Graham Watt
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I ordered my copy of the Tim Greiving book on John Williams yesterday – should arrive on or before next Friday.
I’m selective when it comes to biographies, especially of film-related people. From what I have, too many seem to be written by “fanboys” (thanks to Ford Thaxton, I am now considered such), with very little critical filter, and the others seem largely copied and pasted from Wikipedia.
But I have high hopes for the Greiving book.
By the way Thor, I “know” (infer) that the Greiving bio flummoxed your own plans to eventually write the “definitive” JW biography. Is there anything that you had previously researched (for example, Williams’ ancestry) which is not covered in the new book?
Hello again, playmates!
Just to clarify/ confuse the issue wot I was on about several moons ago, this particular topic was (previous to this post) last contributed to 2 dager, 8 tiner siden.
The topic “Been to Any Good Concerts Lately?” is currently three places down the list, and yet the most recent post was a mere 19 minutter siden.
Do I make myself clear?
Is there a way to show the most recent posts at the top of the list? I thought that most message boards did that by default.
Big bro is on the insurance case now, Thor. I imagine we’ll get a percentage back.
Thinking about all this – and it might be good fodder for a new topic – I’m not sure a actually want to go to Skye next year. Not becuase it isn’t beautiful (it’s spectaular), but because every year there are more and more tourists. The island is still mostly single-track roads, and nowadays, in the summer, they’re packed with tour coaches maneuvering around the passing places. I suppose the next step is to make all the roads much wider to accommodate them, but then the place loses all its charm. The road through Glen Coe on the mainland has been ruined, for example. Maybe Alan has an opinion on this.
When I retire (three more years – I hope I stay alive), I’m going to take my holidays in May. Good weather, fewer tourists.
Hello playmates!
I recently got back from a visit to the Auld Country. My brother and I had booked a week in a cottage on the Isle of Skye (spectacular place), but the day before we were due to travel, my brother “fell” (not quite sure how he did that) and broke his collarbone. So we had to cancel it, and lose all the money we’d paid to book it. No refund when you break your collarbone the day before arrival!
And so I spent two weeks sleeping on the floor in my brother’s little house, which is also my sister-in-law’s house (as you can imagine). Not quite Skye, but my brother’s greenhouse is coming on a treat.
Thor, the Nieto book seemed VERY heavy-going back in the day. Full of diagrams and the philosophy of colours. I was initally against the idea of reading the book, because there are actually NO film composers mentioned throughout. Now, skimming through it, it seems absolutely fascinating.
Thanks Thor. Yes, we get over everything. I’m a grandad now! Taking the baby out for a lunchtime beer tomorrow!
Hey, are we going to have a Cheers “live chat” sometime soon? It’ll be like Andy Warhol’s TRASH, only with less action.
Has anyone seen CORRUPTION? It’s a 1968 piece of Brit exploitation, with Peter Cushing (he HATED the film) as a surgeon who has to kill young women for their glands (or something). To see Peter Cushing on a train letching over some bird opposite him in a mini skirt, then killing her (and getting his tongue down her throat and everything), later killing another young girl, stripping her and rubbing his blood-drenched hands all over her tits… then he cuts her head off. How he could go home to his beloved wife Helen and chat cheerfully about the day’s filming I’ll never know.
Bill McGuffie did the score. It’s like somebody has suddenly put on a “Live at Ronnie Scottt’s” jazz record. And all this for scenes of Cushing chasing dolly birds along the beach so that he can mutilate them. Perhaps if there had been a backstory of Cushing as a frustrated jazz musician….
My collection is SOOO incomplete! I don’t even have all the works of Gil Mellé and Basil Kirchin!
As regards to my OTHER favourite composers (Goldsmith and Williams), I think I’m missing about 50% of their output (counting expanded editions). Partly because I can’t afford them, and partly because I don’t want them.
I’m an FSM geek, but I’m beginning to feel quite at home here with the low traffic. Small fish in a small pond. I don’t really like having more than one messageboard to look at. My friend Dr Chatterjee told me that to be happy you have to reduce your choices.
Sorry to hear about the worsening of your tinnitus, Thor.
I’ve had a fairly shit past two years. My mum died in September 2023 and I was constantly jetting back and forthe between Spain and Scotland. Thankfully my brother is in Scotland and he could do a lot of the funeral arrangements. I was with her when she died. It was terrible. No sense of peace, just terror in her eyes. I was alone with her then. My brother couldn’t come to the hospital as he was really ill with Covid. I also saw my dad die, in 1982. I think about my parents every day.
The day my mum died, I started seeing lots of flashing lights at the corners of my eyes, and swarms of flies. In the morning I was in the Emergency bit of the hospital, where I was told I was in danger of having a detached retina. Then I went upstairs and watched my mum die.
Since then I’ve lost 10 kilos in weight. I had diarrhoea for nearly two years, but it’s getting a bit better now. I think it’s all down to nerves.
Are you sorry you asked?
Thor, don’t you have all the John Williams family tree background to have started on an exhaustive biography? Has Tim Grieving nipped that venture in the bud?
Let me think… Books on the shelf beside me –
MÚSICA PARA LA IMÁGEN by composer Jose Nieto
JAMES BERNARD: COMPOSER TO COUNT DRACULA by David Huckvale (he’s a great writer)
JAZZ IN THE MOVIES by David Meeker (invaluable before the days of online clickery)
EL LEGADO MUSICAL DE LA HAMMER by Antonio Piñeira
ALEX NORTH: EL VIAJERO IMPENITENTE by Frederic Torres
KNOWING THE SCORE by Irwin Bazelon (I stole this from the library when I was a kid, and they haven’t caught me yet)
THE ART OF FILM MUSIC by George Burt (excellent)
ENCICLOPEDIA DE LAS BANDAS SONORAS by Conrado Xalabarder
LA MÚSICA EN EL CINE by Russell Lack (I have the Spanish translation – it’s actually “Twenty Four Frames Under” I think)
U.S. SOUNDTRACKS ON CD by Robert L. Smith (these things go out of date immediately, but it’s interesting to look at in retrospect)
THE MUSIC OF STAR TREK by Jeff Bond (great, and there’s a new one due)
MUSIC FOR PRIME TIME by John Burlingame
FILM SCORE by Tony Thomas (looking quaint and square nowadays)
GRAMOPHONE: FILM MUSIC: GOOD CD GUIDE (just seen the spine of this. What on Earth is it?)
LA MÚSICA EN EL CINE by Michel Chion (translated from the original French)
HAMMER FILM SCORES AND THE MUSICAL AVANT-GARDE by David Huckvale (superb)
MUSIC FROM THE HOUSE OF HAMMER by Randall Larson
INTRODUCCIÓN A LA HISTORIA DE LA MÚSICA EN EL CINE by Carlos Colón Perales
SOUNDTRACK: THE MUSIC OF THE MOVIES by Mark Evans (another one which now seems old, quaint and square)
TV COMPOSER GUIDE by John Williams (not THE John Williams, and not even the guitarist)
CIEN BANDAS SONORAS EN LA HISTORIA DEL CINE by Roberto Cueto
PENTAGRAMAS DE PELICULA by Juan Padrol
NOMBRES DE LA BANDA SONORA by Jose Maria Benitez and Luis Miguel Carmona)I had no idea I had so many.
Doesn’t it say in the liner notes that the album was split that way to maintain the “geography” of the score? Something like that?
I still think BEN-HUR is an absolute masterpiece. I love SODOM AND GOMORRAH but find that the the re-recording is taken far too slowly (in the non-action cues). EL CID is splendid. IVANHOE… I’m a sucker for that Golden Age pageantry. Oh, KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE. LUST FOR LIFE, even late-career stuff like THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD. I’ve no idea how many I’ve listed, but I’m not sure I could whittle it down to five.
I would say that, in general, C n’ C presentations don’t work as well as a carefully thought out “reduction”. And why should they? It’s actually amazing to me to find so many C n’ Cs that work at all. Not all films follow a traditional story arc, and even when they do, no matter how great an “architect” the composer is, a climax (if there is one) may be left unscored. That’s just one of many examples. There are really too many variables to mention.
But just to cite one example, I don’t think that the complete THE EIGER SANCTION works anywhere near as well as the re-recorded LP from the time. The last few tracks are suspense mostly, with Clint Eastwood hanging on a rope. Then the End Titles kick in. I could list a dozen more.
I don’t do playlists either. I want a good record producer, preferably the original composer, to put the album together for me. I wouldn’t buy a DVD/Blu-Ray of a film and edit all the bits I like into a personalised mini-film. And if it’s a 6-hour presentation of the film including all the outtakes and alternate edits, well I wouldn’t watch that either.
I think that in many ways Morricone was a true genius, but I’m by no means a fan of all his work.
Perhaps other Brits of a certain vintage will remember that the BBC screened the DOLLARS movies around the mid-1970s (but not THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – that one was too long for the regular time slot), and they were a kind of “rite of passage” for young teen boys. Some of my friends and I had the LP (on the cheap Pickwick label I think – it cost about 1 pound 50) of highlights from the first two films. That was a gateway release for many.
I’m fairly selective when it comes to buying his soundtracks. In general they’re all too long, with a lot of repetition of perhaps two or three themes which go through various subtle changes in instrumentaion. Main Theme 1, Love Theme 1, Dissonant Hell Theme 1, Main Theme 2, Love Theme 2, Dissonant Hell Theme 2, Main Theme 3…. but I have a (how did Thor put it?) high pain threshold with much of that stuff.
Perhaps my favourite Morricones are not even full scores. Those compilations (“Psychedelic Morricone” and so on) are mostly a joy, although there’s ALWAYS at least one very silly track on then, just to annoy Onyabirri I’m sure.
Chill out, Thor. Don’t get exasperated. Enjoy the wine. As the great Sir Christopher Lee once said to me when I was assistant makeup artist on THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, “Don’t sweat it”. You see, Lee was bald but wanted people to think that Billy Wilder had asked him to shave his head for the role of Mycroft. As I was taking off his wig (“No cameras, no cameras!” bellowed Lee), he then patted me on the hand (I was only nine years old) and said gently, “Don’t sweat it”. And I rarely have done since.
[I screwed up, Graham…please reinstate your post]
Does not compute. Files unavailable. Science eyes only. No override.
I have enough room for all my stuff in our fairly modest flat, Thor. In fact we have more room than ever now that our son has moved out into his own place. No special media room as such. I have books in nearly all the rooms. My CDs are in another room which kind of acts as a spare room, but the music centre as such is in the bedroom. So no, nothing’s really “on show”.
I think I have amassed around 1,000 film scores on CD. I don’t know how to back them up. When I want to listen to something, I put the CD in the CD player, sit down and listen. If I want to simply sample something, I’ll find it online somehow. But my CD collection has many hidden treasures within, and very often when I go back to a score I “thought I knew”, it turns out that I hardly “knew it” at all. I think I would be quite happy if no more music releases ever happened, no more films ever made, no more books ever written. The past is where I belong. It’s a foreign country. They do things differently there.
Hi all! I “think I know” quite a few of you here, from your FSM Board posts. Some of you will thus “think you know” a bit about me, for better or worse. But in case you don’t, a short introduction –
I’ve been into film scores since my early teens. Now in my sixth decade I feel comfortable as a kind of archaeologist, delving into so much material from my favourite time period (very roughly from around 1955 until about 1985). I have very little connection with the present. I am a man out of time, a bookish, serious old fellow with a beard and glasses, and very little patience for modern fads.
I’d say that my favourite composers are Goldsmith and Williams, but I also love Rózsa, (some) Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Leonard Rosenman, Jerry Fielding, Lalo Schifrin, Alex North, Hugo Friedhofer, Basil Poledouris – and of course I have an unhealthy fascination with mavericks from the world of jazz, especially the amazing output of Gil Mellé and Basil Kirchin. And Oliver Nelson too, but he seemed to be more human than both Mellé and Kirchin, who actually came from another planet.
