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June 27, 2016:

SHENANIGANS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, first things first, which is always preferable to second things first – first things first, we have a new Kritzerland release to announce. This was a notion that turned into a possibility – that happened about two weeks ago. Last Monday the possibility turned into a reality. By the end of Tuesday we had a master on its way to the pressing plant. By Wednesday morning the liner notes were delivered and the rest of the packaging was designed, it was approved and to the printers by Thursday morning. I’d say that was a pretty speedy turnaround, but we wanted to get it out because it coincides with a just released Blu-ray of the film the soundtrack is from. Well, that’s not quite accurate, as the Blu-ray of the film has no music. Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, the film our soundtrack is from has no music – not even one note of source music let alone an original score.

Now, I’m sure you’re sitting there like so much fish, scratching your collective heads and thinking what in tarnation is BK going on about. Is he releasing seventy-nine minutes of silence? Well, we’re not releasing seventy-nine minutes of silence although that would amuse me no end. No, this film had no music because the score that was written for it was not ultimately used because the film’s director felt that it would give the film more realism not to have any music in it. He made that decision after attending the scoring session. It wasn’t a question of liking or not liking the score, it was simply an artistic decision, and it certainly worked for the film, which is entitled The Panic in Needle Park, which I watched a couple of weeks ago and wrote about right in these here notes.

In actuality, no one really knew there had ever been a score for the film. But a fellow overseas had written a book about rejected film scores and he found out about it and went on the hunt to find out more and, more importantly, to find out if the tracks still existed, which, of course, was a long shot almost forty-five years after the fact. Well, he did his homework and found that the composer had indeed kept the tapes and donated them to the Library of Congress. And happily the composer had had the Library of Congress make him a CDR of the tape. This fellow then alerted our very own Mr. Nick Redman about it and a deal was made to include the music on the Blu-ray as an isolated score, placing it where it originally occurred. That is always a fascinating thing, and I watched it – of course it’s not mixed into the film so you don’t hear the film itself, but watching the scenes with scoring was hugely interesting. And in certain instances, it gave the film and characters a poignancy that they are lacking with no score. But that’s what’s always intriguing about film music and how it functions.

And the composer was certainly an interesting choice and certainly an unconventional one as the composer had never written a film score before. That was Ned Rorem, a classical composer of operas, symphonies, chamber music and art songs, generally considered to be avant-garde. Given how much American classical music I issued on CD in the Bay Cities days, I’m surprised that Mr. Rorem was never on my radar, although we were inclined to do more traditional and tonal music. So, I didn’t know what to expect and I got nervous with the main title music, which is dissonant and jangling, like an open nerve, rather like the film in some ways. But then I was taken aback at how lyrical and beautiful much of the score was. It’s a small ensemble of twenty, but they’re terrific musicians. In any case, Nick and I both felt it was an important release to try and make happen, and he, in fact, did make it happen, so I’m very pleased to announce the world premiere release of the unused score to The Panic in Needle Park. It’s very short, but it’s kind of cherce. Here’s the cover.

KR_Panic_NeedleCov72

Yesterday was quite an uneventful day in which there were some events – uneventful events. I didn’t fall asleep until three, woke up at five, didn’t fall back asleep until seven, and slept until one – so I think that somehow I got eight hours of sleep. Once up, I wasn’t inclined to do much of anything. After a while, I prepared the eBlast announcement and got everything ready to announce at Kritzerland and elsewhere. Then I went to Gelson’s and got two small chicken breasts and a few other items, then came home and cooked the chicken boobs in a frying pan, then added my Wacky Noodles sauce ingredients, then made some white rice and that was my meal o’ the day and it was really good.

Then late in the afternoon, I had a few telephonic calls, then sat at my computer like so much fish and watched a live auction online for original comic book art and comic books. I’ve been doing this, watching these weekly auctions for a few weeks now and it’s very interesting, as I feel there are some shenanigans being played. I’m not sure that ever used to be the case with auctions, but like everything today, things devolve and become not what they appear to be. For these weekly auctions, you can bid online for a week, then you can bid live from your computer. This particular company has been doing auctions for over fifteen years and I’ve sold a few things through them, as well as gotten a few things.

A couple of months ago they had a big illustration art auction and I watched with some astonishment at how the bidding went. There were no bargains because someone kept bidding stuff up – it was so patently obvious to me. Anyway, weeks after the auction I happened to see one of the pieces I’d liked for sale at a gallery that is on eBay. At the auction it had sold for six hundred dollars – a real bargain, because really only two or three people were bidding on it, but one of them wouldn’t stop and got it at that low price when the other bidders dropped out. Well, now it was being sold on eBay for – wait for it – 5,600 bucks. Not that it was selling. So, I went back to the online auction site just to make sure I was remembering correctly – I searched the artist and all the results for that artist came up and boy was that interesting. This same piece had been in the auction several years prior to this year’s auction and had sold. And suddenly it was back in the auction again. The first time it had sold the buyer took advantage of a thing this auction house does – he offered it for sale if anyone wanted to pay his price. I found that odd, since the price was around four grand more than the buyer had paid. And now it had sold cheap again and was being offered for even more money by this eBay person. I asked a friend who knows this auction house AND the eBay gallery really well and he dropped a little bombshell on me – the owner of the auction house also owns the eBay gallery. Say what? So, what I think is going on is this guy bids on everything (or has his cronies do it) that isn’t achieving decent prices. And he wins a lot of it super cheap, but I mean SUPER cheap when you factor in that the auction house takes a percentage from the original seller and then doesn’t have to pay the 25% buyer’s premium. It seems very suspect to me and not kosher at all.

And as I watched last night’s auction I couldn’t help but think it was happening a lot. And I would not be surprised in the near future to see some of this stuff even back up for auction or at this eBay gallery. Time will tell, but the one thing I know is that the illustration art piece I did the detective work on was absolutely consigned to an auction, bought by the owner of the auction house, who tried to once again auction it and when that didn’t work simply purchased it again (having to not really pay for it, of course) and put it in his eBay gallery). There’s absolutely no other way it could have happened in that particular instance. And it calls into question how rife that is in terms of all the auctions everywhere – where prices get artificially driven up. Yes, you can get two nutcases butting heads, but in the comics auction yesterday there was stuff that was going so far over what it was worth that you know someone was getting sucked into that fake war. That is my opinion on what’s going on here. I have no real proof, of course, and could, I suppose, be completely wrong, but then there’s the one example where I cannot be wrong.

Another thing over the last few weeks is that someone has been putting in a lot of original movie poster art from United Artist films – I know who most of the artists are, even though the auction house hasn’t a clew. And you cannot win these – you could bid until the cows come home and someone will outbid you until you give up. I’ll be keeping a close eye on that stuff to see when and if it reappears, which I truly believe it will.

I had a few other tiny snacks, and that was basically the day and evening.

Today I’ll be up at six in the morning to announce our new title, and then I’ll probably go back to sleep. Then I’ll hopefully print out a LOT of orders (I’m hoping fans of the composer from the classical world will glom onto this release), I’ll eat something light but amusing, hopefully pick up packages, and then finish casting the Kritzerland shows and mush on with the casting for the ALS benefit.

And that’s basically what the week is. And then on Saturday I was invited to see Mary Poppins at a dinner theater and I called Richard Sherman and his wife and they wanted to come with, so that will really be fun.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce our new title, sleep, hopefully print out a LOT of orders, eat, hopefully pick up packages, cast, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What movies do you love where you think there could be a better score, where the existing score doesn’t quite work? And what movies do you think were, in fact, hurt by having a bland or bad score? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after a lovely evening of watching shenanigans.

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