Sadly, there are no Cyndi Lauper widgets to be found here, although her syncopated breath and synth-drums carried many scenes of The Goonies (1985). Nor will David Grusin’s film score be featured, other then his false notation for One-Eyed Willie’s bone organ. No, this here has little to do with traditional music, for the most […]
Archive of posts tagged bad movies
Mystic’s Chord
Jim Henson’s 1982 puppet epic The Dark Crystal features a race of gentle beings known as Mystics. Central to the lives of the Mystics are a series of musical rituals, the dissonance of which, seriously belies the gentle nature of these fraggle-faced hunchbacks. Behold the Mystic’s Chord! What a chord! It’s like three chords in […]
The Billy Dee Wilhelm Scream
The “Wilhelm Scream” is a popular Hollywood stock sound. Originally recorded for Warner Bros. Westerns, the scream achieved cult status with its appearance in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies and continues to be used extensively today. Here is the Wilhelm 4―the most classic of the Wilhelms. There is a lesser known sister satellite […]
Adult Sing-Alongs in Contemporary Film
Dead, dead; dead. The American sing-along is dead. Once upon a time, there was a baby Steinway in every household, and American families sang together in perfect nuclear harmony. Pa was an operatic baritone, and little Timmy had chosen to forgo puberty to carry on the castrati legacy. The sing-along was the musical hearth of […]
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
There’s a kind of swelling of guitars, like violins joyously weeping. Some of them, are possibly reversed. Who can tell? They cyclone around the protagonist’s sorrow, wrapping up the episode’s final moment, when the TV composer twists it all around and drops a heavy Twin Peaks chord on the Stringboard, if only to launch the […]
Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good
The high B and C on a pianoforte drive the spirits away. Every house should have a baby Steinway, just in case, for bustin’s sake. Oh, but don’t you go anywhere poltergeists! You can rap upon the walls, bewitch the acoustics and electronics. Add some much-needed white noise. Watch Murray hit this little semitone upside […]
