islanded in a stream of stars

My cousin Jason got married this Friday! Congrats to him and his new wife, Jenny; may you have the happiest of times together. And happy 77th birthday to my paternal grandmother as of yesterday!

I left Thursday afternoon to go up to NYC for the wedding and got back at around 8:30 to my dorm this evening. There were tons of relatives from both sides of the couple's family plus a lot of co-workers and whatnot. The ceremony was held at this psuedo-Victorian manor on Long Island where the festivities ended up being held inside as it was pouring ropes that afternoon. The bride cried a lot, and the maid of honor gave the sappiest speech I have heard in years. The flower girls didn't show up until the ceremony ended (their father got hopelessly lost in the rain), the best man dropped the rings down the aisle, and the groom kept bumping his head against the floral arrangement hung on the top of the wedding arch, but I still think it's the most entertaining wedding I've ever attended. Then again, I've only been to two others before, and the first one was when I was three so I remember nothing. I was amazed by how many of my stiff-faced relatives flung themselves about on the dance floor with the aid of a few drinks. My cousin even took off his bride's garter blindfolded in the middle of the dance floor; luckily my grandmother's eyesight isn't so great anymore. And then the best man, who caught the garter afterwards, had to put it on the girl who caught the bride's bouquet with his eyes closed. Nobody ended up starving-there must have been enough for two entire small African nations to consume within a week. I'll confess that I'm not particularly fond of the bride from what I've heard about her, but if she and my cousin are happy together and will continue to be happy together, then who am I to judge?

I met a lot of people who knew me and my father when we were younger; two of them actually showed my old Christmas card photos to everyone else at my grandmother's birthday dinner yesterday. I nearly crawled underneath the table but thankfully I was slightly photogenic then. My female cousins are all much prettier than me; what happened to our gene pool to give me the short end of the stick here? To be very shallow/defensive, the married ones have unattractive (which doesn't mean ugly) husbands, although they seem to be nice if dull human beings. We have tons and tons of photos that I'll post up later if anyone remembers to send them to me.

While I was up in New York, I also visited two universities. As chance may be, I always end up liking the places that I expect to detest and don't really like the places that I thought I'd want to attend. The only exception to this finding is that college where cutemew will be attending in the fall. Hmmm.

Apparently my semi-existent accent is "transatlantic," the accent that was super popular for women appearing in spy films and TV shows in the 60's so that they sounded exotic while still being understandable. Personally I think like I sound like a pretentious anglophile who can't drown out the American tones in her voice, but whatever.

If I'm not making any sense and am rambling on excessively, I'd like to blame ingesting a lot of caffeine on a relatively empty stomach as the culprit. My nightly boba drinking may be the cause of my semi-insomnia/late night hyperactivity.



I swear I've been suffering film music commentary withdrawl; I have to stand up on my tiny little soapbox every once in awhile and pretend that I know what I'm talking about. On the bus I listened to some mediocre contemporary smooth jazz muzak which stimulated this really strange musical craving for something more substantial and Romantic programmatic to practice analyzing.

My dear Scottish DJ friend sent me nine full CDs of lots of rare, lovely John Barry soundtrack and non-soundtrack material just as I was leaving on Thursday. You can check out his radio station site here. His accent is rather charming and quite a treat to hear; you don't really hear many well-modulated voices on the radio anymore. That has been my bright spot for the weekend; there really are few things in life that bring as much joy to me as rare, never before heard film music cues that I've been trying to locate for months. If Ellie were here, she'd shake her head and mutter about my needing to get a life.

And he dedicated one of the tracks on the second show to me! And the two tracks after that just happen to be two of my all-time favorite works of Barry's, a fact that I've mentioned rather frequently. It's probably coincidence, but I'd like to think that he might keep in mind my preferences when creating his broadcast playlist. To stop being such an egomaniac, I must also mention that he dedicated the aforementioned track (an intriguing spliced version of the beginning of "The Palace Fight" from Octopussy with the beginning of "Final Confrontation" from the Living Daylights) to two other film score geek friends of mine. There were probably a bunch of Scots a few weeks ago wondering who the hell the Cat, royalmile, and me were and why we'd get mentioned in the broadcast. But how special I feel! I'm starting to be embarassed by my self-centered.

You wouldn't believe how shocking it is for me to even contemplate about how and why anyone would go out of his time to ship out 9 CDs worth of rare material plus provide CD jackets. He has a John Barry: The Collection 2 (a parody on the 4-CD Nic Raine compilation with the City of Prague Philharmonic) jacket printed out; even the font is the same as the official compilation! Plus, he threw in a DVD copy of the Barry-scored Alice in Wonderland with Peter Sellers! No one has ever done anything like this for me before; it's like someone tailored a radio show just for my taste without asking for anything in return. Even as an optimist I'm always amazed when people go out of their way to make my day; I don't deserve this sort of generosity. There's nothing that I've done to . I'm trying to find a way to thank this man for his generosity; would anyone happen to know about the extended Paul Simon records?

For the record before I sound skanky and manipulative, I'll have you know that this guy is happily married and a grandfather. We literally talk about nothing but film music.

Anyway, back to real music commentary.

Being as picky and pretentious as I am, I would like to point out a few vaguely bothersome bits I've heard so far. It's great for acquainting the casual listener and general music aficionado with Barry's work. My biggest issue at the moment is the melodic disjunctions when presenting pieces from many different genres; I prefer to have more of a thematic or at least a some resemblance of a tonal bridge between pieces. It's just so jarring to hear the bombastic, quick-paced brass of Goldfinger right before the elegaic, contemplative title theme for Dances With Wolves. The suite from Goldfinger is from Nic Raine's Bond Back in Action, a musical misdemeanor for a Barry purist; a splicing of "Alpine Drive" and "Dawn Raid at Fort Knox" rather than having awkward cuts of the two pieces in the rearranged suite would've been much truer to the Barry style and less rushed in tempo.

I'll admit, though, that having "Three in Bed" from the Knack and How to Get It follow the heavy-handed Frances suite worked well to lift the mood, especially as an unidentified track from Somewhere in Time played right after "Three in Bed." Alas, the Frances suite track was not linked to any particular album. It sounds like a suite from another Nic Raine Barry compilation rather than from the original soundtrack, but I know little about this score so I'll have to ask.

Thankfully this Scottish DJ did not use any of the rearranged/rereleased cuts of "Romance for Guitar and Orchestra" and used the original with the London Symphony Orchestra from Deadfall. There are several non-OST (Original Soundtrack) cuts of some other pieces like the title theme from Out of Africa. Some of them I am very sure are Barry rearrangements on his later compilation albums like Moviola; I find them intriguing to compare them to the originals on the OSTs.

He focuses heavily on the non-soundtrack album Eternal Echoes; here I must object somewhat to his known personal bias towards this album. I've only heard two pieces from the Beyondness of Things, two pieces which are more contemplative and subtle in thematic shifts, i.e. more Eternal Echoes in tone. Perhaps later I'll find one of the more joyfully stately tracks found earlier in the album in a later broadcast, but I doubt that will happen.

The vocal song for JB's the Deep bears an eerie resemblance to the disco end titles for Moonraker, although the latter is sung by Barry's ex-girlfriend and singer-collaborator from the 60's and 70's, Shirley Bassey. But Moonraker sounds so much classier as Barry moved towards a more majestic/ethereal sound that would later categorize some of his most famous scores in the late 70's and 80's.

I need to listen more before I can say anything else and start cutting up the one long track for each show. I need good audio editing software! Unlike my film score geek friends, I don't exactly have any professional recording/editing/mixing software and equipment at home. Urgh.

Note to self: look up Kevin Spacey/Bobby Darin cut of "Charade" vocal on Beyond the Sea soundtrack...