Music

fave amy winehouse song? god shes good

Musicguy here. No hate; Just got intensely busy with other projects/obligations. I also didn't want to crowd out other voices and have it become "the Musicguy board."

I was halfway writing through a piece about the intro piece for the movie "You: Hunter from the Future" from Oliver Onions. I might still finish it up and release it. Here's the YouTube link for that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH-XxApyjGg

And then I began to also develop another piece about Oliver Onion's "Black Inferno" and then I got into a debate as to whether to combine the two into a single piece but it would've been too long and then I became to busy with other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNq8gEyN-Rk

Anyway, glad that the board is continuing to prosper but I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to do regular posts for awhile.

Until then, keep grooving to the tunes!

music guy hath death...

MUSICGUY IS GONE WHAT DO I DO

threech.top

Hey guys, Chip here. Like actually, lol. I wanted to make a short post about this day in musical history- specifically, the now not so lost song, everyone knows that. It's name is actually Ulterior Motives, and it was in a movie called Angels of Passion, that was made in 1986. The song was likely made by Christopher Saint Booth, as he has made songs for pornos before.

All I have to say is that this is fucking insane; please help me god because I am laughing my ass off.

Music, and the internet, has changed today. For better, or for worse.

Signing off, Chip.

psycho soldier from no more heroes 2
shit bangs hard

Everyone likes a good "What If...?" scenario. Who doesn't?

There's an old joke in Hollywood that goes, "How do you know that you've landed a part in a movie? When you walk the red carpet at the premiere of that movie." It just means that, until the movie premieres in front of an actual audience, things can always change. Hollywood is infinitely adaptable. When you're dealing with psychopathic studio executives, devious directors and pathologic producers... Well, anything is possible. And the loudest voice at any meeting inside of any studio is always money.

Actors and actresses are always being shuffled around even after a movie begins shooting. The actor Eric Stolz was Marty McFly in the movie "Back to the Future" until he was replaced weeks into shooting by Michael J. Fox. Timothy Dalton was chosen as the iconic British spy James Bond only because Pierce Brosnan couldn't get out of his contract for the television show "Remington Steele" (although Dalton's tenure as 007 was decidedly short and, admittedly, Brosnan would go on to play the role anyway). Tom Selleck was cast as Indiana Jones but couldn't get out of his contract for the television show "Magnum P.I.," a development for which Harrison Ford will always be eternally grateful. James Remar was forced out of the movie "Aliens" because of a drug arrest and replaced by Michael Biehn. And the list can go on and on and on...

The phenomenon isn't reserved for just the cast, though; Movie directors have been replaced mid-stream during a movie's production as well. Richard Stanley was practically chased off the set as the director of the infamously plagued "Island of Dr. Moreau" (returning clandestinely as an extra) and replaced by John Frankenheimer. The actor Clint Eastwood forced director Philip Kaufman off of the movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales." And how many times has a Pixar movie began with one director only to wind up with another part way through? Well... How many fingers do you have on both hands? Close enough.

It's one thing to replace an actor or a director. With actors, the concern is just making sure that the costumes fit. Actor Vernon Wells was a last-minute replacement in the movie "Commando" and the reason why some of his garb appears to be more snug than usual is because the person that he was replacing had a decidedly smaller frame. With directors, you have to make sure that the footage shot meets the vision. On "Sinbad of the Seven Seas," director Enzo Castellari was let go after submitting hours of mostly unusable footage. Luigi Cozzi was brought in to salvage the mess; It's the reason why the movie went from having a conventional narrative and adopted the 'bedtime story' motif (the same type of device used in the movie "A Princess Bride")... Because it was the only way to piece together the fragments of the movie that still resembled... Well, a movie.

Yet, beyond actors and directors, perhaps the hardest role to replace during a production is the music composer. Composing music is hard. Scoring a screenplay has been often compared with flying in complete darkness, then having to land the plane quite suddenly in an entirely different location from where you were originally told. And that's if you were fortunate enough to be hired right from the start. James Cameron, while directing he movie "Aliens," didn't understand the need to finalize scenes so that they could be worked on by other crew in order to add special effects and music. James Horner, the composer hired to score his movie "Aliens," became so frustrated that he nearly left the production. The resulting music was such a jumbled and rushed mess that Horner was forced to use unused music from a prior movie that he scored, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," in order to complete his assignment.

Perhaps the largest "What If...?" in movie production are that of rejected movie scores. These are scores that were fully written and performed but, for one reason or another, were either rejected by the director, the studio or some other person with considerable influence. It's no small feat to turn down an entire score because movie scores aren't exactly cheap nor are they quick to produce. Artists also aren't keen to working very hard only for their product to wind up in a vault somewhere, gathering dust. The artist known as "Sting" was notoriously perturbed when over a year's worth of his hard work to create original songs for the Disney animated film "Kingdom of the Sun" was scrapped because the project went into turn-around to eventually become "The Emperor's Last Groove."

Arguably, the most famous rejected movie score of all was when director Stanley Kubrick, a notorious perfectionist, fell in love with the temporary music that he had been using while making the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and used that music instead of the one composed by Alex North. North only learned of that his score had been rejected when he watched the premiere of the movie.

Yet rejected movie scores abound and perhaps one of the more prominent ones is Gabriel Yared's "Troy." Having worked on the film score for over a year, his score was tossed when test audiences found that the score was too "old-fashioned." Given that the movie is about the famous battle between the Trojans and the Greeks (yes, the one with the wooden horse), the reasons for rejecting the score as 'old-fashioned' is more than a bit ironic. James Horner wrote the replacement score in a matter of weeks and, with all due respect, it shows.

Thankfully, Yared's score holds up quite well when listened to by a more intelligent audience. Given that the film wasn't exactly a financial hit (even with it's 'new-fashioned' score from Horner), one must wonder if Yared didn't have a smug sense of satisfaction for having not been a passenger on that sinking ship. The rejection hasn't seemed to hurt Yared's career and Horner's... Well, his was cut short because of a small plane crash in 2015.

Movies and their scores are said to be made for one another and only for one another. Would "Chariots of Fire" have succeeded if Vangelis hadn't scored the film? Would "Blade Runner" be the cult classic if Vangelis' score was rejected for someone else's? Would "Troy" have brought about a renaissance of old-fashioned "sword and sandal" epics if it had been attached to Yared's score instead of his replacement's?

Everyone likes a good "What If...?" scenario. Who doesn't?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF8IjBSQmQ-Ahu2RTDk83Yo4CF1QAJWsr

love it tho

this board is literally just some dude's blog now

Everyone likes a good gimmick. Who doesn't?

While AI can impress all of us by rendering endless pictures of "Barbershop quartet of singing mailboxes," it is neither powerful nor creative enough to conjure up such a concept all on its own. Those days may be fleeting but, as of this writing, when it comes to realizing truly original concepts, humanity still has the upper hand.

Therefore, it's always nice to see people think "outside of the box," if you will. Sometimes, in the world of music, that means some pretty bizarre formats in how they deliver it. Flexi-discs, for example, are a form of vinyl records that were printed on very flexible pieces of plastic that were not much thicker than wrapping paper. The concept was straight-forward enough: The more that a product weighs, the more expensive it is to transport and, likely, the more expensive it is to create.

One application of the format was for people to record their voice (a few moments of it, at any rate) and press that onto a post card that could be shipped by postal mail and played on a record player. The concept didn't pan out (most gimmicks don't; that's why they're called "gimmicks") but it did demonstrate the versatility of human creativity despite a lack of resources that we enjoy in our modern era.

Another odd concept is to simply do away with a playable storage medium, such as a record, and merely provide the entire mechanism to play your musical composition. The concept isn't as bizarre as you might think: Certain birthday cards, upon opening them, play a small musical tune. The cards are expensive and the music is the typical bleeps and bloops that one expects from the chiptune era but the overall effect is impressive, especially when they were first introduced to the paying public.

Tristan Perich is an artist who decided to take that concept one step further and issue his "album" as an electronic device sold just as a typical compact disc would normally be. Everything that one needed to listen to the music was there, from storage medium to speaker to battery. Even the source code and schematic were available, as well. Obviously, such an effort couldn't be mass-produced unless one had the resources of, say, Taylor Swift. While second-guessing Ms. Swift's business strategy for her music is always a fool's errand, the smart money is that she's probably not going to be breaking into the chiptune genre anytime soon.

The music on Tristan Perich's album "1-bit symphony" is definitely an acquired taste; No one expects such a venture to receive heaps of praise from the likes of Rolling Stone magazine. But one also doesn't have to. Despite the limitations of the device (and it is decidedly limited), it still delivers something akin to music.

Would I want to listen to the entire recording in one sitting? No. But everyone loves a good gimmick. Who doesn't?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apDFVsBDCYE

holy fuck that's long

There is a saying that the soundtrack to 1982's "Conan the Barbarian" movie was the unofficial soundtrack to the tabletop role-playing game, "Dungeons & Dragons."

They weren't wrong.

Tabletop RPGs have received a renaissance in popularity as of late. However, it may never obtain the degree of mainstream popularity that it once held in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. To give just one example, during that time period, you could buy Dungeons & Dragons merchandise at your local Sears store (and that's saying something, considering that Sears was hardly any teenager's first choice for such products).

Did "Conan the Barbarian" benefit more from the ppularity of the "Dungeons & Dragons" game or did "Dungeons & Dragons" benefit more from the big-budget movie production of "Conan the Barbarian"? It will always be difficult to say definitively. Each camp has their own passionate proponents and, like any discussion that is bereft of hard factual data, the debate is destined to devolve into the usual "my favorite deity is better than your favorite deity" subjectivity. Cooler heads, when they are forced to visit the topic, just chalk it up as a draw.

"Conan the Barbarian" was not a slam-dunk in terms of money-making potential, though. While the pre-production of any major motion picture may be described charitably as "chaotic" (I'll refrain from deciding whether it is chaotic good, neutral or evil), Conan's path from elevator pitch to first day of shooting wasn't smooth, even by that era's standards. At one point, the movie was destined to be a post-apocalyptic film. Such is always the winding nature of Hollywood productions.

The eventual star of the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a relatively unknown personality unless you followed the then-obscure world of male bodybuilding. His female co-star, Sandahl Bergmann, was supposedly cast because she was one of the few women available who was tall enough, large enough and athletic enough to not look tiny in comparison to the male lead.

Viewed from the era of Marvel superhero blockbusters, it is understandable that the movie is perceived as slow and plodding. There is no mid-credits scene and no "easter eggs" for eagle-eyed viewers to catch. It earns its R-rating through intensive violence and some female nudity. There isn't a CGI effect shot in sight. For anyone interested in understanding the state of CGI effects in Hollywood, one can only turn to the movie "TRON" that debuted in the same year.

Yet it is also undeniably a good picture and one of the few films in the "sword and sandal" genre of that period with reasonably competent production values. From its inspired casting and impressive sets to its soundtrack, "Conan the Barbarian" delivered on the goods. Indeed, you could fill more than a few seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes with "sword and sandal" films that feel as though they were made solely to fulfill an obscure tax write-off scheme.

Basil Poledouris pulled his weight on this production, with tracks so memorable that they don't just emphasize the scene that they play in but overshadow them. From the bombastic main title to Conan eternally pushing the Wheel of Woe to the raid on the decadent orgy to the final climactic battle and more, the tracks and the scenes fit themselves together like gloves into hands.

It's a pity that the sequel, "Conan the Destroyer," went for a more child-friendlier approach that, predictably, didn't pay off. A possible third film got derailed by Schwarzenegger's detour into politics. A reboot failed to arouse fans or bring new ones into the fold. And the unofficial 'side-quel' known as "Red Sonja" may be much maligned but it's actually more enjoyable a yarn than the official sequel; A low bar to hop over, admittedly, but you can't fault it for accomplishing that goal.

In the end, great soundtracks elevate good movies into great movies and great soundtracks elevate great movies into instant classics. Regardless of what you may think of the movie, the soundtrack is still worthy of listening to even if you have no desire to see the movie itself. At forty-two years and counting as of this writing of this article, that's an endorsement that any soundtrack wouldn't mind obtaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoAXA_Rm25A

Paul Verhoeven, please come back. I miss you.

Paul Verhoeven was the director of the movie "Starship Troopers," based upon the book of the same name by Robert Heinlein.

This song, kind of ironically, is a cover of David Bowie's original "I have not been to Oxford Town." Although it's not from composer Basil Poledouris (but it is sung by his daughter, Zoe), it still fits the movie well.

And what a movie. And what a soundtrack. And what a cover.

The movie works on so many levels that, nearly 30 years later, it still resonates with audiences. The best movies always do, even if, at the time, the movie was a dud. It has since become a cult classic (much like how John Carpenter's "The Thing" was a dud only to become a much beloved cult classic), having spawned sequels of all sorts and its visual style is still used for the franchise.

It's strange how the movie has evolved over the years for me. On its surface, the movie parodies fascism and propaganda. Deeper, the movie mimics the old "cowboys & indians" black-&-white westerns of yesteryear. There's more than just a hint of 'Red Badge of Courage' & 'All Quiet on the Western Front'-styled anti-war messaging.

Yet, finally, it has come to represent the public's naivete over the Internet itself. 1997 was still very much a formative year in the Internet. A year of webrings and multiple young, scrappy search engines. AOL, Prodigy & other "mega-BBS" companies still existed. Everyone thought that the Internet would "solve everything." Did the teenagers and young adults of the 90s really do it and create the perfect tech that would propel human society into Utopia? There was no shame in thinking that way at the time.

And, of course, it all fell apart, much like the bugs shatter humanity's vision that they were the dominant species in the universe. As the great philosopher Michael Gerard Tyson once said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

This cover is the perfect 1990s equivalent of "The Morning After," the 'love song' from the movie "The Poseidon Adventure" (the original); It's that song that's played before the spit hits the fan. Everything is safe. Everything is wonderful... And then everything falls apart. This is the last time everyone will be young and happy and healthy and all together.

Everyone has that moment in their life if they live long enough. Everyone has the moment that, when looking back, everything was quiet and simple and normal UNTIL THAT MOMENT HAPPENS, be it someone dies or everyone graduates and moves away or someone has a major health issue.

That's what this song represents. The pinnacle of Eden. The final evening inside of Utopia.

And the brutal nature of this song and "The Morning After" is that no one is aware of it. Everyone is ignorant that a storm is coming and they will never, ever, be the same after that.

And, in a way, that's what the movie "Starship Troopers" and this song represents for me. The shining promise of the Internet that will *solve everything*. You're still young and healthy. Your friends still live in the same time zone as you do. No one has health issues. Your whole life is still ahead of you. Everyone your age is still on a level playing field.

Maybe Paul Verhoeven no longer has his proverbial "fast ball." Maybe, like so many others, he has simply gotten too old or too tired or too cynical to make the biting social commentary that permeates his classics such as "Robocop," "Total Recall" or (obviously) "Starship Troopers." It happened to John Hughes. It happened to Stanley Kubrick.

I may not have been to paradise, as the song says, but I was privileged to live through the era of Prime Paul Verhoeven. Thank you, Mr. Verhoeven and, if you ever feel the urge to come back to the Starship Trooper universe, I would definitely love to know more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSy7KsXi6I

no new musicguy posts... what now?

I've always had a soft spot for puppetry. Puppetry really was the first version of CGI. Sure, there's also stop motion (and I like stop motion animation as well) but I've always admired puppeteers and their craft in general.

"Mysterious Mose" is a song from the 1930 but, here, it's been given the music video treatment. In this rendition, it has a definite Halloween vibe with an indie production and aesthetic. This video is the type of thing you'd see back when cable access channels (think of them as "Youtube before Youtube was Youtube") still existed.

The lighting, puppetry, animation and even stop motion animation work really well together. It's creepy but not too creepy and even though you see the support wires and rods for the puppets, you can also tell that a lot of hard work went into the production.

This song also reminds me of the early Internet. I have no idea if this particular link is the same one that I used well over a decade ago but it doesn't matter. If anything, this video looks fairly crisp compared to what I remembered it as.

Listening to this song again and watching the video makes me feel old. It also makes me feel sad. The Internet, quite frankly, has moved on and something odd like this is old hat for an Internet that has an endless capacity to weird people out in all sorts of imaginative ways.

But it is a catchy tune and it has nice production values for what it offers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2rjEUpmzow

>>3675
this one was a really fun read... thanks music guy!

I honestly miss the early Internet.

And while the term "early Internet" means different things to different people, my definition is that time when finding things on the Internet required effort. A time of webrings (ask your parents about them) and multiple search engines. A time when you went to the W3C website every day to see what new exciting HTML technologies that they were developing. CSS? What's that?

The early Internet was weird and wonderful. All that you needed to do in order to impress a prospective employer was say, "I know Microsoft Office, HTML, Javascript & Java (with a little bit of Perl thrown in on the side)." Hey, did I mention my expertise in VBA?

It has been ages since I've listened to "Bathtime in Clerkenwell," a song that is best described as rhythmic babbling. It was odd, it was funny and the music was catchy. The animated music video loosely follows a series of birds as they organize into an army to overthrow... A guy in an apartment in London (I think they call it a "flat" over there)?

I know that today's Internet is "better" than the Internet of yesteryear. It's faster, brighter, better resolution, you can find things easier... I understand all of that.

Yet there was a charm about the early Internet that today's Internet just doesn't have. The Internet itself was a strange and wonderful puzzle, the ultimate ARG. This song reminds me of it (BTW - This is a better resolution version than the one I used to watch).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETyOwymflXc

Sometimes, the premise of a movie is far better than its execution. To each their own and sincere people may disagree as to which movie delivers on its promises and which do not.

The premise of the movie "Limitless" is that a man comes into the possession of what society now dubs a "brain drug" which gives the man seemingly superhuman abilities to remember every thought that he's ever had and prioritize his life correctly as opposed to spending most of his time on the internet doing stupid things like writing opinion pieces about movie sou.. nd.. trac...

Anyway, although I ultimately didn't like the movie, that's not to say that the movie wasn't without its moments.

"Howlin' for You" is the song playing when the brain drug first kicks for the main character and you see him get his act together. The song is a great choice for the scene; It has a nice driving rhythm that accentuates the "get it done" spirit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCZI2C-tWzM

brandon won.