Big Jeter - Halloween 2001

If you check the (mim-uh-zeen) archive, you can find some background info about Kansas City's late, lamented Big Jeter - although the main members have gone on to other, better things (burlesque shows and movie-making and screening), there's something very sad about living in a Big-Jeter-less universe.

BJ has been described as a cowpunk/country outfit - not totally inaccurate, since they did start out by doing tweaked countryish songs - but it doesn't tell the whole story.

They had more in common with bands on both coasts that would do wild shit, and deliver great songs. In BJ, if the musicianship was sometimes a little shaky, they more than made up for it in the passion of performance and cleverness.

Case in point: not just ANY band would do a cover of THE GREEN SLIME Theme.

Big Jeter didn't really release much - there was a promo CD-R of 5 songs that used to be sold at shows, and some MP3's were on a site or two before the Napster Smackdown canned the First Wave of FileSharing. There are a few files on the Chucky Lou A/V Club Yahoo group, but it's just a taste. What exists is on bootleg recordings, both audio and video.


This is a compilation I did of the BJ songs I'd manage to scavenge over the years, which include that CD and MP3's.

But to get a sense of what they were like onstage, you'd have to listen to their Halloween show at The Hurricane in KC, MO in 2001.

Altered States

John Corigliano's first film score for the wild Ken Russell adaptation of Paddy Cheyefsky's novel.

Thought I should put this up as well, as a companion to REVOLUTION - AS is more 'out there', but listening to it some 25+ years later, it doesn't seem as outlandish as when it debuted. It's a landmark score, and people should be more aware of it.

If you're also thinking that it sounds a bit like some of Elliot Goldenthal's work - Goldenthal did study under Corigilano, so that explains that.




Check it out

The Night of the Hunter

With Halloween around the corner, I thought I'd dig out some items that are seasonally appropriate... with that in mind, gather the kids around the MP3 player and listen to a scary story.

Most probably wouldn't consider THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER to be Halloween fare. Specifically, it's not - but it's plenty scary, the kind of scare that follows you in dreams, if you were young enough to see it on the Late Show. It holds up, and it's the kind of film for Halloween that you can let the kids see as well.

Part of what makes the film work so well is the music by Walter Schumann (who's also known for co-composing the theme for DRAGNET). RCA did release an album, but instead of being merely musical selections, got Charles Laughton (the director of the film) to also perform a reading of the story with the underscore. Most of the time, this drives soundtrack listeners nuts, but this is one of the few times when it works well... pretend that you're listening to an old-time radio broadcast - or, to be more contemporary, listening to an audiobook performance.

Check it out

COLD TURKEY - Randy Newman

When people think of Randy Newman as a film composer, and trace his career back, most may assume that his first score was for Milos Forman's muddled adaptation of E.L. Doctrow's RAGTIME.

Not so... although RAGTIME would not be a bad debut score.

Newman's first score was for a Norman Lear/Bud Yorkin (producers of ALL IN THE FAMILY, MAUDE, SANFORD & SON, THE JEFFERSONS, among others) film, COLD TURKEY, with Dick VanDyke, Bob Newhart and a lot of familiar faces from 70's sit-coms, about a small town in Iowa that takes up a tobacco company's challenge for every resident to quit smoking for 30 days. The humor may be a bit forced in today's climate of non-smoking, but it's a pretty good satire for its time.

Newman's score plays up a lot of his now-trademark Americana, as well as a take on Elmer Bernstein's MAGNIFICENT SEVEN theme opening the picture (part of the joke - the theme was used on Marlboro commercials in the 60's), and the song "He Gives Us All His Love" as the Main and End Titles (of which an arrangement can be found on Newman's album SAIL AWAY).

One of the earliest scores I remember hearing and totally digging, along with the film. The film is only on VHS, for the time being; the score never got a release, the song notwithstanding.
This file is from my own archives, so sound quality is not pristine; plus there are some snippets of dialog, which I've tried to minimize.

Go get it.

REVOLUTION - OST John Corigliano

John Corigiliano is well known in the Classical Music world as a renouned composer and in the film music world for the scores for ALTERED STATES and THE RED VIOLIN. Back in 1986, he composed a score for the Al Pacino film REVOLUTION. If you haven't heard of it... well, no surprise. Hugh Hudson's follow-up film after GREYSTOKE, REVOLUTION was a look at the
emergining America from under British rule. Despite a pretty decent cast (Natassia Kinski, Donald Sutherland and ROCKY HORROR's Richard O'Brien in a supporting role) the film pretty much stunk on ice.

One of its saving graces is Corigiliano's score, which features flautist James Galway.
Since the movie tanked, no record was released, although test pressings were made and a few did make their way into the hands of collectors. This has long been requested as a legitimate release, but legal wrangling still makes this MIA... well, until now.

Go get it.

Christus Apollo - Jerry Goldsmith

My first big musical love was - and still is, really - movie soundtracks. Due to a steady diet of 60's television rerun on afternoons after school and on weekends, I suspect - well before STAR WARS burst the soundtrack gates wide open in '77, I knew who John Williams was; when he was "Johnny" Williams and doing the music for Irwin Allen shows like LOST IN SPACE and LAND OF THE GIANTS, to name one example.

For me, it's opened the doors into a lot of aural landscapes; rather than being limited, it's a genre/label that's pretty inclusive - everything from orchestral, to pop songs, to sound/noise design.

I mention this because in addition to the occasional pop/rock items that may show up here from time to time, I'll also post soundtrack/soundtrack related items also.

CHRISTUS APOLLO falls into 'soundtrack related' - it's not a soundtrack, but a concert work from the late 60's composed by Jerry Goldsmith... specifically a "A Cantata For Contralto, Narrator, Chorus And Orchestra", with text by Ray Bradbury.

If you only know Jerry Goldsmith from his work in the 90's, like TOTAL RECALL, BASIC INSTINCT, RUDY... well, this is the Jerry Goldsmith from the 60's, when he was into serial composition - stuff like PLANET OF THE APES. Great stuff, but the neighbors may complain.

There is a recent recording of this, on the Telarc label, that features Anthony Hopkins doing the narration, as well as features two other concert pieces from Goldsmith, that is highly recommended.

This recording is from the premiere performance by The Southern Chamber Orchestra and Choir, with Goldsmith conducting and narration by Charlton Heston.


CHRISTUS APOLLO

Jumping into the File-Share pool

It's been quite some time since updating this particular corner... to be honest, I was a bit intimidated - I've written about music before, but no matter how talented your poetic gifts are, nothing quite puts it across like the genuine article.

Over the summer, I discovered the new crop of music blogs all over the place - and decided to wait until I had some access of posting some of my favorites, which will back up all the good things I have to say about them.

So I'm jumping into the pool, with the other lemmings... let's see how long we can swim before we go under.

I started this blog off with The Smarties post - if I had the ability then, I would have put up those songs which caught my attention. Craig does have some downloads of songs at the MySpace page, but I'll put up those 3 songs that were on that tape. According to him, that was a tape that was sent out to bookers for gigs - two of the songs are on the PLAY IT! album, but these versions are slightly different -- and one song hasn't been featured anywhere else, from what I gather.

So enjoy!

He Fixes Things

Day Off

Is Your Daddy Gonna Pay (For My Broken Heart)?


Addendum 10/27/06

Craig of The Smarties posted news that a limited quantity of PLAY IT! cd's were discovered and are now on sale at CD Baby; and that Smarties songs will soon be found on iTunes and other online music services.

Tribute to Brian Harvey and his family



Hello - finally some time to post some content!

Just recently signed up on YouTube, and one of the first things I found was this tribute - "Remember Me Well", the closer on the CAKEWALK album is used.

A fitting epitaph...