Shostakovich’s waltz from the previous post has been given some cinematic glory, especially from the visionary Stanley Kubrick. Over a decade before, the visionary David Lynch had TOTO keyboardist David Paich compose the score for his epic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (a project that Lynch had tremendous enthusiasm for, despite his later disowning it). As Paich remembered, Lynch had Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony in mind for the kind of music he wanted for his film. As this track demonstrates, Paich and his bandmates ran with that influence and achieved a beautiful result:
Great Performances
Composed of Three Parts
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion thematically flows right along to the best Medieval prog rock song ever, and perhaps the only Medieval prog rock song ever. This is “Triptych” by Roxy Music, and it’s truly extraordinary that something like this ever came out of popular music:
St. Matthew Piano
And yesterday’s Bach through the filter of jazz leads to Bach through a solo piano lens. This is the introduction to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, a few days late, I regret to say. (But, nonetheless, Happy Easter!) Mr. Harry Volker does the honors, very nicely:
Not That Dizzy
So here’s an easy transition, from one Can song to another. But this live version of “Dizzy Dizzy” from a German TV performance doesn’t exactly sound like “Dizzy Dizzy” and it’s been argued that it’s actually “Animal Waves.” I suspect that it’s some strange hybrid that this frequently improvising band worked out at some point, and it ended up being recorded here.
Almost an Instrumental
Yesterday’s bird looked an emperor, but today’s is officially a lieutenant.
I hope that the elderly lady’s witch hat did not cause any moral panics on satanism and the effect of rock music on the elderly.
Observin’ Bird
Continuing from the previous Bryan Ferry video is this far more creative one. Mr. Ferry was still going through his beard phase here, while the video is loaded with futurist imagery that also looks a little fascist.
But the real reason to watch is the star of the video, an unnamed eagle that sits on a perch, observing all around it with withering scorn. The makers of the video must have realized what kind of effect it would have, because it eventually gets projected onto the U.S.S. Enterprise viewscreen behind the singer, making its imperious dominance of everything it surveys even greater.
Seriously, this eagle should have had its own TV show.
Vilmos Zsigmond, 1930-2016
There is a tiny bit I can add to the recent eulogies for the great Vilmos Zsigmond, legendary cinematographer who escaped to the West from his native, communist-controlled Hungary with friend László Kovács. Before their Hollywood careers took off, the pair toiled in low-budget films, and even together as they did on Ray Dennis Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964). During this era, Zsigmond had the distinction of shooting Arch Hall and James Landis’ The Sadist (1963), one of the most effective no-budget movies made by anyone, anywhere and the one movie that wipes out the perception that Hall and his son Arch Hall Jr. were not that talented. (Junior’s Beavis hairstyle, pretty ridiculous in Wild Guitar and Eegah, even makes sense in this movie.)
Zsigmond was still picking up some lower budget jobs by the mid-70s when he worked on the Phil Tucker production Death Riders (1976), a documentary about stunt motorcyclists produced under the working title Star Spangled Bummer. In 2007, I found an address for Mr. Zsigmond and mailed him a letter, hoping that he might have something to say on the topic of Phil Tucker and this film. To my delight, he replied with a note written on my letter, giving me his home phone number and the word “Unlisted!” added in, giving me a fun moment of being let in on something. So I called him a couple of times and got an answering machine, to which I left a message at least once.
Eventually, my phone rang one evening and I was in amazement to see his name on my caller ID. From there, it was a pleasant little chat of about five minutes in which he remembered the Death Riders production, and related that he was greatly impressed by Phil Tucker’s generosity and overall easygoing personality. (I got the sense it went less well with the film’s director Jim Wilson.) Tucker had even, as he remembered, bothered to call him up and let him know how it all went, as Zsigmond worked on it for a couple weeks and departed. He was a little blindsided when I let him know that Tucker had passed on, which he had not known. The conversation ending cordially, I got the sense he was in the midst of getting to somewhere, sounds of outdoors being audible throughout the call. (Or maybe he was just out for an evening stroll, and I shouldn’t assume that the life of a DP is non-stop itinerancy.)
So as I can attest by his kind attention to someone he didn’t know from anyone, Mr. Zsigmond was a classy guy through and through. But this is obvious from his life: risking capture with smuggled film while escaping communist Hungary, and then a career of always being a consummate professional on the job, eventually making it to the highest pinnacle of his profession. Rest in peace.
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