.' So we started with classic orchestral instrumentation, moving to futuristic sounds and concepts at the end."

The '00s logo

Defamer's funny idea of what the UA watertower now looks like

Next AFOS episode: I'm taking a break after five consecutive eps. I don't know when I'll stream the next new ep.

Cue & A

There's an interesting discussion over at Matt Zoller Seitz's House Next Door blog in which he asks readers if there are any film and TV score cues or existing songs from a movie that they often hear playing in their heads. The post is part of the "Filmmusic Blog-a-Thon" and it's a particularly fun read for me because I host a show about film and TV music.

MZS, a longtime New Yorker, said Bernard Herrmann's brilliant Taxi Driver score often plays in his head, not because he's psycho like Travis Bickle but because the score perfectly captures New York. One reader said he hears the RZA's Ghost Dog score (that brooding main theme that accompanies Forest Whitaker while he's driving is the perfect commuting music). Another guy said John Carpenter's Escape from New York theme underscores his endless hours of driving around in circles in L.A. and his desire to escape that city. (What about Carpenter's theme from his L.A. movie Assault on Precinct 13? Wouldn't that be more suitable music?)

Other interesting choices from the comments section: John Williams' "Planet Krypton" theme from Superman: The Movie, the "Zarathustra"-esque cue that was featured prominently in last year's Superman Returns teaser trailer; Gerald Fried's Star Trek fight music (which I'm sure was being hummed by a lot of gadget geeks while they battled each other for the first few iPhones on June 29); and Georges Delerue's lush "Thème de Camille" from Contempt, forever synonymous with visuals of Brigitte Bardot's sweet booty and Bardot lying on that white rug.

Do film and TV score cues ever get stuck in my head? Actually, they rarely do, but when I was a kid, Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice theme used to get stuck in rotation in my brain a lot. In fact, a classmate once caught me humming it and said, "Isn't that Beetlejuice?" Then a few summers later, I watched A Fistful of Dollars for the first time on TBS and Morricone's main title theme became the Theme That Wouldn't Leave.

Lately, if my brain does start shuffling movie or TV themes, it'll play either an instrumental from Cowboy Bebop or David Shire's main theme from one of my favorite movies, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which is such an awesome theme I bought Mix Master Mike's "Suprize Packidge" remix as one of my ringtones because it samples the Pelham theme.

One side effect of loving that Pelham theme so much: whenever I hear someone say "Gesundheit," guess what starts playing in my head?