John Cage Performs “Water Walk”

It’s a 1960 appearance on the television show “I’ve Got a Secret”

Drop

From Cornelius

Oh, and also…

I have nothing more to say

Sväng New Harmonica Quartet

Just found this while trying to find out more about the bass harmonica. Meet the Sväng New Harmonica Quartet of Finland, here offering a bit of that terrific Bulgarian rhythm I blogged about previously. I have trouble turning this off once it gets going. The second half of the video is more of a Ragtime number; also terrific.

As for the bass harmonica, I’d previously only heard it as part of the odd accompaniment in part of the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer” (lai lai lai – thwack – lai lai lai lai lai… etc.). I finally got around to trying to figure out what on earth that instrument is!

Vintage Musical Theater Footage

Blue Gobo has an addictive collection of footage from original Broadway productions dating at least as far back as Rogers and Hart’s Jumbo (1935). Most of the footage that interests me is of scenes excerpted on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 50′s and 60′s.

“The Nice Things I Will Not Miss”

In researching the last post I came across something that has me howling. A couple of Dutch guys made this loopy music video using a Burt Bacharach song I’d never heard before (from a movie I’ve never heard of before). The song isn’t much to blog about, but video is hilarious.

Fool Killer

Here’s a little-known song by Burt Bacharach that I like a lot. “Fool Killer” follows and elusive, moody chord progression and is pretty sophisticated for a 60′s pop song. The instrumentation displays Bacharach’s usual cleverness and restraint. Vibes and little guitar tremolos combine with the odd chord progression to match the mysterious quality of the lyrics. As always with Bacharach, pay attention to the violins, which (as always with Bacharach) come in for the second verse.

This song was recorded by Gene Pitney for a movie in 1965, but some sort of business mix-up between Burt’s and Gene’s people resulted in the end of the singer’s working relationship with Bacharach and the song was not used for the film.

Here’s the song, accompanied by a weird montage of Gene Pitney album covers. (It’s all I could find. Oh, well.)

Let’s Start at the End

So I just connected a dusty old hard drive to my shiny new Mac, and found some things I ought to share here.

For starters, here’s my favorite cue from a film score I did a few years ago. This is the very end of Shakespeare’s Merchant. I can’t give you a whole synopsis of The Merchant of Venice here, but for this cue it helps to know that in our version, Antonio is in love with Bassanio. Bassanio has just pledged fidelity to his wife Portia, and that sucks for Antionio. In the second half of the cue, we see Shylock, having been rendered penniless and yarmulke-less due to a court-ordered punishment for his crediting practices. I love the way this cue came together for a lot of reasons.

I will sheepishly mention that this score is an electronic rendering of what is/was hoped to be recorded properly. Also, due to the rather severe letterboxing, I recommend the “full screen” option, which is the square icon to the right of the timeline.

By the way, the this score is available from CD Baby, iTunes and Amazon.