Does it seem like everyone's taking inventory lately? Ten Books, Ten Movies, Ten What-Have-You everywhere you look. I'd been planning something like this for awhile and it was not meant to reflect this trend. But as for taking inventory: guilty as charged. I like taking inventory.
Another thing I like? (Segue!) Film music. In fact I love it and have as long as I can remember. Lately - it started earlier this year when I was collecting the Bond soundtracks - I've been absorbing them more than usual. Here's ten favorites, just for the hell of it.
Some caveats: (Always with the caveats!)
- I'm not including any soundtrack that I might love (say, Purple Rain, or - for entirely different reasons - Rocky IV or Trainspotting) or that may even be perfectly integrated into the film the way film-score music would be (all the aforementioned, Mean Streets, Stand By Me, etc.) I don't consider them inferior to the strictly orchestral soundtrack, it's just what I've gravitated to lately.
- No Bond, since I did that 007 mix tape post, and no John Carpenter and I limited myself to one John Williams. The truth is: if I entered these composers in competition and truly set out to map out which was best or even which were favorites, I'd probably have a top 10 of nothing but these 3 Johns. Which might be truthfully represent my favorite soundtracks, but it seemed more fun to talk about some of the others below.
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| No disrespect Favorites are probably Moonraker (or The Black Hole) and Halloween, respectively. (You can't go wrong with any Carpenter - especially the two he put out to films that do not exist.) Favorite Williams, see below. |
- Similarly, no Star Trek.Which one is the best? I have no idea. Maybe I'll do a Trek soundtrack post sometime. (Most underrated? Insurrection or The Search for Spock. Probable best: The Motion Picture. Or Wrath of Khan. Or The Voyage Home.)
- And finally, I'm not including any hybrids of score and songs, like Back to the Future (which remains one of my favorite soundtrack collections of both) or Risky Business (which was painful, as the Tangerine Dream music in there is awesome. While we're here, there is a lack of Tangerine Dream on the list below, too, which is unfair. I'm a huge fan and they did some fantastic film scores over the years. Sorcerer, Legend, Thief, you name it - many more. But the one I want is The Keep. It's available only at ridiculous prices, so as a slightly ridiculous protest about not being able to crank it from my stereo (YouTube just isn't the same) I left them off the below.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Truly there could a hundred here, but I'm going with:
Korngold is a composer I've been studying a little bit. I don't know his work very well, but this Sea Hawk and Other Scores disc goes a good broad-strokes-ing his cinematic approach. I've got his opera Die Tote Stadt (which is pretty good - took me a few listens but now I kind of love it) and his Midsummer suite on the way. You haven't heard the last from Korngold in these pages.
I'm delighted to have added Young Sherlock Holmes to my collection after all these years of singing "Rame Tep" (cued up to the part here that was unbelievably cool when cranked from the stereo instead of heard via mp3 on my computer) to myself. Bruce Broughton, I discovered from the liner notes, lifted some parts of his score for the TV mini-series The First Olympics - which I watched a gazillion times on VHS - for parts of YSH. I'm not sure which yet, but I'm on the case.
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| Korngold (l) Broughton (r) |
10.
Totally underrated soundtrack. Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra provide not just the perfect soundtrack for the abstractions of the film but a standalone masterpiece. I can think of many words to describe the music - turbulent, elegantly structured, wonderful, deeply stirring, disorienting - but just have a listen to the reintroduced main theme at the end of the film. It's better than any of them. (Words, that is.)
9.
Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice soundtrack might lack the maturity of some of his masterworks to come, but it's my personal favorite of all of them. The main theme gets a justifiable slice of attention, but most of the other tracks are equally wonderful. Like "Travel Music." Or "The Incantation." I love this album.
8.
Broughton again, here conducting the Sinfonia of London in a faithful reproduction of Bernard Hermann's original score. Holy crap do I love this music: the perfectly precise use of the orchestra in "Hydra's Teeth/ Skeletons Attack", the echoes of Hermann scores to come in "Medea's Ship", or this haunting accompaniment to Hercules and Hylas finding the Titans treasure. You could use the same music for an opera based and it'd make a hundred million, easy. Well, adjusted for inflation, and in 1880, or something. Still: beautiful music. And kudos and deep thanks to Broughton and company for doing these recreation soundtracks.
7.
I remember a friend once saying something like "Koyaanisqatsi is great and all, but when's the last time you actually watched it?" And I thought, "I watch Koyaanisqatsi all the time, dude." And at the time it was true. These days, not so much, but I still listen to the soundtrack often enough. A classic. Throw it on and trance out and think about really deep things.
I've been listening to some of Philip Glass' operas. Like Korngold, he shall return another day.
6.
The composer/conductor of this one, William Stromberg, is another to whom we should give thanks for recreating film scores of the past. Here he gets to blanket this atomic bomb documentary with his own nuclear array of sound (please forgive me). But holy moley - listen/ watch this. Or this. This isn't a movie or a soundtrack; it's a declassified opera about atomic bomb tests narrated by William goddamn Shatner with some of the heaviest orchestral gloom ever committed to celluloid or digital print.
5.
One of the most influential scores of all time. I was driving through the edge of what I later discovered was a tornado a few months back and this happened to be playing at inadvisable volume. Couldn't see a damn thing and was afraid to move my hands from where they were locked on the wheel to turn down the volume. Top Five Most Intense Driving Moments of My Life. (If they ever make a movie of it, please call it Visibility Zero.)
Prokofiev had a troubled life. I keep bringing up operas and don't mean to, but I've got one of his on tap as well (The Love for Three Oranges.) Nevsky, though, is more or less the musical model for every movie made in the West set in or about Russia that came after.
4.
What makes this one so special is how unnecessary it was. This movie would've been fine with just a traditional score, but Basil went ahead and composed this. Very much in the tradition of Nevsky and Soviet military traditionals but with its own blockbuster ethos. Guaranteed to make your day more epic. This is kind of my stand-in for all Poledouris. If push came to shove, I think I'd go with Red October, but Robocop and Conan would be right up there to the last round.
From what I understand, the choir's Russian isn't very clear, so native speakers have to read along with everyone else to understand the words. I've never even looked up the words, and I've listened to this a gazillion times. What am I waiting for? (I don't know if this is accurate or not, but there's this.)
3.
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| Special edition 2008 |
Like any reasonable person I've always loved the movie, but it took until the release of the Indiana Jones Soundtrack Collection in 2008 for me to properly appreciate everything John Williams does in this score. As with Poledouris above, this is kind of my stand-in for John Williams, which is ridiculous, but I just mean: between Indy and Star Wars, this is my pick. Limited to those two franchises. Still ridiculous but less so - Williams has done so much he's genre of one. (Click here for the first of a multi-part wonderful overview of said genre.) I didn't go with Star Wars here not because the Raiders score is any better, really - just "The Raiders March" and "The Map Room" are my all-round, enduring, desert-island favorites.
What more can you say? It is film score perfection.
2.
I'd forgive you for thinking I'm crazy for putting this above Raiders or any of the others you can think of. But what can I say? I love every track on this album, and I listen to it at least once every couple of months, and years back I listened to it damn near everyday. From the opening ("Voluntary Hospital Escape") through the middle ("Snowflake Music/ Mr. Henry's Chop Shop") and on to the end ("Futureman's Theme," which sums it all up) this is music to reprogram your life to. Which is exactly what the movie is about, so film score mission accomplished. And then some.
Of the album's non-score songs - and technically yes this is a cheat since I made a point of excluding such albums but a) there was no way I was leaving Bottle Rocket off, and b) there's only a couple of them - the one that hits my head in that same frontal-love heaven way is "Zorro's Back". The YouTube links appear to be only the 4-minute version from the Alain Delon film from the 70s or this fan-made stuff at the soundtrack length.
And finally:
1.
Both the movie and the soundtrack are enduring favorites, but Queen's score for Flash Gordon has come to represent some radical (and radically awesome) alternate path for America. Somewhere out there in multispace, the earth spun off into the history we all know, while in some other timeline, Flash Gordon not only made a gazillion dollars, the world remade itself, Bill and Ted's style, in its mix of steampunk Queen-arena-rock awesomeness.
Beyond this alternate timeline business, it's amazing how seriously Queen its role in scoring the film. It's very much done in the classical score style, with themes for characters and leitmotifs; I'd say between this and Star Wars/ John Williams, there was really no way in retrospect I wasn't going to gravitate towards scores that followed certain rules rather than free-for-alls. But also very much in the exuberant spirit of its era and refashioning the familiar into new, again-totally-awesome directions.
"Totally awesome" is the only true description of this soundtrack. Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Genghis Khan, and Yngwie Malmsteen all wish they wrote this album. I do, too, for that matter. I'll settle for cranking it every other week. How fortunate to be alive in an era such as this, even if we're in the crap timeline.
But hey! Maybe not.
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