Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi's Rome preview is neck-and-neck with the extended Green Lantern trailer for the week's juiciest-looking new trailer

I first read about Rome, Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells producer Danger Mouse's homage to '60s and '70s Italian film scores, back in November and couldn't wait to hear the results of the project. Rome has Danger Mouse collaborating on new material with Italian composer Daniele Luppi (whose 2004 album An Italian Story is a nifty homage to the '60s Italian sound that's similar to Rome), as well as several of the veteran musicians who performed on many of those terrific '60s and '70s scores.

"It was really the dream to reunite the Cantori Moderni 40 years later. It was a choir put together by Alessandro Alessandroni--think about the Sergio Leone movies, the Morricone soundtracks with those beautiful soprano melodies," said Luppi to the Guardian. "Alessandroni was not only the choirmaster, but his whistle is all over those movies."

The concept album, which finds Danger Mouse and Luppi paying tribute to not just Morricone, but also to the likes of Piero Umiliani, Bruno Nicolai and Piero Piccioni, took about five years to make and will finally drop on May 17. Parlophone Records recently posted a lengthy trailer featuring interviews with Danger Mouse, Luppi and lead Rome singers Jack White and Norah Jones.



Judging from White's Sergio Corbucci-esque, spaghetti western imagery-filled "Two Against One" and the lush and loungy Jones/Cantori Moderni tune "Black," which were also posted by Parlophone and will debut together as a 7-inch vinyl single on Record Store Day on April 16, Rome sounds promising and is far from kitschy or overly cutesy like many homages to the '60s Italian sound have been.





I would love to stream some of the tracks from Rome on my station, but because AFOS focuses only on original score material or existing songs featured in film and TV, I can't find an appropriate block for the Rome tracks. I'll think of something.

Speaking of Danger Mouse (whose love for '60s and '70s Italian scores first emerged in 2004 when he sampled the Viva Django score in the Gnarls hit "Crazy"), here's one of my favorite Danger Mouse-produced joints from last year, amusingly mashed up with a fixture of early '80s MTV:

AFOS: "I'll Kill You and Recommend to God That He Put His Foot in Your Ass" playlist

Airing tomorrow at 10am and 3pm on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "I'll Kill You and Recommend to God That He Put His Foot in Your Ass" (WEB89) from June 18-24, 2007. In WEB89, I picked out my favorite score cues from obscure spaghetti westerns I've never watched like Keoma and Life Is Tough, Eh Providence? One of those tunes is the Viva Django cue "Nel Cimitero Di Tucson," which Gnarls Barkley sampled for their 2006 hit "Crazy."

The ep's title is a play on the title of the 1968 spaghetti western I'll Kill You and Recommend You to God, a.k.a. Dead for a Dollar.

1. Ennio Morricone, "Main Titles" (from Face to Face), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume Three, DRG
2. Roberto Fia, "Django" (from Django), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume Two, DRG
3. Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, "Keoma (instrumental)," Keoma, Cinedelic
4. Dandylion, "Wolf," Mannaja, Cometa
5. Stelvio Cipriani, "Un Uomo, Un Cavallo, Una Pistola," The Bounty Killer/Un Uomo, Un Cavallo, Una Pistola/Nevada, CAM
6. Stelvio Cipriani, "Faccia a Terra" (from Un Uomo, Un Cavallo, Una Pistola), The Bounty Killer/Un Uomo, Un Cavallo, Una Pistola/Nevada, CAM
7. Franco Bixio, "Just a Coward (instrumental)" (from And Now Recommend Your Soul to God), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume One, DRG
8. Gianfranco and Gian Piero Reverberi, "Nel Cimitero Di Tucson," Preparati La Bara!, RCA
9. Ennio Morricone, "The Hellbenders" (from The Hellbenders), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume Two, DRG
10. Ennio Morricone, "Main Titles" (from Life Is Tough, Eh Providence?), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume Three, DRG
11. Bruno Nicolai, "The Man Called Apocalypse Joe--Sequence 1" (from The Man Called Apocalypse Joe), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume Four, DRG
12. Augusto Martelli, "M 9 and M 15 V" (from La Collera Del Vento), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume One, DRG
13. Angelo Francisco Lavagnino, "A Gambling Man (Versione Strumentale)," 5000 Dollari sull'Asso, CAM
14. Piero Umiliani, "Suite" (from Roy Colt & Winchester Jack), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume One, DRG
15. Gianni Ferrio, "Controluce" (from Ben and Charlie), Spaghetti Westerns, Volume One, DRG

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm.

Later... with Jools Holland

I recently discovered this awesome BBC Two live music show on Fuse, where it airs weeknights at midnight weekdays at 8am and suffers from really horrendous trims to make room for more of our wonderful American commercials. (It celebrated its 200th episode in February.) I didn't know a British music show could be this cool. I thought all their music shows were like the terrible Top of the Pops. I stand corrected, after catching Later... and VH1 Classic's reruns of The Old Grey Whistle Test.

I love the circular set-up of the studio--each episode opens with the camera circling the studio to introduce the guest acts as they all participate in a jam session--as well as the cutaways to a guest performer dancing to another guest's number. Where else can you see Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley grooving to Franz Ferdinand or Thom Yorke rockin' out to the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Certain songs sound better live. I thought the Chili Peppers' 2006 hit "Dani California" was an alright tune, even though it was overplayed that year, but now I like it even more after watching the Chili Peppers perform it live on Jools Holland.

Now Later... is how you do a music show, whereas Top of the Pops--a show that was made for Ashlee Simpson--was the opposite. The Top of the Pops producers forced their acts to lip-synch or sing live against pre-recorded backing, so the producers frequently wound up with disgruntled bands that plotted to make their show look stupider than it already looked, like when Morrissey lip-synched into his gladiolas during the Smiths' "This Charming Man," or when Nirvana basically told the producers to go fuck themselves by giving a hilarious "performance" of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," one of my all-time favorite TV moments. The best part is Dave Grohl's fake drumming.