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Folks. Orders at the bar for the @thesociallondon and @RoughTradeBooks.
Playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7BYfDu820RvVLqMhZpnhkr?si=3SvE3f9jSYOm3sRGnvDVHw
Got lots of liner notes so expect one mutha of a THREAD
Playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7BYfDu820RvVLqMhZpnhkr?si=3SvE3f9jSYOm3sRGnvDVHw
Got lots of liner notes so expect one mutha of a THREAD
The tracks are all filmic in nature, and in a celebration of the book They Live— http://roughtradebooks.com/books/they-live-a-visual-and-cultural-awakening/
I’m no DJ, but I’m going to attempt to take you on a meandering through music in, and for, film. Expect lots of John Carpenter, as I try and pimp our book, but also a few surprises I hope.
Let’s go.
Kicking things off with a bit of Kurt Russell’s finest—Snake Plissken—as he and Lee Van Cleef get us up to expositional speed.
Carpenter had scored his previous films—Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and The Fog—all-but alone but this marked the first score composed with Alan Howarth in what would become a pretty fruitful collaboration.
The score used ARP and Prophet-5 synthesizers and a Linn LM-1 drum machine, as well as an acoustic piano and Fender guitars, to create the palette of sounds in the score, while Carpenter composed the melodies on the synthesizer keyboards.
There’s a great @residentadvisor playlist here if you want more… https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?id=230
Q Lazzarus now. This song was loved by director Jonathan Demme, so much so he used it in two of his films—Married to the Mob (1988) starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Matthew Modine and more infamously in Silence of the Lambs (1991).
Whilst working in NYC with her band The Resurrection, Q also drove a taxi and one day picked up the director, Demme, who heard her demos playing in the car and encouraged her to come to Hollywood.
After Demme placed the track in the scene where serial killer Buffalo Bill prepares his make-up naked, Goodbye Horses got the nickname "The Buffalo Bill Song" and has been featured and parodied in film, television, and video games since.
Q Lazzarus dropped out of the public eye and many presumed her dead as all traces led to nothing much. Until she responded claiming to drive a bus in Staten Island.
Sticking with Demme, here’s The Boss’ original contribution to the soundtrack for his film Philadelphia (1993)—a film dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis as it was occurring.
It plays over the title sequence (designed by Pablo Ferro) and also won an Oscar for best song—even beating Neil Young’s song of the same name for the same film.
No playlist is complete without Moondog.
This was featured in The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges also claimed that playing Moondog was/is the part that he has always longed to be cast in. Let’s make it happen Twitter.
And the less said about this Moondog, the better.
Here’s a classic Masaru Sato composition played with his orchestra for master Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961).
Sato scored some on Kurosawa’s most famous films including Throne of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and (my favourite) Red Beard.
(I also think you can hear subtle threads of Sato’s work in Mica Levi’s Under The Skin score… particularly Throne of Blood. Just me probably.)
