quinn

Johnny Cool: Original Motion Picture Score

[ review of: Johnny Cool: Original Motion Picture Score by Billy May (CD Album) ]

Anyone familiar with the Smucker's fruit preserves commercial? Where the slogan says, "With a name like 'Smucker's, it's GOT to be good"? Well, with a back photo on the CD showing Sammy Davis, Jr., Elizabeth Montgomery and some guy who may or may not be Johnny Carson shooting craps (ask your mother), it's GOT to be…uh, something. There's another slogan that advises to not judge a book by looking a gift horse in the - nevermind. I think you know what I mean.

There is an interesting and largely unsung sub-genre in jazz: West Coast big band. It has its roots in Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool", a ground-breaking experiment with a nine-piece ensemble that was anything but cool, and even more interesting that it was conceived in New York City in 1949 but flourished in Los Angeles throughout the 50's and early 60's. LA musicians were a breed apart - the top studio cats could read gnat-notes and were adaptable to a variety of settings: TV commercials in the morning, record dates in the afternoon and club gigs at night. "Johnny Cool" is a showcase for Billy May, an arranger known for some top-flight work with Frank Sinatra ("Come Fly With Me"), and the soundtrack is a very cool send-up of both the 50's film noir and the spy films of the early 60's. This is "Mission Impossible" music (check in with your daddy-o) with an attention to detail. Dense, colorful arrangements, the band cooks on the uptempo tracks with some aneurysm-inducing trumpet high notes, and Sammy even sings! If this is retro-lounge music, bring it on. I can dig it.
Posted by quinn at 00:00, 25 Feb 2000

Live in Concert/Gustav Mahler Festival

[ review of: Live in Concert/Gustav Mahler Festival by Uri Caine Ensemble (CD Album) ]

What a big, sprawling audacious mess-terpiece this is - it's probably the main reason I like this so much. Caine, an American pianist and composer with extensive classical and jazz training, lashes into a massive project: a reinterpretation and re-orchestration of the music of Gustav Mahler that is both loving and sardonic. We can see this from the initial moments of this two CD set - the liner notes SAY that the first piece is Mahler's "Symphony No. 5 in C# minor, Funeral March", which in its usual setting employs a stately martial rhythm. What we HEAR are nervous staccato prepared-piano gestures, violin harmonics, quick, quirky references to Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" and Wagner's "Die Walküre", snatches of Cecil Taylor-like phrasing, subtle musique-concrète bird calls, until a trumpet (well, at least it's a C#) calls us into…what? It's not a funeral march - it's more like an invitation into a seedy Berlin cabaret. The only thing that seems to be missing is a vampiric, hollow-cheeked maitre' d cooing "Willkommen" as we are led to our seats. It's the damndest thing.

Irony abounds on this project. Not the least that Mahler, in his day, was more regarded as a conductor than a composer, while Caine, whose 1992 debut "Sphere Music" contained many original compositions, has recently focussed his energies on the reinvention of other composers: Mahler, Wagner and early 20th century pop songwriters. There is also a profound sense of displacement here. When Caine tackles "I Often Think They Have Merely Gone Out!" from "Songs of the Death of Children", he makes it a positively jaunty hard-bop blowing session. Oh, by the way, did I mention that this is a jazz album? Well, it is - some very solid playing, and a beautiful balance of head, hands and heart. The other salient point is that it's a live date, recorded in Italy in '98 at the Gustav Mahler Festival. And ironically (here we go again) while Mahler was criticized for borrowing folk melodies as motifs for his compositions, I'm sure that this concert caused a fair share of walk-outs for the audacity of turning Mahler's music into - uh, folk melodies. But, hey - that's entertaaaaaaainment. Gypsy music, turn-tabling, klezmer scat-singing, postmodern jazz ... is this a joke? Yes. No. Yes. It's serious comedy in the attitude of Frank Zappa's classic "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" or early Henry Cow. It's funny peculiar AND funny ha-ha. Here's the headline: "Jazzer Bites Off More Than He Can Chew, Dead Composer Spins In Grave While Administering Heimlich Maneuver". All this and beautiful packaging, too.
Posted by quinn at 00:00, 21 Feb 2000

I Want to Live!: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

[ review of: I Want to Live!: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Johnny Mandel (CD Album) ]

First, let's get the movie out of the way. A US release in 1958, it's about a girl (Susan Hayward), the product of a broken home, becomes a card shark, a prostitute, a liar and (gasp) a drug addict. Rykodisc has been generous to enhance the CD with video clips of this movie, and it received many Oscar nominations. I have to admit that after viewing the snippets, I was full of awe ... because the film is truly AWE-ful. Over-emoting runs rampant a go-go. Give me the understated kitten-with-a-whip sultriness of Ann-Margaret any day.

However, the music, which shamefully did not receive an Oscar nomination that year, is tremendous. The arrangements are hip, and the interesting aspect of this work is that Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, responsible for many of the arrangements on Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool". Mulligan is now the featured player in the soundtrack as well as the film, and Johnny Mandel had a challenge on his hands: how to write for Mulligan?

Mandel needs to be congratulated for sticking to his guns and composing and arranging real jazz, swinging and straight-ahead, by using a small big band. I must confess that I initially was not knocked out, but let me give you an analogy. When I first examined architect Frank Lloyd Wright's works, I was unimpressed until it was pointed out that his work is so pervasive that has almost become a cliché. This is another example of not seeing the forest for trees. These musical pieces can be heard in themes such as "Mission Impossible", to "Hawaii Five O" and "Pink Panther" - clever uses of instrumental voicing, exotic percussion, and some great blowing (natch), which undermines the impression that the West Coast school of jazz was too cool. It ain't "Sketches of Spain", but what else is? This is "Sketches of Van Nuys and Lankersheim Blvd. With A Really Nasty Hangover and It's Three in the Afternoon and It's Too Freaking Bright Out and The Bus Is Late".

Sooooo ... the enhanced trailer with Hayward as a bad girl gone worse is a good laff riot, but this swinging bop soundtrack is the real deal.
Posted by quinn at 00:00, 20 Feb 2000