Well, dear readers, it was a bittersweet day yesterday, with Michelle Nicastro’s funeral and the gathering back at Michelle and husband Steve’s house. As I said yesterday, I really don’t like or do funerals if there’s any way to avoid them – but it was absolutely essential for me to attend Michelle’s, because we had such an incredibly close working relationship and I loved and adored her. The attendance was amazing with every pew filled and people standing in the back and against the side walls – I’d guess between 600 and 700 in all. The service was lovely – Michelle’s daughters each read a passage from the Bible, Howard McGillan sang a beautiful Ave Maria and friend Reece Holland sang For Good. It was all very touching, but nothing was as touching as Steve’s speech – the love, the humor, the warmth, was so affecting and beautiful. Then many people went to the house. On the lawn was a huge blow-up of the cover of On My Own, the last solo album we did together. I didn’t know many people, but saw Steve and went over to him. When he saw me he hugged me and told me how helpful I’d been to Michelle and I just could not speak – no words would come out – I just made some feeble gesture as if to say, “No, she was helpful to ME.” It was an emotional morning, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
After that, I had to come right home to meet Miss Juliana A. Hansen. I gave her a CDR of her songs, but hadn’t gotten to the Xerox place to make copies – in fact, I won’t have time to do that until I get back on Sunday – I’m really behind on getting stuff to people, but it was just too much of a roller coaster week to get it done. After Juliana left, I did a couple of errands and whatnot, had a low-cal lunch, several telephonic conversations, listened to some music, and then sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched the first half of a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Bridge On The River Kwai, directed by Mr. David Lean, starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, and Sessue Hayakawa. It’s really a great movie and one I haven’t really seen more than twice before. So, I always come to it pretty fresh. I saw it once when it came out, and then on DVD. I’d run the first five minutes of the Blu-Ray the other day and was not so pleased with what I was seeing in the credits, which looked pretty bad – and I didn’t know if that was solely because the credits are obviously an optical – and even when it cut to the regular footage it didn’t look that good to me, especially in light of the fact that I’d heard this restoration was amazing. Well, I don’t know about amazing, but it’s really quite excellent (it gets better about ten minutes in), with very good color, relatively sharp and I think about as good as we’re going to get. I’ll finish it today.
After that, I got the CDs of our next release – transfers from thirteen four-track tapes, two of which didn’t need to be transferred at all as there were no circled takes on them. There were several pieces of good news as I listened and followed the cue numbers on the paperwork. The cue numbers are sequential to the film – this makes assembling the music in film order simple as pie. Is pie simple? Just what is simple about pie, I’d like to know? I think pie is not that simple, frankly, and whoever made that saying up was both a dolt and a fool, not necessarily in that order. Where was I? Oh, yes, assembling the music in film order will be a piece of cake. All right, wait just a darned minute – what are all these dessert things to imply that things are simple? A piece of cake – simple as pie – what’s next – easy as Jello? Effortless as a donut? I gotta tell you. Where was I? Oh, yes, assembling the music in film order will be pretty easy, simple, and effortless. That was the first piece of good news. The second piece of good news is that we have the entire score from start to finish, including a few cues that didn’t make the finished film, and a couple of bonus tracks, probably close to an hour of music. The album and previous CD release was 35 minutes, and I think people are going to be VERY happy with this release – it’s a much-loved film by a terrific composer and the album basically only had dramatic scoring from the second half of the film, which I always found really odd. But now, we’ve got it complete and if we do the full score AND the original album (from the album masters) it looks like it has to be a 2 CD set. I do think it will be a VERY quick sellout, because I think people have really wanted ALL the music. I don’t know that we’ll make a Monday announcement, but we’ll try our best – if not, it will have to be Tuesday or Wednesday, but it will definitely be next week.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, which, by the way (BTW, in Internet lingo), is simple as pie and a piece of cake.
Today, I have way too much to do. I have to do some errands and whatnot in the morning, then I’m having lunch with someone I haven’t seen in about fourteen years, then I have to pack, then I have to at least start the liner notes for our next release, then I have to relax and finish a motion picture, write notes, post them early and get to bed.
Tomorrow, I shall be on my way to the Land of Port. I’m quite looking forward to the trip, and whatever sort of get-together we’re having tomorrow night, and then doing the event on Saturday night and hopefully going out after. Then I shall be on my way home on Sunday morning and it will be a full day of work on Sunday – Xeroxing and making CDRs for the cast of the next Gardenia show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do errands and whatnot, have a lunch, pack, write liner notes, jog, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite film soundtracks from the 1970s? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we – after all, it’s simple as pie.