Coulson's Musical Taste

[Mandragora]

At least, THAT's a better way to handle college... signing up for classes. In OUR case here, you are very much obliged!

oh, on one note, I think that music these days have become more diverse than it was before, though I cannot help but notice what I call the 'clonies'. But as to the genre, it's not even easy to say one is rock nor alternative... is alternative anti-mainstream, or just the sound is mainly mainstream but then it gets appreciated by a number of people?

Just troubled, I think Tori Amos sounds mainstream lately, having heard her in almost all stations, but she remains to be the alternative diva for me. She's also one of those few who could guve me a nervous breakdown.

And yes, Sampaguita, the NPA issue is not for around here

[Sampaguita]

Tori Amos as pretty mainstream? I don't get that impression. But that's because her song is only being played on one radio station here in Los Angeles (STAR 98.7-- the one with Ryan Seacrest). Okay, perhaps on a couple of other's, her older song "Silent All These Years" gets played occasionally... but you barely hear her.

I REALLY like her new song "Sorta Fairy Tale." Maybe that's because it's a VERY Los Angeles song. I'd love to sit down and deconstruct the lyrics according to the Sunshine vs. Noir paradigm one day. But I also like it because, musically, it's a faint echo of "1000 Oceans." I tend to like her songs with the repetitive rhythms and the more traditional harmonies.

You know, sometimes Vonda Sheppard (the Ally McBeal singer) reminds me of her... on her album at least. Not so much in her soundtrack and singles work. I do have to say that I really liked "Baby Don't You Break My Heart Slow."

[Mandragora]

My sister has ALL the Ally McBeal OST... yeah, I love that song too, and her rendition of Spiral Starecase's "For Once in My Life" is quite touching... though of course, the original is better I pretty much like the first OST better than the second one, though she has this song with Robert Downey Jr that could send me to a fit of, er, giggles. I think it's called "Chances Are".

I have to say that all of Tori's albums, "Boys for Pele" will always be my favorite (I LOVE ALL OF THEM HOWEVER), that's the album where she sounds so raw and primordial and rustic. And she gets played around here, though not that often, in pop stations who would sometimes insert 'alternative cuts'. To this definition they include Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, Garbage, John Mayer... and then after some commercials you hear N'Sync. Quite a mix though, but I don't listen to that station

Heh, I myself can't stop talking about music either. It's just one of those things...

[Sampaguita]

I wonder what kind of music Henry Winter would listen to... I don't think that his musical taste would be as diverse as Mr. Coulson's. What would be playing on the radio in that BMW? I don't think he'd have such horrible musical taste as the main character of "American Psycho." Why do I want to say that Henry's favorite song would be Sting and the Police's "Every Breath You Take"? Sorry about going on yet ANOTHER Henry digression... but you all get Ioan to talk about.

I watched CoS again, and paid more attention to the score. For a while, I'd gotten a vague impression that John Williams is recycling all his old compositions. Now, after watching CoS for the umpteen-billionth time, I'm sure of it. Have you noticed how much "Harry's Theme" sounds like "Han and Leia's Theme"? Or have you noticed that every time everybody's all happy, it sorta sounds like the Ewok music from Star Wars? And all the suspenseful music sounds the same... Voldemort's theme sounds a bit like The Emperor's theme too. I should crash a guest lecture that Williams gives at UCLA and ask him about that...

Oh and does anyone else think that CC looks a bit like a conductor when he's shooting spells at Aragog?

[jencoulson]

He does! I just thought of that yesterday! I was visiting my friend's school, and the band conductor looked exactly like CC! It was uncanny... Yes, I can totally imagine him as a conductor.

[redwood11287]

Hey 5 words.....Different Strokes for Different Folks ......my grandma always says that!lol
Over and in.

redwood11287

[MsPoet]

Well, there ARE similar elements in all of John Williams' work, and yet they all seem unique to me. He seems to me to have an uncanny ability to conform his compositions to the movie(s). If they all seem connected, it makes sense.........most if not all of paint/drawing artists have similar themes and styles...you can tell Monet across the board, Van Gogh, Seurat, Escher, etc etc etc.

Donna

[freelancer]

redwood11287: your grandmother is a very wise and very funny person.

as for the tori amos thing, i think scarlet's walk is genius. well...maybe not genius. what is genius? let's just say it's really good. i listened to from the choirgirl hotel today and i have to say i'm not that impressed. less electronic manipulations? i dunno. i suppose i like tori amos' work "rare" or nice 'n' raw - heck, maybe a little "medium rare." [i'm loving 'carbon'. absolutely wonderful work. mixed meter?! gotta love mixed meter.]

the question remains: what am i supposed to do with the stickers?! [just kidding]

'alternative.' psssh! what is 'alternative' alternative to?
lump music lump

[Sampaguita]

Someone recently e-mailed me this article written as a collaboration between Josh Kun and Christopher Cowell. I believe it appeared a couple of weeks ago in some London publication. I thought it could be pertinent to the discussion of music we're fostering.

London calling

BY THE TIME he recorded "Sweet Jamaica" in 1952, Trinidadian calypso star Lord Kitchener had been in London for three years, just long enough to know that he wanted out. "I regret the day I leave sweet Jamaica," he sang about the country where he had lived for six months "If I had wings like an airplane, I would fly to that blessed country again." Like the down-and-out calypso hero of Nat King Cole's "Calypso Blues" (who wants to go back to Trinidad because of how bad the food is where he is and how much it costs), Kitchener was ready to surrender the immigrant dream. He worried about dying of starvation, complained about the winter, and railed against unemployment and government food rations.

When he first took a ship to London in 1948, Kitchener – who was named after an English military hero – was brimming with hope and optimism. His arrival put a face on the first big wave of British Caribbean immigration: Kitchener on the docks, fresh from Kingston, singing "London Is the Place for Me" for newsreel cameras. "I've been traveling to places years ago," he serenaded, as black West Indians carrying suitcases walked into London's future, "but this is the place I want to know." The song was his giddy tribute to a city he had never lived in before (he beams about how "sociable," "pretty," and "comfortable" it is), a city he would eventually leave in 1962 to return to Trinidad when his disillusionment became too much to bear.

These two musical poles of Kitchener's London stay bookend London Is the Place for Me: Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950-1956 (Honest Jon's Records), a new compilation that tells the story of West Indians in Britain through the songs of displaced calypsonians. What falls between them are songs by Kitchener colleagues including Lord Beginner, Mighty Terror, and the Lion – songs released both in England and back home in Trinidad – who all may have lived in London but never fully became Londoners.

rest of article to follow...

[Sampaguita]

London Calling cont.

Many of the songs on London Is the Place for Me are stories not, like the title track, of landing and staying but diaspora stories of being stuck, of wanting to go, of nostalgia for places and homelands that suddenly seem worlds away. Lord Beginner's "Jamaica Hurricane" plays like a news bulletin about a disaster back home, and Kitchener's "Birth of Ghana" – on which he's backed by musicians from Guyana, Jamaica, Panama, and Barbados – celebrates Ghanaian independence as if it meant the creation of a new destination for him, a place where, after leaving London, his generation of migratory Trinidadians might settle.

The compilation's most revealing songs are those that do glimpse Trinidadians striking cultural and racial deals with their new home – negotiating their Caribbeanness with a British crown intent on excluding them from the Anglo whiteness of Union Jack national pride. Young Tiger may have been one of the thousands of Londoners watching and cheering the coronation of the queen – he was "looking rapturously," he sings on "I Was There (at the Coronation)" – but actual racial integration into British culture was still enough of an issue that Beginner and Kitchener both sang about it. Take the former's "Mix Up Matrimony," a manifesto against racial segregation ("any color is a color, any race is a race, life is short so they mean to embrace") and an affirmation that West Indians are Britons too ("It doesn't take no glass to see how it come to pass, colored Britons are rising fast").

Though London Is the Place for Me only technically covers six years in the musical history of black Britain, its view of a racially divided nation uneasy about its dark immigrants is one that is still at the forefront of British cultural politics. While the British calypsonians had the independent Melodisc and Parlophone labels, their contemporary counterparts – the West Indians, Asians, and Arabs of post-Thatcherite Britain – have labels such as Nation Records that were founded to give voice and distribution to the international breakbeat fusions of second- and third-generation immigrant Brit noisemakers.

Select Cuts from Nation (Select Cuts) looks back on Nation's 14-year history with artists who replace the jazzy elegance and staid social commentary of their Trinidadian predecessors with militant postcolonial anger (and add bhangra, industrial, jungle, and hip-hop to the mix). The sample from an anti-immigrant British politician that begins Urban South's hip-hop diatribe "Brain Damage" – we hear him advocating the repatriation of black Britons to save the state from the terrors of a multiracial society – is what Nation artists like Asian Dub Foundation, Transglobal Foundation, and Fun Da Mental have been making music to combat.

In that way Select Cuts is an inadvertent second-generation sequel to the fresh-off-the-boat ambivalence (and cool confidence) of London Is the Place for Me. Instead of songs that never leave a homeland too far behind or never stop imagining the next stop on the diaspora tour, now we get songs for an immediate British home, songs determined to make London the place whether London likes it or not.

[Angelamyte]

MsPoet said:

Well, there ARE similar elements in all of John Williams' work, and yet they all seem unique to me

i will have to disagree...the soundtrack for HPCOS sounded very similiar to the soundtrack for Home Alone..i mean, the phoneix's song sounded almost exactly like the music they play at the end of the movie when the family gets together..so yeah ;D

[MsPoet]

I watched Home Alone on video years ago...ONCE. ughhhh

That Phoenix song---"Fawkes' Theme"---I love it.

Donna

[Mandragora]

Hm, Kun and Cowell? INTERESTING

Reminds me of this Menudo song decades ago, "I'm Going Back to the Philippines"... by the way, those who do not know, Menudo was the VERY FIRST boyband I had encountered in the 80s (Puerto Rican?), and Ricky Martin was a member! I believe his nickname was Little Kiki. Menudo was a very big hit here at that time... and yes, their outfit was very 80s, complete with that turban and Miami Vice pants. No, I don't remember them wearing espadrilles ;D

Sam, am not too familiar with this artist, is he reggae? Am thinking if I were to make music in the London scene, am gonna stand onstage with an acoustic guitar wearing one of those Muslim-inspired clothes that are very beautiful and can be easily integrated with contemporary clothes, and sing about the dawning of the feigned innocence of the next generation mankind, the diversity of beliefs in the backdrop of one globe, and lost identities in the (post)modern society.

I must say, I like the TTT soundtrack best. Saw it the second time last night, and might see it again anytime next week... Speaking of OSTs, I love "I am Sam" and "Magnolia"... Aimee Mann just rocks.

[lizifer]

i've never really been a fan of soundtracks...i think i only own 3; shooting fish, that thing you do and the lion king. and i never listen to the instrumental tracks on the lion king cd! i prefer songs with lyrics!

i have my own copy of ttt so thtas saved me a lot of money in cinema tickets!

[cheesy_badgers]

I have both the HP soundtracks, I must say I listened to TPS soundtrack a lot more than the CoS one, mainly cos it reminded me so much of the film and I could picture all the scenes, whereas for CoS, I didn't think the music was as obvious as in TPS. But both soundtracks are good, my favourites from TPS are: 'Hedwig's Theme', 'Leaving Hogwarts', 'The Quidditch Match', 'The Face of Voldemort', 'Harry's Wonderous World' and my faves from the CoS soundtrack are 'Fawkes the Phoenix', 'Gilderoy Lockhart', 'The Dueling Club', 'Meeting Tom Riddle' and 'The Polyjuice Potion'. And of course there is a strong resemblence between the music from HP and other films such as Star Wars and Jurassic Park seen as John Williams wrote and composed the music for all the films! I think it's amazing how he can write such emotional music that fits in so well with the film!