My blog is now, inexplicably, ten years old. It's taken many forms over the years, and sometimes it's busy and sometimes it's not. A few years ago I managed to produce a grand total of thirteen posts, while last year I had over five hundred. I suspect I'm getting ready to head into a reasonably quiet stretch, especially now that my witless Proust reading/commentary is at an end (and Proust lovers everywhere feel a tremendous sense of relief). I'm thinking of a couple different potential themes for the next "My Year With ________" but I don't have the time or energy for it now. As everyone knows, but no one believes, my last student international trip will be the fall of 2019, so I'll certainly have more time for big blog projects then, but doubtless I'll embark on something before then. This is all by way of saying that I appreciate you guys showing up every week to promote songs and write commentaries - and also to the folks who show up every week to read; you're the ones keeping the lights on here at On the Way Home.
We've now reached Week 23 of our second year, and it's another theme week. Alice proposed that we suggest songs used in movies or television that are so perfect that any other song would have been made the experience worse (I'm paraphrasing, wildly). Last year we had a week dedicated to best use of a piece of music in a movie or television, but I think this is a more subtle and profound theme.
A quick housekeeping note: in a month the esteemed Cyndi Brandenburg and I are, inshallah, going to be back in Jordan for a week, so I'll be sending around one of my annoying requests for early song submissions soon.
In quite possibly the most brutal scene in Breaking Bad,
10 inmates are brutally murdered in prison. Walt paid a gang of Nazis to
murder them because he is afraid they will testify against.
Often
in film music is used to evoke a time or place and it’s hard to find a better
example of this than in one of my favorite all time movies Oh, Brother Where
Art Thou? The main musical character, Man of Constant Sorrow appears on
the soundtrack four times. It’s performed twice by The Soggy Bottom Boys (Union
Station, sung by Dan Tyminski from Rutland, VT) and twice by John Hartford. The
Hartford versions are used as background and keep the melody behind the story
while the SBB versions appear in the pivotal scenes. The song works so well
because it describes the dirt-poor existence of our desperate heroes. Sometimes
the song is jubilant and sometimes forelorn in the capable hands of music
director T. Bone Burnett and directors Joel and Ethen Coen.
Side
note: Even though I'm markedly more like the Smalls character in this movie, I
always wanted to be Benny Rodriguez as a kid. I set up backyard baseball games
every weekend and proceeded to dress exactly like him through most of high
school (and if I'm honest, I still do every so often...) Sigh #2.
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, I Love You Baby
in The Deer Hunter
Truthfully, I almost went with how Woody Allen used George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in Manhattan. It beautifully bookends the film. In the end, however, I went with I Love You Baby from The Deer Hunter, which may be the greatest American film of all time (and no one loves Casablanca more than me). I'm not even a Frankie Valli fan, but Michael Cimino's use of the song was perfect. The film is so alternately grim and nightmarish (but also so true), and the song provides a lovely quiet moment. It's also a celebration of friendship and the bond of the main actors, which sets up the rest of the film. On a somewhat related note, for several years students have been pestering me to run a film series here at Champlain, with their suggested titles being either "Scudder's Essentials" or "Scudder's 'I Don't Care What You Want to Watch' Film Series." If I ever give in to their pleas I would probably start with The Deer Hunter.
We've now reached Week 23 of our second year, and it's another theme week. Alice proposed that we suggest songs used in movies or television that are so perfect that any other song would have been made the experience worse (I'm paraphrasing, wildly). Last year we had a week dedicated to best use of a piece of music in a movie or television, but I think this is a more subtle and profound theme.
A quick housekeeping note: in a month the esteemed Cyndi Brandenburg and I are, inshallah, going to be back in Jordan for a week, so I'll be sending around one of my annoying requests for early song submissions soon.
Dave Wallace
Aimee Mann - Wise Up
There were a lot of different songs
that I could have chosen for this theme week, but I wound up choosing something
that is literally part of a movie scene. Paul Thomas Anderson was
inspired to write the screenplay for Magnolia after hearing a batch
of unreleased songs by Aimee Mann. Many of these songs provide the
soundtrack for the movie. All of the different storylines in the movie
wind up intersecting with a scene that shifts between different characters
singing along to Mann's Wise Up. It's the perfect culmination
of what all of the characters have been going through to that
point.
Kathy Seiler
Richard Strauss – Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
This week’s theme was difficult. As I’ve recently been
discussing with my excellent sisters Alice and Cyndi, I suck at movies. I
mostly watch British TV shows, primarily mysteries and dramas. I confess to not
only being deficient in the medium of film and TV, but even when I do watch, I
often don’t notice so much about the music unless it’s really striking. You
will perhaps not be surprised at my selection this week – Strauss’ Also
sprach Zarathustra from the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey film.
I watched the film with my father on VHS, quite a bit after it was originally
released (since I wasn’t yet born when it premiered) and I loved it – both the
movie and the music. I remember being very surprised when he told me that the
opening music was from a classical piece of music and that he had the album.
The music used in the opening of the movie is the beginning of
the classical piece, and less than 2 minutes long, but I have included a link
to the whole piece. The bold but quiet beginning, which represents creation/sunrise
in both the Nietzsche novel upon which it is based and in 2001,
then quickly rising to the drumbeat, and continuing to crescendo…I literally
get chills EVERY TIME I hear it. The music, the meaning, and the movie couldn’t
be any more perfect for one another.
Phillip Seiler
Public Enemy
in Do
The Right Thing
If
only I had known. I feel badly writing about this song again after having so
recently done it but given the theme, I couldn't let it pass. Public Enemy's
Fight the Power is the perfect song in this perfect scene from Do The Right Thing (which was inexplicably not nominated for an Oscar.) In
the heat of summer, in the heat of the corner pizzeria, in the heat of
injustice and oppression and anger, it all can explode so quickly. And behind
it all is Chuck D rapping his creed "Elvis was a hero to most but he never
meant shit to me." Undeniable truth and yet the irony of it all is that
the power that is keeping these people down, all of these people down, is just miles
away supping on filet mignon and champagne leaving the rest to fight over
pictures on a pizzeria wall. But that fight is still real and What so many of
us face daily. The quest for dignity and representation continues almost 30
years later with not nearly enough progress being made. Most of Chuck's heroes
still haven't appeared on a stamp.
Dave Kelley
"Pick Yourself Up" Nat King Cole
Having a beautiful classic performed by Nat King Cole
play over the scene is an odd but inspired choice. Beautiful
juxtaposition. Walt is so evil by this point that he envisions this
carnage as beautiful.
Kevin Andrews
Television,
because of its fleeting week to week existence, doesn’t have the opportunity to
use a piece of music as a character in a story the way movies can. Music is
still very effective on TV though, I think of Scrubs, The Simpsons – which
employed a full orchestra, The Sopranos, or shows like Nashville that wrap
their plot around music. In one of my favorite Scrubs episodes Colin Hey from
Men at Work follows the story ghost-like, singing Overkill solo on acoustic guitar.
Meanwhile, the narrative continues under the song in typical Scrubs fashion.
It’s a very creative narrative technique but it’s not my selection.
Film
with its longer format can turn a song into a character in a story. If I were
to say As Time Goes By or The Entertainer you
would know the film they’re from. If you’re familiar with The English
Beat’s Rotating Heads you would recognize it from the third
act of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Alice Neiley
Well, I suppose the ability to change one's mind is a good
thing, though I only seem to be able to do it without anxiety on this blog,
when I've ABSOLUTELY made a choice about what song to post, then, just like
that...a memory bubbles up from within and...
On
the other hand, what does it say, existentially, that I haven't REALLY changed
my mind at all because A. the new song/scene is equally if not more rooted in
nostalgia than my original choice, and B. I'm going to post both--I can't
choose.
The
original: The Wonder Years: Season 1, Episode 23: How I'm Spending My Summer
Vacation (last scene) in which the Simon&Garfunkel song "Scarborough
Fair" plays. Below is a link to the transcript for that episode (no
judgement, please ;)) -- for the scene I'm talking about (very last), just
scroll all the way down and start reading at EXT. NIGHT COOPERS' FRONT YARD
until the end. Below THAT is the link for the song so you can imagine the whole
shebang accurately.
The
reason I'm convinced there is no other song on earth that would be as powerful
for this scene is two-fold:
1.
I've seen it on Netflix WITHOUT this song, and it's absurd and horrible.
2.
More importantly, the tune is melancholy in the deepest, most gentle of ways,
and, like the future of Winnie and Kevin, and the future of Winnie's family,
and the future of the country and all those boys fighting the Vietnam war at
the time, the tune is full of haunting questions, and wandering, rich imagery.
Also, the 'remember me to one who lives there...' brings in the loss and
distance between Winnie's reality and her childhood. Sigh.
The
second choice: The Sandlot (movie): 4th of July scene, during
which Ray Charles's version of America the Beautiful plays. Below is the actual
scene, including the song!
Though
nostalgia is The Wonder Years' primary feature, my personal nostalgia is more
connected to The Sandlot, and therefore my feelings about the song playing
during the 4th of July scene might be more biased than objectively
definitive. America the Beautiful is an obvious choice for a 4th of
July night baseball game scene, but Ray Charles sings an especially
powerful rendition. It works best for this particular movie
because...well...Ray Charles represents a soulfulness and history, which in
this context fits perfectly with the close friendship of all the sandlot boys.
Also, the sound of his voice, the natural flow of his interpretation harkens
back to that ungraspable "simpler time", in baseball and in
life.
Bob Craigmile
Any Mad Men fans out there? No doubt one of the
greatest shows ever made. It seems more anachronistic than ever now given
the rampant sexism and racism of the sixties, but it gets it right.
Perhaps
one of the best scenes in MM is Don arriving at LAX to help out his
"niece" who is a flower child and hopelessly pregnant.
The clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V06RHDJcbs
shows
Don shaving in the plane bathroom (like the badass he is), and then we see him
going stoicly along a moving walkway, Trilby# in position to meet his young
wife Megan, who picks him up in a Austin Healey 3000* . Megan is wearing
some (now vintage) baby blue dress that makes men swoon. The scene gets a
few seconds of slow motion to emphasize just how completely cool these people
are. Their lives are the best, a bicoastal couple in the 60's, who are
heading for disaster(s). He's got money, and she's got some fame from a
soap opera. The perfect fuel for an explosion. They ARE perfect
looking and both completely lost.
The
music is from Spencer Davis Group, with Steve Winwood singing at the height of
his formidable powers.
I
suspect they built the scene with this song in mind. As Bruce would later
say, "it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive". This song makes
the truth of that clear.
Gary Scudder
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, I Love You Baby
in The Deer Hunter
Truthfully, I almost went with how Woody Allen used George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in Manhattan. It beautifully bookends the film. In the end, however, I went with I Love You Baby from The Deer Hunter, which may be the greatest American film of all time (and no one loves Casablanca more than me). I'm not even a Frankie Valli fan, but Michael Cimino's use of the song was perfect. The film is so alternately grim and nightmarish (but also so true), and the song provides a lovely quiet moment. It's also a celebration of friendship and the bond of the main actors, which sets up the rest of the film. On a somewhat related note, for several years students have been pestering me to run a film series here at Champlain, with their suggested titles being either "Scudder's Essentials" or "Scudder's 'I Don't Care What You Want to Watch' Film Series." If I ever give in to their pleas I would probably start with The Deer Hunter.
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