2025 August 11 • Monday

Is it possible that Ennio Morrione's music for Per Un Pugno Di Dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) has never been featured here as a Soundtrack of the Week? As Tuco would say, we fix that right away. It's #869.

With its acoustic and electric guitar, literal bells and whistles, and extremely active bonding with the action on screen, this was a truly revolutionary score.

I have to imagine that the crystalline electric guitar sound heard here did as much to move sales of the instrument as popular rock bands did.

Like many Morricone scores, this one exploits the potential of a single theme. But what a theme! The main title has arpeggiated acoustic guitar backing up a whistled melody that soars up and down like a bird riding air currents. Then piccolo comes swirling in, percussion that starts extremely sparsely and builds very gradually. Then a male chorus and one of the all-time great electric guitar sounds for one of the all-time great electric guitar lines, perhaps not as well known as the James Bond riff but certainly its equal in quality.

Some of the rhythmic ideas are moved to piano for "Quasi Morto", with staccato playing that anticipates some of Jerry Goldsmith's work down the road, particularly for the Rambo movies.

"Musica Sospesa" uses long tones from flute and organ and short, sharp notes from guitar and percussion to create some uneasy feelings. After this comes a very heavy and shadowy "Square Dance" cue that doesn't really sound fun or easygoing at all.

Some very weight and dramatic music introduces "Ramon", the villain of the piece. It sounds funereal and the mood is not at all lightened in the next cue, more long, heavy, shadowy tones for "Consuelo Baxter".

The main theme then gets another run-through for "Doppi Giochi", followed by "Per Un Pugno Di Dollar (#1)", the movie's secondary theme, an ancestor of "The Ecstasy of Gold", still a few years away. This is classic "walking to the final battle" music.

Snare with some subtle electric guitar or bass guitar kick off "Scambio Di Prigioneri", soon joined by trumpet and strings and female chorus for another tense track.

An abbreviated version of the main theme, which swerves into some unexpected harmonic territory follows with "Cavalcata" and then gets reprised with a much busier and lighter feel in "L'Inseguimento".

Morricone could cover a lot of ground and this is displayed vividly in the almost ten minute-long track "Tortura", a suite of sonic surprises and orchestral color, merging the melodic with the avantgarde and bringing in elements you'd expect to hear from a horror or fantasy movie score. If someone hasn't written a monograph just about this piece yet, why not?

After that comes a kind of march piece, with pounding snare drum, lots of sharp notes and swelling crescendi/descrescendi, again anticipating some famous movie music we would all love in future decades.

"Senza Pietà" starts quietly and peacefully and then takes off for "and now we ride!" energy at the end.

Very off-kilter rhythm and seesawing parts from harmonica, violin, percussion (especially gong), with electric guitar and piano and other instruments doing monomaniacal and relentless ostinati create a brilliant landscape for "La Reazione".

After that there are two reiterations of the two main themes and we're done.

There are several reasons why this movie and others that followed were so successful and the music has always been one of those reasons.

2025 August 08 • Friday

Here's a great Japanese surf/instro album: Makka na Taiyo by The Sanders!

The title song was a big hit for singer Hibari Misora. She recorded it with the band The Blue Comets who also had a hit with "Blue Chateau", the third song on this record.

Who were The Sanders? I have no idea.

But this is a great record, with the electric guitar and drums sounding like they were recorded in the same studio that provided music for 1960s Japanese gangster movies.

There's too much saxophone playing, but the playing itself is good and doesn't overwhelm the songs. There are strings on some numbers also, as well as a Farfisa-like organ, but the real star is the nimble guitar playing.

2025 August 06 • Wednesday

Surf music always went along with hot rod music. Sooner or later someone was going to do something about hot rods of the sea. Here are The Hornets with Big Drag Boats USA!

I couldn't find a lot of information about this, but apparently it's a Jerry Cole project. The guitar sound is great, as are most of the numbers.

Some of it is a little too goofy and almost all of it is marred by overuse of saxophone. Both the tone and the lines played give it an unwelcome cartoonish effect, when otherwise this could be a tough and tight instro rock album.

It's still worth listening to, and some of these songs deserve to be played by bands today.

2025 August 04 • Monday

Bert Shefter's music for San Francisco-set crime film No Escape is the 868th Soundtrack of the Week.

The main title starts with piano in front of the orchestra playing cascading figures, sort of a mini-piano concerto. Since one of the main characters is a songwriter who plays piano in a bar, this will be a motif.

Typically perky and bright music accompanies "Golden Gate Bridge", but there are some unsual dissonances for the strings as well as some sweeping harp lines and a sultry and bluesly sax line at the end.

Strings, flutes and percussion create sounds of suspense and mystery for "Trace Writes Song", which resolves into a sequence of major chords.

Then there's a shift to a minor key and the piano comes back for the intriguing "Love and Laughter Menu", followed by a tense and short cue for "Hayden's Penthouse".

There are two very short "Pinker Jingle" cues just for bells, and then a midtempo ballroom dance rhythm for "In a Dress Salon".

"Tracy at the Piano" and "Tracy Improvises" are two short solo piano pieces, followed by a somewhat Herrmannesque cue, "Calling All Cars", which is a surprisingly soft and gentle action piece.

The strings come in strong for "Police Station Lobby" before handing the melody over to clarinet.

The "Pinker Jingle" returns but is joined by strings for "Pinker's Clock", and then the piano concerto idea comes back for "Tracy Under the Bridge".

Flutes create a sharp sense of uneasiness for "Tickets on Table" that's followed by tension and action statements in "Market and Powell".

Music for "Railroad Station" starts off almost carefree before a romantic heaviness and feeling of danger comes sweeping in with the orchestra.

The second "Calling All Cars" cue is a lot shorter but more intense then the first, leading to a nerve-jangling, percussion heavy "Night Montage".

Then there are two more short solo piano tracks, "Tracy Playing 'No Escape'" and "Chords".

There might be a "Far Away Look in Pat's Eyes" but this isn't a dreamy cue, it sounds more like action and violence. The dreaminess comes next, in the sweetly romantic, violin-led "Tracy and Pat Love Scene - Part 1" and ""Tracy and Pat Love Scene - Part 2 ('The Buzzer')", though the latter does get interrupted at the end by more menacing music.

Stereotypical "Chinese" is unsurprisingly on offer for "In a Chinese Restaurant". Shefter does some sick things with the strings in here, slidy and microtonal and kind of woozy sounding.

"Penthouse" has the piano with orchestra swinging its way through our main theme, this time with some drums!

Chopping strings and perky percussion add a lot of sharpness to "A Fight", but all is well and segues into the sweet and calm "Tracy and Pat End Title", followed by an Afro Cuban-influenced take on "Pat and Tracy".

Then there are two hot jazz source music cues and some alternate takes.

2025 August 01 • Friday

I hope you've found some time to go surfing this summer. It's not too late! If you need some inspiration, check out this unusual record, The Surf Symphony's Song of Summer!

It starts with bowed strings and you might start worrying that this is some kind elevator music neo-"classical" thing but in seconds "The Last Thrill" kicks in with electric guitars and keyboards and electric bass guitar and a serious backbeat from the drums. There's even a good breakbeat in there to sample. Too bad it fades out on what sounds like an electric guitar freak-out.

After that comes "Sandcastles at Sunset", which would be great in any number of 1970s TV shows and movies, that breezy, dreamy, light, electrogroove with syrupy strings.

In what I imagine to be an insurance policy, the next tune is an arrangement of The Beatles' "Get Back". Both the song and this record were released in 1969 so this makes sense. If you ever wanted to hear this with horns and strings playing the vocal part, this is your chance.

Another cover follows, but The Beach Boys' "Warmth of the Sun" is a good fit here and the orchestral arrangement of it does show off how nice the melody is, as well as allowing for interesting harmony blends.

The A side ends with a piece called "Green Water Sails", a dreamy number with arpeggiated guitar chords, wordless vocals and some ethereal floating horn lines.

Another cover of a very familiar song opens the B side and it's hard to argue against the "Theme from 'A Summer Place'" in this context. This is a nice arrangement, particularly the choice of electric keyboard—harpsichord or clavinet or something like that.

"The Promise of Rain" definitely has electric harpsichord as well as some nimble drumming in the intro. The bass guitar also buoys the rhythmic feel and there are some interesting pockets of space and percussion in there as well.

In case you wanted another cover and a really familiar one, you're in luck because the next track is "My Cherie Amour". This is like a Vegas lounge version. It probably sounds like you imagine, if you're imagining electric harpsichord in there again.

Following that comes "That Bluebird of Summer", a jaunty piece with a strangely shadowy feel, again with electric harpsichord or some similar keyboard providing most of the sonic interest before a flute flourish signals a segue into a very "God Only Knows"-inspired section.

The album wraps up with "Night of the Lions", a cover of a lesser known song from Mark Eric's A Midsummer's Day Dream album. This is maybe the best track on the record, with guitar and keyboards digging in and the rhythm section pushing everything forward urgently.

I wouldn't mind hearing more of this.