"What's your favorite score?" is not a question I like to be asked

(Photo source: Katwalla)

I've been asked twice or thrice "What's your favorite score?" My answer to that will always be "55-10, Niners over Broncos."

I don't have one favorite score. I have lots of favorite scores, but there are too many out there to name. I've listened to thousands of them since my college radio programming days. It's impossible to pick one that's the best. It's like asking a parent who his or her favorite kid is.

Plus my answer to that "favorite score" question would change every other minute. One minute, it would be "Out of Sight by David Holmes," and then the next minute, it would be "An Oversimplification of Her Beauty by Flying Lotus." Then that would change to "the frequently rapped-along-to Samurai Champloo by the late, great Nujabes, Fat Jon, Force of Nature and Tsutchie." And so on.





The same thing applies to "favorite hip-hop album." It'll ping-pong back and forth between "De La Soul Is Dead," "good kid, m.A.A.d. city," "Barkada" and "whatever I bumped in its entirety last week."

But one thing I do know is that Drive composer Cliff Martinez's anachronistic score music to Cinemax's 1900s medical drama The Knick is a sublime piece of work. I've added Knick score selections like "Son of Placenta Previa" to "AFOS Prime" rotation on AFOS. Martinez's Knick episode scores are the automatic winner of "best score to a TV show I'll never watch because I hate watching extremely graphic medical procedures."