BimboBob
Well-Known Member
Soundtracks
Something a little different this week. Tracks submitted for this playlist need to be music from the soundtrack of a movie or TV show. I’m not excluding songs but they must be music created for the soundtrack and not existing pop songs that have been incorporated into a soundtrack. So Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” doesn’t count but Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” would. However, instrumentals are the preference.
The initial list of five tracks is focused on the work of the three Johns that are my favourite film composers: Williams, Barry and Carpenter; there is one exception.
I haven’t gone for the unfamiliar but I have hopefully not gone for the over familiar either.
The non-John track is from one of my favourite westerns “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”. However, it’s not the iconic Ennio Morriconne theme tune but a piece called Ecstasy of Gold.
John Carpenter stands out from the rest because the instrumentation he uses is primarily electronic keyboards; also, he scores his movies that he has written and directed. Assault on Precinct 13 is one of my favourite movies and one of my most memorable cinema going experiences.
John Barry has produced some exceptional TV and movie music. He has a distinctive style that often marries more contemporary instruments with traditional orchestral ones. The body of work he produced for the early James Bond movies is perhaps the finest ever created for a movie series, although fans of the third John might dispute that. Spotify doesn’t actually have the piece I wanted to use but from the same movie, my favourite Bond film “You Only Live Twice”, we have Space March (Capsule in Space), which beautifully scores SPECTRE’s spaceship swallowing up a a nuclear power’s one.
John Williams is arguably the greatest composer of film soundtracks. His partnership with Steven Spielberg has been enduring and spectacularly successful so I had to include an example. I have chosen Welcome to Jurassic Park, which, perhaps strangely, I find to be the most moving film accompaniment of all, in addition to being the soundtrack to one of the most memorable film moments I have witnessed as it scores the first appearance of the dinosaurs in all their CGI glory, a truly groundbreaking event.
Finally, it’s only fitting that as I am writing this just after the news has broken of the passing of the magnificent, marvellous, magical Dame Maggie Smith to include a piece from the Harry Potter movies: Hedwig’s Theme.
And let’s try to avoid musicals!
So I can't choose My Old Bamboo?