Saturday Music Club on Monday: some soundtrack music

from Who Fears the Devil? (aka The Legend of Hillbilly John): 
"The Devil" by Hoyt Axton


from the television series Legacy (which used it as opening theme), 
"The Mummer's Dance" by Loreena McKennitt (longer edit/"album cut" with best audio)


"Walk On Boy" (Doc Watson's recording is the soundtrack for the short film starting at 4:17)


The Dillards and Maggie Peterson: "There Is a Time" (from The Andy Griffith Show):


"Chove Chuva" performed by Miriam Makeba, Sivuca, Leopoldo Fleming, Jr. and William Salter...perhaps cheating a bit since this from a concert for Swedish television, but I think I'll forgive myself...


"Unsquare Dance" by the Brubeck Quartet featuring Joe Morello (used as the opening theme to Emma Thompson's series Thompson as well as providing the soundtrack to this number taken from an Australian concert program, The Craven Filter Special):


Charles Mingus in Mingus: Charles Mingus 1968 (a documentary)


please see also:
Sunday's "Forgotten" Soundtracks: 3rd Streamers John Lewis (ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW) and Dave Brubeck (MR. BROADWAY) for crime drama, David Amram's Beat

Sunday's "Forgotten" Soundtracks: 3rd Streamers John Lewis (ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW) and Dave Brubeck (MR. BROADWAY) for crime drama, David Amram's Beat

Jazz scores, or at least jazz-flavored scores, for crime drama were almost inevitable by the latter '50s, and some items, most obviously Mancini's "Peter Gunn Theme" but also (a little later) Duke Ellington's score for Anatomy of a Murder, were major hits. So, after John Lewis had taken charge of what had been the Milt Jackson Quartet, and remade into the Modern Jazz Quartet, losing Kenny Clarke as drummer but gaining the more sympatico Connie Kay by then, and while the MJQ was setting about to beat the world as the proudest carriers of the banner of Third Stream Music (the European classical tradition and jazz being streams one and two, which mingled in the third, suggested Gunther Schuller in a notable essay), Lewis continued to look for challenges...a large group including MJQ members under the direction of Lewis scored a UN-sponsored short film, Exposure; the MJQ scored a European film, No Sun in Venice, and Lewis was called upon to score a 1959 American dramatic film, based on a novel by Ziff-Davis veteran William P. McGivern and starring and produced by Harry Belafonte and directed by Robert Wise, Odds Against Tomorrow. A hell of a film, with the most over the top ending of any crime drama I've seen yet (even in the age of excess in such matters as we live in now), and featuring some compositions that would become chestnuts in the MJQ repertoire...in fact, the MJQ recorded their own interpretation album, issued at various times as Patterns and as Music from Odds Against Tomorrow and currently offered at an exorbitant price by Amazon for a CD-R they will burn for you, when not erasing books from your Kindle or refusing to sell you books by publishers whom they don't like. And, speaking of exorbitant, the prices being hung on copies of of the 1991 cd of the original soundtrack would pay for an excellent stereo component...sorry I missed that item, for at least two reasons. But, here is the contents of the cd:
1. Prelude To Odds Against Tomorrow (01:44)
2. A Cold Wind Is Blowing (01:20)
3. Five Figure People Crossing Paths (01:40)
4. How To Frame Pigeons (01:04)
5. Morning Trip To Melton (03:09)
6. Looking At The Caper (02:01)
7. Johnny Ingram´s Possessions (01:08)
8. The Carousel Incident (01:44)
9. Skating In Central Park (03:29)
10. No Happiness For Slater (03:56)
11. Main Theme Odds Against Tomorrow (03:24)
12. Games (02:17)
13. A Social Call (03:53)
14. The Impractical Man (03:00)
15. Advance On Melton (01:58)
16. Waiting Around The River (03:51)
17. Distractions (01:25)
18. The Caper Failure (01:23)
19. Postlude (00:45)
Total Duration: 00:43:11
Track listing contributed by Dick van Oosten
--and it's notable that the performances by Harry Belafonte are missing, as he interrupts Mae Barnes as she performs "All Men Are Evil" (and she walks off the bandstand accusing Belafonte's character of definitely being evil):


...though the cues that include the MJQ augmented by the likes of guitarist Jim Hall and pianist Bill Evans are definitely collected here. Here's the scene with "A Social Call":


The Patterns album:
A1 Skating In Central Park 6:08
A2 No Happiness For Slater 5:20
A3 A Social Call 4:46
B1 Cue #9 5:05
B2 A Cold Wind Is Blowing 7:31
B3 Odds Against Tomorrow 3:32
--also features a track called "Cue #9," missing from the sountrack album, but audible in this scene (Odds the film is an early credit for Wayne Rogers and Zohra Lampert):


But perhaps the only recording I can find to snag from the MJQ album is this (and the sound quality isn't optimal, but it's worth hearing):


Well, if there was any band specializing in Third Steam music that was doing better financially than the MJQ, it was the Dave Brubeck Quartet, who in 1959 achieved the first "gold" album in jazz history, and whose pianist/leader was engaged to write the musical cues and themes for a 1964 return of Peter Gunn's Craig Stevens to network television, Mr. Broadway. The Brubeck Quartet also recorded an album of their interpretations of the cues, Jazz Impressions of New York (with one track from those sessions, "Toki's Theme," reslotted for the Jazz Impressions of Japan album instead). Here, among a charming array of mostly jazzy themes (including the McBain series 87th Precinct and the Roy Huggins/Anthony Boucher [Kraft] Suspense Theater), is "Mr. Broadway" with an organ dubbed in over Brubeck's piano part, but otherwise featuring the DBQ:

(and here's a quieter version, with a Lengthy coffin nails ad attached.) Here's the DBQ album version, a track that has had much more success than the one-season series. The New York album has one real dud of a recording, "Broadway Romance," but more of that quartet (Paul Desmond on alto sax, Gene Wright on bass, Joe Morello on drums) doing excellent work at the height of their popularity, such as this:


Coming, like Gunther Schuller, from the classical side of the Third Stream ferment, but with strong Beat movement connections (such as his friendship with Jack Kerouac that led to his participation in this film), David Amram would go on to have his greatest commercial success as a film-score composer with 1963's The Manchurian Candidate--but in 1959, was putting together the music for Pull My Daisy:


The second (and perhaps final) of a series of Interim "Forgotten" Soundtracks posts while Rick Robinson reorganizes his collection, causing temporary suspension of his regular Saturday Soundtracks feature.

Monday's "Forgotten" Soundtrack: BANDITS by (more or less) Bandits (1997)

If the Go-Go's were the Beach Boys of post/punk all-women rock bands of the early '80s, and the Bangs/Bangles were the Byrds, it took a while for the Monkees correspondent to come along...but they did, with Katja von Garnier's 1997 film Bandits (not to be confused with the later, somewhat less good Bruce Willis vehicle). A German film, ineptly promoted upon its 1999 US release despite a glowing New York Times review by Lawrence Van Gelder and apparently grossing something like $25,000 nationally here, it was a smash in Europe, where the soundtrack album reportedly became the bestselling in European history, ahead of the Beatles' albums, or anyone else's, in that market (the first-year figure is usually given as 750,000 copies). [Late bulletin...it seems that Bandits in the US suffered from an internal hassle at Stratosphere Entertainment, wherein moneyman Carl Icahn pushed his esthetic partner, the one who was buying films like Bandits, out the door.] The film involves a prison band, in a women's facility rife with casual brutality from some of the staff, while some (with some overlap) pride themselves on their progressive attitudes toward reform. The quartet, with a new drummer whose first days at the prison we follow, are trotted out to a Policeman's Ball as show ponies, but they are harassed beyond tolerance by the guards on the way over, and they manage to steal the police van before they are delivered to the ball. Meanwhile, Luna, the somewhat bullying primary songwriter and guitarist of the band (played by Jasmin Tabatabai, who here is almost a dead ringer for Selma Blair, perhaps a bit more muscular), has submitted demos of their songs to various record companies, and while they are on the lam, one of the companies releases their demo recordings as an album, which does very well with the attendant publicity. Von Garnier and Uwe Wilhelm's script resembles both Thelma and Louise and The Monkees' various productions (and, of course, the Beatles' before them) in being comic with both surreal and somewhat seriously desperate edges, and the songs the band performs, or can be heard having performed at various points in the film, reflect this admirably.

Tabatabai, who would go on to collaborate musically with von Garnier on her next project, HBO's English-language feminist historical drama Iron Jawed Angels, and star in such notable productions as Unveiled, was well established as both musician and actor before coming to Bandits, as were two of the other principals, Katja Riemann (who plays the taciturn, sharp-witted Emma) and Nicolette Krebitz (who plays the essentially sweet-natured, rather insecure Angel). All three women sing on the recordings of songs they in various combinations wrote (along with a number of cover versions), but only Tabatabai plays her instrument (rather as with guitarist Roger McGuinn on the earliest Byrds' releases, or the early Monkees releases) for the soundtrack recording. However, Riemann and Krebitz were competent enough on drums and bass respectively to tour in support of the soundtrack album as Bandits.

The film begins with the audience's introduction to the prison, with a cover of "All Along the Watchtower" (it's notable that aside from a German folksong they cover, all Bandits songs are in English, even if at times definitely English as a second language, or in Tabatabai's case her third at least [she is German-Persian, and was born in Iran], though Tabatabai is probably the most comfortable with idiomatic English lyric-writing). Tabatabai reportedly, in at least one interview, wanted to use a vocal take that was more energized, and I think she's right in this, but it's still a good performance with a nice arrangement of the song:



After their escape, and before much of the rest of the events of the film, the record exec who gets lucky with the demo can be seen enjoying a little nose candy while playing one of Tabatabai's nearly-solo performances, "Another Sad Song"--while the women are enjoying, however briefly, an idyll of freedom out in the German countryside (Jutta Hoffmann, a non-musician actress, plays the band's somewhat older keyboardist and harmonica-player in the film; her character is a bit daffy to the point of slight senile delusion, but generally the most emotionally grounded of the four--even also despite a suicidal tendency):



A somewhat more punkish Tabatabai song (I'm always happy when neo-garage features some harp-playing):



One of the two singles from the soundtrack, the delightfully slinky "Puppet" (Tabatabai again, with solid vocal support from the other two):



And here's the MTV-oriented promotional video they did for this single, from a Korean site. Mixed in among the video clips is apparently some club-date performance by the touring band.

The Thelma and Louise parallels aren't limited to their initially escaping from nasty men; rather cocky yet strangely sympathetic cops pursue them, even as their music starts to become a major sensation, as they attempt to formulate a plan to get out of the country and collect enough wherewithal (including their royalties if possible) to do so, and have various encounters along the way.

Including sexual (Krebitz's primary song on the soundtrack, and one which is quite engaging when seen in context):



And, rather in the same mode Tabatabai's makeout song, and an even more engaging scene, if a bit, um, muddier:



But sex on the run can have consequences, and these women have already been dealing with a fair amount of consequences...this being one of the two most overtly feminist songs in the film, and one employing the most rude language...the next one, which features all three women trading lead vocals in a quasi-rap, also has a bit, with justice, since the bleat, a sort-of coda, "I'm your sister, and your mother!" isn't a joke at all, nor the suppressed moan of rage that follows--the first song's name is "Blinded" but the Germanophone YT poster typoed that:





Somewhat lighter in tone, but similar in spirit, are two covers--Billie Holiday and that German folksong (the latter performed first acapella in an early Cool Hand Luke-reminiscent moment, then, as one fan notes, Riot Grrl style):





More lighthearted yet, giddy even, is the song of their early days of escape, their Beatles tribute too, I suspect, again trading lead vocals:



But the sadness that has dominated their lives is never too far away, whether wistful:



or rather more elegiac (and this is Riemann's primary solo showcase, as *MILD SPOILER FOR THE FILM*

her character mourns the loss of her fetus...she was imprisoned for murdering her paramour, who chose to beat her so badly she miscarried).

*END SPOILER (the song is not a spoiler, but is more meaningful as one learns of the spoiler fact):


And all resolves with the other single from the album, "Catch Me," Bandits' slightly reworked version of British band Saint Etienne's more ethereal and dirge-like "Hobart Paving," only with the faintly suicidal morosity of the original turned into something a bit more life-affirming, if not any less world-weary (and adding at least one more layer of meaning in the use of the phrase "Catch Me")--here's the promo video for the single:



Which takes us through nearly the whole soundtrack album, except for two more versions of "Puppet," the first an essentially acoustic version featuring only Tabatabai singing lead and playing guitar and Krebitz humming in accompaniment, the second the extended chase-sequence remix (including the dialog wherein they decide on their band name)...:





...and the extended mix of "Catch Me", as presented in the film, and not quite a spoiler:


In short, an excellent album and a film which actually improves upon repeat viewings, as one sees how well put-together it is, even in its excesses. The mockery of police and recording industry types is not overdone, and the flaws in the characters of the quartet aren't glossed over. The domestic release of the video, with really inept dvd box art but also the two videos included, is still barely available, but the soundtrack is only in print, unsurprisingly so, in its import editions for we Yanks.

Since I don't own a legit copy of the latter, I'll be picking one up soon. (For regular Saturday Soundtrack items, see Rick Robinson's The Broken Bullhorn, though this meme/feature is on a brief hiatus...George Kelley and Patti Abbott (see sidebar) have joined in a bit as well...

And, just for a fillip, a slightly horizontally-stretched upload of the US trailer (it's Not an "Upbeat Thelma and Louise"...but thanks for playing.)