{"id":6234,"date":"2013-03-08T02:23:52","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T07:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6234"},"modified":"2013-06-12T04:42:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T08:42:59","slug":"cd-stagecoach-1966","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6234","title":{"rendered":"CD: Stagecoach (1966)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>S<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records<\/a> \/ Released: LLLCD-1215<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 20 tracks \/ (53:28)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 2000 copies.<\/p>\n

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Composer: Jerry Goldsmith<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Julie Kirgo\u2019s CD liner notes regarding Fox\u2019 decision to undertake a remake of John Ford\u2019s classic 1939 western are much kinder to the over-ambitious filmic endeavor, but it\u2019s not unreasonable to say Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s music evokes the emotional and dramatic spectrum director Gordon Douglas and his awkwardly chosen cast tried to capture in the dud that was ultimately produced.<\/p>\n

The years have been much kinder to Goldsmith\u2019s music, and with only slightly contemporary elements within the score\u2019s instrumental DNA (the occasional electric bass line, the rhythm of the semi-comedic mouth harp twang), it\u2019s a solid western score that draws only sparingly from the genre\u2019s musicological lexicon.<\/p>\n

As Kirgo observes, Goldsmith avoided scoring the action scenes, and the music\u2019s focus is on bridge material for the characters, punctuating the aftermath of an event, or presaging what may lie ahead for the group travelling in an overly bouncy stagecoach. It\u2019s an unusually mellow score by the genre\u2019s standards, and contains few big cues, but every once in a while Goldsmith brings up the orchestra for a forceful, sudden statement. It\u2019s a unique approach when compared to the Big Sound typical of his peers (The Big Country <\/strong>and Giant<\/strong> scream Epic), and when the emphasis of the era was to match big screen ratios with big screen stereophonic sound.<\/p>\n

Fans of the composer will appreciate the scaled-down style and emphasis on the consequences of events and actions, and the little dramatic dark spots which showed how Goldsmith was so distinct from his peers and contemporaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAftermath\u201d is an ideal example where a boisterous opening switches to grimness when the group find slaughtered soldiers, and Goldsmith plays with low reverberating tones (a great blend of wooden and thick-stringed timbres), and he creates contrast with a Native American recorder and undulating timpani. The cue\u2019s also goosed with a little reverb and the high-pitched warble of a keyboard, but neither component takes away from the period setting; it\u2019s just another ideal example of the way Goldsmith applied modern instruments to create the right dramatic effect rather than striving to achieve period accuracy. His finesses in fusing so much musical matter doesn\u2019t date the score, and his approach provides a bridge so contemporary audiences can identify with characters without arcane, musical clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

La-La Land\u2019s CD (sporting gorgeous art direction derived from the film\u2019s original campaign materials) features a \u2018B-side\u2019 made up of three bonus cues from The Loner<\/strong>, a short-short<\/em> lived TV series about a wandering character who tackles political and social conflicts, as conceived by The Twilight Zone<\/strong>\u2019s Rod Serling.<\/p>\n

The approach this time was to inject a more contemporary sound into the score via electric and bass guitars, as was typical of the composer\u2019s sound in the mid- to late-sixties (witness the Flint films). Counter-punctual rhythms are prominent in the title theme (not to mention a ticking motif that was oft-used in suspense scores like The Satan Bug<\/strong>), but again the uniqueness of his scoring style lies in the details: Goldsmith may have been a rhythmic whiz \u2013 one of several chief reasons he excelled in the action genre \u2013 but he was extremely adept in creating dramatic contrasts, such as trumpet and flutes rising above somber guitar, under which strings and brass grinding uneasily below in a dirge.<\/p>\n

The represented scores are a short but engaging set of suites which boil over with Americana (and perhaps a wistful trumpet solo somewhat reminiscent of Elmer Bernstein\u2019s own genre efforts), and some of the instrumentation \u2013 especially the use of marimba and heavy percussion hits \u2013 are reminiscent of his mini-masterwork 100 Rifles<\/a> <\/strong>[M<\/a>]<\/strong> <\/strong>(1969).<\/p>\n

LLL\u2019s CD features newly remastered cues from Stagecoach<\/strong>, taken from fresh 35mm sources, with additional instrumental layers not present in the older CD release from Film Score Monthly (which happened to be their first CD production, back in 1998).<\/p>\n

The new mix features finer details and greater aural scope, plus some bonus source cues (3) and alternate takes (2). The Loner<\/strong> is derived from the same mono sources used by FSM and sounds fine, if not a little bit muted (perhaps due to the original recording having a bit too much hiss and dryness in the high frequencies). The last Loner <\/strong>cue is the final mix of the main titles, featuring the original narration.<\/p>\n

Julie Kirgo\u2019s liner notes are more broad than Lukas Kendall\u2019s FSM track-by-track notes, but the latter also acknowledged the prior Mainstream LP which was the official soundtrack album in 1966 \u2013 a terrible re-recording which, when reissued on CD in 1991, was paired with themes from Goldsmith\u2019s The Trouble with Angels<\/strong> (1966).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2013 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Select Merchants:<\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" —\u00a0BSX<\/a> —\u00a0Intrada<\/a> —\u00a0SAE<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0S<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ S . Rating: Very Good Label:\u00a0La-La Land Records \/ Released: LLLCD-1215 Tracks & Album Length: 20 tracks \/ (53:28) . Special Notes: 20-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 2000 copies. . Composer: Jerry Goldsmith . . Review: Julie Kirgo\u2019s CD liner notes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[545,834],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1Cy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6234"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6742,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6234\/revisions\/6742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}