[villagardens553]

Greetings!

I am new to this forum, at the invitation from Thor, who either does not remember or has forgiven me for speaking unkindly about his favorite score (Jurassic Park) on another site. As a lifelong (and I’ve had a long life) fan of John Barry, I was most pleased that Thor liked my suggestion that he listen to Barry’s album Americans.

I am from St. Louis in the American Midwest. My first comment to the rest of the world is: Please don’t hate me! Enough about that. I’ve been listening to film music since, as a teenager, my parents took me to a double feature of Dr. No and From Russia with Love that was released before the premiere of Thunderball.

I started with Barry’s Bond scores and then expanded to other spy/detective scores of the era (and there were a lot of them): the Flints, Charade, Arabesque, Murderers Row, UNCLE, IPCRESS, Sebastian, Mannix, etc. From there, other scores from the same composers: The Knack, The Chase, The Sand Pebbles, The Fox, Cool Hand Luke, The Blue Max, In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and many more. To Kill a Mockingbird had a huge impact on me.

The Lion in Winter expanded my tastes. A friend started introducing me to Herrmann, Waxman, Rota, Rozsa, and North. By this time I was an older teenager and buying Gerhardt’s albums, as well as Rozsa’s Polydor, Herrmann’s London Phase 4, and Bernstein’s Film Music Collection.

Now, during this time, thanks to my friends and my older brother, I started listening to Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Harry Partch, John Cage, Miles Davis (Bitches Brew was and remains my favorite album), Carla Bley, John Coltrane, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Morton Subotnick, the Nonesuch Explorer series of music from around the world, and just about anything that was unconventional.

My love for film music, jazz, and the avant-garde has not diminished, and I’ve become more accepting of popular music and attend as many concerts as my budget will allow: a lot of jazz, blues, international, and classical. (St. Louis has a great symphony orchestra).

Well, I could go on, but this is plenty as an introduction. I’m looking forward to the forum and reading your thoughts.