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Monday, October 03, 2005
MAIN THEME
Lalo Schifrin
Dirty Harry Soundtrack
Aleph Records : 1971
[Buy it]
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY COMPUTER
Kolar Goi
Kolar Goi
Beatservice Norway : 2004
[Buy it]
L'ESTASI DELL 'ORO (Ecstasy of Gold)
from The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Ennio Morricone / Bandini
Remixes Vol. 2
Compost Records : 2004
[Buy it]
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Hugo Montenegro and His Orchestra
1967
available on All-Time Greatest Movie Themes & Schemes
RCA : 1999
[Buy it]
EXECUTIVE PARTY
Andre Previn & The London Symphony Orchestra
Rollerball Soundtrack
United Artists : 1975
[Buy it]
Todays post is just an excuse to post this artwork, the cover of Lalo Schifrin's 1977 Towering Toccata. The image is cleary meant to say "look at how enormously colossal and towering is the talent Lalo Schifrin" but thanks to 70s graphic design competencies, its ends up saying something more like "does any of you persons down there have an asprin for me? Lalo was having many ales last night."
Schifrin has scored over 400 films. Most famously, Mission Impossible, and most uncomfortably, 2003's Bringing Down The House. (I have this dark suspicion that when Eugene Levy is in the very last stages of advanced Alzheimer's, the last four words he will remember before the light goes out for good will be: "You're straight trippin' Boo!")
I can't speak to the bulk of his work, but this "Dirty Harry" theme is a cunning little masterpiece. It's definitely got all those staple 70s action film elements: the Chase Bass, the Strings of Intrigue... but that little downbeat guitar and organ thingy that bookends the song? Good god theres genius in that. Its amazing how comfortably it sits at the table with modern electronica, especially the "Arctic Jazztronika" of Kolar Goi. Arctic Jazztronika? My Papa loves the stuff.
Kolar Goi's song is of course an update on another famous Eastwood film score, by another famous film scorer: Ennio Morricone's The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Morricone's operatic "L´Estasi Dell´Oro (Ecstasy of Gold)", from the same soundtrack, gets a cool trip-hop treatmnent here by Bandini, as part of a recent remix project by Compost Records that spawned 5 discs over two volumes.
The second version I've posted is a 1968 cover by Hugo Montenegro, "one of the great chameleons of space-age pop" according to this space-age pop website.
His 1968 recording of Ennio Morricone's theme...featuring whistling by Muzzy Marcellino's, sold over a million copies and hit #2 on the Top Ten chart as a single. Montenegro's version also features an electric violin (played by Elliott Fisher), a piccolo trumpet (played by Manny Klein), an electronic harmonica, an ocarina, a vocal group, and Montenegro himself grunting nonsense Italian-sounding syllables.
And no film boy post would be complete without Andre Previn, who squandered away some serious chops being Johnny ShoTunes. His Rollerball stuff is a fantastic psyched-out break from form.Labels: James
posted by James
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