FSM # 41: My Fielding Freak-Out Experience!
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I have to tell you about an experience I had yesterday.
I’m currently visiting my parents’ house in the southern part of Norway. They’re both on holiday, though, so I’m alone here. Now, last night saw one of the worst thunderstorms in a long time, complemented by rapid-fire lightning and cascading rain. At about midnight, a flair and earth-shattering boom killed off the electricity in the entire neighbourhood. Complete darkness – hardly even moonlight. I stumbled my way into the kitchen and lit a couple of candles.
I returned to the livingroom, one of those spacey ones, and placed a comfortable chair in the middle of the room. For several minutes, I just sat there in silence – bathed in a blinking ocean of blue flairs and roaring thunder. Fascinating for a while, but then I pressed “play” on my battery-driven discman and decided to listen to whatever was in it at the time. It happened to be Jerry Fielding’s FILM MUSIC, VOL. 1 promo compilation…the disc containing the scores to STRAW DOGS, CHATO’S LAND and THE NIGHTCOMERS!
Now, as most of you know, much of this is pretty harrowing and disconcerting stuff, albeit deliciously so. I tell ya, the intense “amalgam of sensations” caused by this had me looking over the shoulder and peeking into the abysmal darkness of the corners more than once. While my parents’ house is no Xanadu, for a while I felt like Kane in his gothic livingroom, peeking at his wife by the fireplace. Man, that freaked me out…
Well, now. I always listen to film music in relaxed situations – lying or sitting down – which is also true for the above. However, I can see that some times film music is able to transcend its medium and enter our reality as an extension of our senses….a “soundtrack of our life”, to use a clichéed phrase. Last night was one of those times. What about you? Have you had one of these?
An amusing thread from 24 years ago, that. But an opportunity to chat about either a) Jerry Fielding, or b) similar situations. Or both.
Yes. As I listen to my music on-the-go, as it were (if I’m walking or travelling or shopping alone, I always have music playing via a Sony mp3 player), there have been countless times where the music in my ears has ‘scored’ the event happening in real life/time…like exciting chase music playing while I’m running towards a train/bus station, or deeply emotional music playing, as I watch a scene unfold, out of a window, involving boyfriend/girlfriend or mum and child etc.
The closest thing to your story is one night (alone) I was playing the score to ARMY OF DARKNESS by Joe LoDuca on a Discman in bed, and a track came on with ghostly whispering/devil-like stuff and I ABSOLUTELY SH!T MYSELF (metaphorically speaking), leaping out of bed and yanking the head-phones from my ears, in sheer terror. It took me a while after to calm down and return to normal relax/sleep-mode function.I love Jerry Fielding’s music and became a huge fan quite later on in my score listening/collecting phase.
For years, I only had THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES on LP (and loved it).
But as the film music climate changed, and I looked to the past for the sound I favoured (and had maybe missed/overlooked), Fielding was in the right place at the right time for me, with all of his unreleased stuff finally coming out and me wanting new Silver Age stuff to discover and love.Fielding can be quite challenging and but I generally like him a lot for exactly being so different (he could go easy listening too of course). He is a bit like Alex North in that regard to me.
I find Fielding more accessible than North, to be honest. He balances neatly between jazz and contemporary concert music and other, more traditional forms of orchestral music. THE WILD BUNCH is the ultimate meeting point between all of these, perhaps, as is THE NIGHTCOMERS.
He also did several non-film albums. I discovered two a few years ago, primarily because John Williams plays piano on them – FIELDING’S FORMULA (1957) and HOLLYWOODWIND JAZZTET (1958). Both rare, especially the latter, but quite fascinating. Do NOT expect Manciniesque flavours!
My days of walking around outside listening to music are long gone. Electric cars that you can barely hear anyway, scrotes who’ll steal your stuff by sneaking up on you and the general reduction in personal safety that you read about all the time means that I’d much rather stay undistracted.
It actually makes me cringe to see people meandering along and just stepping off pavements to cross the road, caught up in their own little world and indifferent to the dangers thereof.
Kev, I’m sure you don’t get any of that down your way, but have a care in any case. I’d hate for our little world to lose its cruise consultant.
On the subject of Fielding, anyone who knows me knows that he’s my favourite film music Jerry. His main title to Lawman is one of the best ever, and his jazzy scores for The Enforcer and The Gauntlet are among my favourites.
I find Fielding more accessible than North, to be honest.
I know what you mean. North is very harsh at times but Fielding is often nothing to listen sideways. I have never explored his jazz albums but I know he did several of them.
My days of walking around outside listening to music are long gone.
I did and could never do that, I need to hear my surroundings as I also “see” with my ears. Especially traffic. It’s somehow weird that electric cars that could be dead silent are actually designed to make sounds so you can hear them for safety reasons.
I once listened to THE TOWERING INFERNO while there was a fire raging outside my apartment.
OK, that’s a slightly too dramatic description of the event… but some years ago, there was indeed a pretty big fire (big enough to get on the Norwegian national news) in a warehouse down the valley that I overlook from my living room. It had started early in the day, and the firefighters had a hard time putting it out. But it wasn’t spreading, and I was safely out of harm’s way anyway, so after a few hours I had basically forgotten about it.
The FSM release of THE TOWERING INFERNO had recently arrived in the mail, and, with any thoughts of the fire gone from my mind, I decided it was time to give it a spin. So I put the CD on, sat down and started listening, and after a while my eyes drifted out the windows and caught the flames and billowing smoke. That’s when I went, “What the hell am I DOING?!” 😉
“Kev, I’m sure you don’t get any of that down your way, but have a care in any case. I’d hate for our little world to lose its cruise consultant”
Haha 😊
And thanks. I’m quite aware, while on-the-air 😉 I’m a Scouser, after all.Just do the same as when you put the quoted text in italics, but instead of ‘I’, press ‘B-QUOTE’ instead when the text is marked.
I really dig Fielding’s variations on Bach in THE NIGHTCOMERS, how he mixes modernistic textures with that. It’s a shame that the CD-R of that film music promo I mentioned in the first post, eventually started skipping, to the point I simply had to throw it in the trash. And of course, I can’t afford picking up the real deal (there were three volumes on Bay Cities, as far as I remember). Might actually be my favourite score of his, all things considered.
There’s a lot of chatter about Jerry Fielding and THE BIONIC WOMAN here and there. Is that something I need to check into? Graham?
I watched the series as a kid, and I fancied the pants off Lindsay Wagner, probably my first real crush.
I didn’t pay much attention to the music, but I always loved the Main Title theme.
Having become a huge Jerry Fielding fan in the ensuing years, I will buy this CD (with some others) when I get back from holiday around 22nd of this month.I watched this as a kid with it’s parent 6 MILION DOLLAR MAN. Btw, THE BIONIC WOMAN was called the “7 Million Dollar Woman” in German 😉
I have listened/peeked into the the Harnell releases as my library service has many BSX releases for streaming and they are nice 70s TV action scoring. Not always totally catchy but I do like the funk elements. I don’t have any of them though, they are kind of in my waiting room (to use terms from Thor’s film composer house) 😉
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