{"id":6376,"date":"2013-04-15T15:03:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T19:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6376"},"modified":"2013-04-19T13:17:07","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T17:17:07","slug":"cd-road-house-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6376","title":{"rendered":"CD: Road House (1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>P to R<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Label: Intrada Special Collection\/ Released: January 20, 2013<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 14 tracks \/ (48:19)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 16-page colour booklet with liner notes by Scott Bettencourt \/ Limited Edition.<\/p>\n

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Composer: Michael Kamen<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

The success of Lethal Weapon<\/strong> (1987) and Die Hard<\/strong> (1988) made Michael Kamen almost the literal personal music man of producer Joel Silver, and although the composer did seek out smaller projects that had nothing to do with exploding buildings, encircling assault helicopters, or shirtless studs, he did accept a huge array of action assignments and is responsible for some of the signature sounds of big budget 80s \/ 90s action flicks.<\/p>\n

Road House<\/strong> is a strange hybrid, because although produced by Silver, it\u2019s a modest film with just a handful of big screen, money elements (including the villain\u2019s palatial lair, and personal helicopter). Essentially a bonehead barroom brawl movie centered around a zen bouncer, Kamen\u2019s music evokes a bit of southern blues with heavy use of acoustic and electric guitar; the harmonics of quaint Americana; and edgy rock elements for the pro-active scenes where the road house\u2019s bar contents are repeatedly destroyed by punks, drunkards, whores, and sleazy henchmen.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of the late, great Jeff Healey in the bar scenes ensured the artist would make some appearance within the score, and Intrada\u2019s CD represents most of the cues plus unused \/ alternates. As producer Douglass Fake writes in the hefty liner notes, only 2 cues near the end are missing \u2013 a not unfamiliar case where elements from a not-that-old movie not longer exist.<\/p>\n

The score\u2019s got a fairly gradual mood shift which allows Kamen to develop and reintegrate score material between source music and Healey\u2019s screen performances, and most of the character theme & variations are performed on keyboards. The style is intimate, low-key, and more reminiscent of quiet cues within 1990\u2019s The Krays<\/strong> (a score screaming<\/em> for a dialogue and sound effects-free release) where Kamen also added synth strings for some tonal warmth. In the CD’s later cues, such as the sad \u201cThis is My Town,\u201d Kamen uses reversed and processed strings emulations to convey the disjointed state of the film\u2019s decent characters as they fight against a greedy slimeball.<\/p>\n

Road House<\/strong> finally shifts into meatier dramatic terrain in \u201cOn the Rooftop,\u201d and like Krays<\/strong>, Kamen layers on grungy droning, didgeridoo emulations, plus skittering staccato keyboard patterns reminiscent of Die Hard<\/strong> (1988).<\/p>\n

Healey\u2019s main appearance is in the percussive \u201cLoading Dock Fight,\u201d where the guitarist\u2019s solo winds up & down as per the progress of the extended screen fight. It\u2019s a fun bluesy cue that also shows off the clarity of Intrada\u2019s mastering from the surviving 24-track elements, as well as the nuances of Kamen\u2019s orchestrations and Healey\u2019s inimitable brilliance. (One kind of wishes he had either collaborated on the score, or there might have been a few unreleased outtakes, much in the way Jerry Garcia\u2019s gifts revealed a quartet of wholly distinct solos in the expanded release of Zabriskie Point<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

“Loading Dock Fight” also demonstrates that instead of writing a droning, looped cue with the same motif playing in the background, an action scene can get extra subtext from a small instrumental grouping, and from a gifted soloist basically doing his thing \u2013 telling a story, commenting on the dueling egos, and adding a little humour to prevent any musical staleness.<\/p>\n

As Fake writes in his notes, use of an orchestra may have been brought in to punch up the finale, hence the score\u2019s somewhat abrupt shift from combo rock & blues instruments to full orchestra. After a brief guitar solo in \u201cEmmet\u2019s House Explodes,\u201d the score kind of swerves into Lethal Weapon <\/strong>territory, but it\u2019s short-lived, as (presumably) the missing cues would\u2019ve provided some extra continuity between Kamen additional scaled-down material.<\/p>\n

On CD, the score does sort of wind down without a meaty conclusion. The rewritten and orchestra-muscled \u201cThe Final Confrontation (Film Version)\u201d helps, but it feels like a hybrid of Die Hard<\/strong> and Lethal Weapon<\/strong>, with some slightly new thematic material.<\/p>\n

Not peak Kamen, but an example that even with moronic material, and a producer demanding a branded sound, the composer could deliver a well-crafted score that transcended & poked a little fun at an already clich\u00e9d genre.<\/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> — iTunes<\/a> —\u00a0SAE<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0P to R<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ P to R . Rating: Very Good Label: Intrada Special Collection\/ Released: January 20, 2013 Tracks & Album Length: 14 tracks \/ (48:19) . Special Notes: 16-page colour booklet with liner notes by Scott Bettencourt \/ Limited Edition. . Composer: Michael Kamen . . Review: The success of Lethal Weapon […]<\/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":[1962,686,1961,1963],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1EQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6376"}],"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=6376"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6431,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6376\/revisions\/6431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}