{"id":7830,"date":"2010-04-02T13:12:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/?p=715"},"modified":"2010-04-02T13:12:04","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T17:12:04","slug":"shirley-walkers-flashes-of-brilliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7830","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Walker’s Flashes of Brilliance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shirley

Shirley Walker<\/p><\/div>\n

Just uploaded is a review of The Flash<\/strong>, La-La land\u2019s latest limited edition release (3000 copies) that gathers over 2.5 hours of music from the 1990-1991 TV series onto 2 CDs.<\/p>\n

The theme was written by Danny Elfman during his \u2018comic book\u2019 period, when studios courted the hot composer to score their own latest comic book films or TV series after the massive success of Batman<\/strong> in 1989.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s amusing is that prior to that meteoric career success, Elfman was initially kept in the background during the publicity campaign. Prince\u2019s songs and the song LP were released prior to the original score LP so that Prince was regarded as the<\/em> musical auteur of the film. Several interminable months later, a score platter emerged on record shelves, and later CD, which featured more music than the vinyl edition (something that was common during the early years of the CD, and affected other early releases such as The Fly<\/strong>, Pirates<\/strong>, and The Big Blue<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Two important things happened because of Elfman\u2019s career boost: he had less and less time to write grand orchestral scores within a short time-frame, and by writing just the theme and delegating scoring chores to one of his orchestrators, Shirley Walker finally emerged into the limelight she deserved.<\/p>\n

Walker was one of the best action writers around, and The Flash<\/strong> \u2013 still an early solo work for the composer of the Batman<\/strong> animated series and the Final Destination <\/strong>franchise \u2013 undoubtedly served as a primo professional calling card.<\/p>\n

The music budget for The Flash <\/strong>was big enough that it allowed for a sizeable orchestra, and Walker mined every instrument to create an expansive sound palette for a show that lasted a year before being axed by CBS.<\/p>\n

My memories were of a rather juvenile series, but then I could never get into the drama because of persistent news alerts that interrupted, pre-empted, or kicked episodes off the air. One reviewer stated the bugger was the Gulf War coverage, but I have no memory of what news was mucking up the show. I just recall being increasingly fed up with a big square that appeared in the lower corner, where news footage feed distracted from the show\u2019s drama.<\/p>\n

(The early nineties were filled with nascent technological abuses: networks had text scrawls at the picture\u2019s bottom, or they superimposed \u2018coming next\u2019 text during the last 10 minutes of a show. The logo watermark was also born around then, so a lot of the distracting crap we see now \u2013 as well as cutting mid-scene for an ad break and splicing a show\u2019s last 2 minutes with the abbreviated End Credits – stemmed from that decade.)<\/p>\n

The Flash <\/strong>died of network neglect, but many fans remember the beauty of the music, so it\u2019s a thrill to not only rediscover a rich sound from nearly 20 years ago, but realize Walker\u2019s brilliance, and what was lost when she died in 2006.<\/p>\n

For a review of La-La Land\u2019s CD set, click HERE<\/a>, and afterwards I\u2019d suggest heading over to the French site UnderScores, where the label\u2019s co-founder, Michael V. Gerhard<\/a>, is interviewed (in English) about how the company has evolved into a major player in the soundtrack market, releasing material from the Paramount vaults, and whether the life of physical media may be dependent on collectors nostalgic for a disc, a booklet, and a shelf to house their library. (I\u2019m actually good with analogue and digital media, but further blather regarding my tastes and habits will be reserved for a later blog.)<\/p>\n

If I can wish for the work of one<\/em> Paramount-heavy composer to make its way to CD, it\u2019s Leith Stevens<\/span>, particularly his classic Paramount sci-fi films War of the Worlds<\/strong> and When Worlds Collide<\/strong>. The masters exist, the scores are brilliant, and be they in mono or stereo, it would certainly allow me to scratch a Holy Grail or two from my own wish list (that incidentally, and if anyone cares, is topped by Carmen Dragon\u2019s Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

– MRH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CD review of La-La Land’s 2-CD set of Shirley Walker’s music from The Flash series (1990-1991) in bouncy-bouncy stereo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-22i","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7830"}],"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=7830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}