Well, dear readers, I had a perfectly lovely day yesterday – I managed to get some writing done and then I went to the John Scott concert at Citrus College with my pals Nick Redman and Jon Burlingame. The concert was wonderful but very poorly attended, around a hundred people. John is a lovely chap who I’ve known for about fifteen years, and he’s one of those terrific film composers who works quite often but never gets many of the “A” list films, even though he should. In the first half of the concert he did brief suites from four of his films – Rocket to the Moon, a TV version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Greystoke and The Final Countdown. I must say, his main title theme to Rocket to the Moon is one of the greats, a fantastic, soaring melodic waltz that would not be out of place in a Broadway musical. After the intermission, we were treated to a showing of the John Barrymore silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Mr. Scott’s brand spanking new score. It was quite a good score, really helping the film, and especially making less obvious the film’s obvious melodramatic scenes. The orchestra was a top-notch group of forty, and the acoustics of the Haugh Theater are great. Somewhere in the last twenty to twenty-five years, film music orchestras have grown to epic proportions (usually around a hundred musicians) and now if a film music fan hears a CD with forty musicians on it they say it sounds like a pit band. This happened on several of my forty musician film music albums – Titanic (it didn’t matter what anyone said – it was a smash seller anyway), Superman, Godzilla and Sherlock Holmes). Well, forty good musicians playing good music sounds great and, of course, that is precisely the number of musicians that played most of the Golden Age film music scores. In fact, I would say that when classic filmmusic scores are rerecorded with huge orchestras they don’t sound the way they should, the orchestrations get muddy and they don’t have the clarity that last night’s group of forty had. Anyway, a good time was had by all.
Mr. Grant Geissman is almost through putting together our basic tracks for recording, so we shall indeed be ready in plenty of time. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I, in fact, must go to Mr. Geissman’s house right now to hear the latest batch of tracks. Yes, Virginia, I must make tracks to hear tracks.
Don’t forget, our Unseemly Live Chat is at six o’clock this evening, Pacific Mean Daylight Savings Time. We want to see everyone there, so be there or be round. Also, if you missed any of this weekend’s sparkling notes or posts do yourselves a favor and catch up by using the Unseemly Archive Button. Also, Donald’s brand spanking new radio show is up and running and this week we will have a brand spanking new Unseemly Interview up, with Danny Burstein.
I’m hoping my handy-dandy car will be all fixed up and sparklingly sparkling very soon because frankly I am weary of driving the behemoth SUV.
I got a lovely package in the mail from dear readers Kerry and MusicGuy and I thank them for all the goodies. It was especially fun seeing the book Myron Cohen’s Laughing Out Loud, which I had as a wee sprig of a twig of a lad of a tad of a youth and which I haven’t seen since. I did, however, write about the book a little while back in Kritzer 3 so it was nice to see my memory was very accurate about it.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must write, I must go to Mr. Geissman’s, I must eat various and sundried foodstuffs and I must do errands, oh, yes, I must do errands. Today’s topic of discussion – what is your favorite concert you’ve ever been to – of any kind. Post away, and I’ll be back to read your excellent posts and contribute. And I’ll see you all at the live chat.