The dignity of the faux dead

This is an addendum to my earlier post on P.F. Kluge's novel Eddie and the Cruisers. And I swear it's true.

In the late 1980s I worked in Florence, Alabama for the Olan Mills Portrait Studio chain. The studio manager was a woman then in her mid-forties, and one night just after closing our conversation turned to how much I liked the music from Eddie and the Cruisers.

"You know," she said fervently, "I wish they'd leave him alone."

I said, "I beg your pardon?"

"I wish they'd just let him rest in peace."

"Who?"

"Eddie. They're treating him like Elvis."

"Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers."

"Yeah."

"Eddie Wilson."

"Yes."

This woman, old enough to have lived through the period when the fictional band ruled the charts, believed Eddie Wilson was real. Somehow the presence of the film on cable and the music on the radio had placed this fictional character alongside Elvis and the Beatles in her memories.

I didn't disavow her of her delusion. It seemed pointless. Her sympathy, however misplaced, was certainly real. But at that moment I realized the power of pop culture: much like the Force, it can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.

And wherever she is now, I hope she takes some comfort in this:



Has anyone else ever encountered someone who believes a patently fictional character was/is real?

Rediscovered: John Barry's score for King Kong (1976 version)

I was 13 when I saw the Dino De Laurentiis version of King Kong. That's how it was promoted, and how it's remembered: few people recall the actual director (John Guillermin), or the cast besides then-newcomer Jessica Lange (Jeff Bridges played the hippie hero and Charles Grodin the comic villain). Instead of the Empire State Building, the poster showed Kong astride the towers of the then-new World Trade Center:



I didn't really like the movie--too much goofy romance, not enough monster-on-monster fighting--but I recognized the musical score as something special. Composed by John Barry, it had the majesty and scale entirely missing from the expensive but cheap-looking film. I bought the soundtrack album, one of the few ways in the pre-VHS era to take a movie "home" with you, and played it over and over. But as music delivery systems changed from vinyl to digital, a few gems were lost, among them Barry's score for King Kong.



John Barry wields a big baton in the movie music world. He essentially created the James Bond theme, though legal maneuvers kept it credited to Monty Norman. He scored most of the classic Bond films, as well as Born Free, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves. He also scored some dogs: Raise the Titanic, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and Howard the Duck. But even when working with utter drek, his scores never pandered: his music for Disney's dire The Black Hole captures more of the wonder and mystery of space than anything since the solar system lined up to "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

And his music for King Kong--briefly released on CD back in 2005, and now commanding collector's prices on Amazon--is even better. His opening theme hammers home Kong's stature, then shifts into a spooky section that promises suspense and danger. In his detailed liner notes for the CD, Stephen Woolston refers to this track as "a cloud of doom," but I'd call it a shroud of mystery: what I've always heard, in every track on the album, is storybook magic as opposed to monster-movie bombast. Barry's innovation--considering the girl Dwan as the main character, and her emotional relationship with Kong the true subject--was so brilliant that James Newton Howard also used it when scoring the recent Peter Jackson remake.

Above: Cover of the original vinyl soundtrack album circa 1976. Below: the main title music.



When I spoke to Woolston about the album he said, "I became a huge film music and John Barry fan when I was a teenager, largely due to my love for James Bond films. So, I started collected Barry's albums and seeing films scored by him whenever I could. I first came across Barry's Kong score on the original Arista LP, which I bought from 'Movie Boulevard' in Leeds in the '80s, probably back when it was still called 'Discount Soundtracks.'

"I actually like Barry's score more than the classic Max Steiner score for the original. I know that's heretical in soundtrack circles, but I feel Barry brought a real majesty, mystery, romanticism and tragedy to that score."

I agree. Steiner's original score is rightly regarded a classic for its Wagnerian use of leitmotivs and orchestrations. Perhaps Howard's score for the Jackson version will someday be as highly regarded, but I doubt it. I don't recall a single moment when that music gave me chills, or opened up a sense of wonder, or brought an unexpected tear to my eye. Barry's score did, and still does, all those things, in spite of accompanying a rather dire version of the story.

Buy the soundtrack here.

"That's the way of the world, baby."

My next novel, Blood Groove, is set in 1975 for a couple of reasons. Since it's a vampire novel, I wanted it to be free of the influence of Anne Rice; her landmark Interview with a Vampire came out in 1977. I also wanted it to take place in a time when it was still possible to exploit cracks in the system that computer technology has forever eliminated. For example, it would be difficult nowadays for someone with no verifiable past to create a legal identity, something my vampires need.

But I also chose the era for its music. 1975 was just prior to the advent of disco, the first hugely successful musical form that didn't depend on an artist. Mechanical beats and producer tweaks were all that was needed to create monstrous dance tracks that ran for over ten insufferable, indistinguishable minutes. This slippery slope has led us to our present dire musical landscape, where "sampling" is considered a valid act of creation.

But was pre-disco music really as pure as I remember? I've been forced to re-evaluate my position after stumbling across That's the Way of the World, Sig (Superfly) Shore's '75 film on corruption in the music industry.



Harvey Keitel plays Buckmaster, the producer with the "golden ear" at Mob-controlled A-Korn Records. He wants to record The Group, a black ensemble better known as Earth, Wind and Fire. The company forces him instead to turn the first single by the Pages, a family trio with a homey John Denver-ish sound, into a number one hit.

There are a number of ultra-cool things about this film. Most obviously, we get a taste of real Seventies funk thanks to EW&F, including glimpses of their legendary stage shows (guitarists rising to the rafters, grand pianos turning somersaults). We see Buckmaster use state-of-the-art studio magic to turn the Pages' inane song "Joy, Joy, Joy Everyday" into something palatable:



We get a glimpse of true Seventies fashion, including pants on Keitel so tight it's amazing he got any blood flow beneath the waist. And Maurice White, the genius behind EW&F, calls Keitel a "jive turkey."

But what's most fascinating, and powerful, is the devastating indictment of the recording industry. The film depicts it as controlled by the Mob, presided over by accountants and completely uninterested in the actual music except as product. These powers-that-be are entirely confident in their ability to convince the public that they actually want this plastic, soulless tripe. Buckmaster, as the lone man of integrity, is forced to use the same underhanded, immoral tactics (justified throughout with the phrase, "That's the way of the world") in order to rescue himself and The Group from their deal-with-the-devil contracts.

What surprised me the most about the film (aside from those aforementioned pants) was how contemporary its central dilemma remains. Can we really have progressed so little in nearly a quarter-century? Compare the Pages to, say, the Jonas Brothers and it's plain that's still the way of the world. Men in suits (or women with talk shows) can still convince vast hordes that this, not that, is what they really want.

For some persective, consider this passage from 1951, found in The Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler:

"...the public is getting increasingly tired of the kind of film which explores the technical resources of the medium with relentless cleverness, but contains nothing which could be acted out on a bare stage and still make its effect."

Apparently the issues of art vs. commerce, surface vs. substance, have always been with us. In a way that's reassuring: it means that when the latest manifestations of these devils (Michael Bay, Miley Cyrus and "American Idol") rear their pointed little heads, we can at least take some comfort in the thought that their reigns of mediocrity will be mercifully short. Sadly, hydra-like, four more will likely spring up to take their place.

The Music from Hell's Waiting Room

Last night the family went out for post-dinner ice cream at the local Culver's. We sat outside, since in the shade it was quite pleasant. However, we could still hear the background music, probably more clearly than the lucky folks packed inside. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, in order, the music from Hell's Waiting Room*:

Ever Changing Times by Michael McDonald & Aretha Franklin



You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone**



Morning Train by Sheena Easton



When You Love Someone by Bryan Adams



The Gambler by Kenny Rogers



Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins



I felt the most sympathy for the young man in the Motorhead t-shirt; he might actually need therapy. True metalheads can only survive a few seconds of exposure to The Gambler. Luckily it's July, and ice cream melts quickly, so I think he left before the song reached toxic levels. I hope we did, too.

* As designated by my brilliant wife, the Mater Familias.

** Unless you lived through it, you can't imagine how ubiquitous and omnipresent this song was. In 1977 it dominated the radio. Your parents loved it, your Sunday School teacher approved of it, Ms. Boone (daughter of white-bread born-again rocker Pat) performed it on each of the many TV variety shows, and it was just plain inescapable. Not even Meco's discofied version of the Star Wars theme could overpower it. It spent ten weeks at number one on the Billboard chart. Fortunately Ms. Boone also won the Best New Artist Grammy Award, often the kiss of career death (i.e., Starland Vocal Band, Christopher Cross, A Taste of Honey, Jody Watley, Mark Cohn, Paula Cole, and most recently, Amy Winehouse), and thus disappeared from the national scene.