A break from the soundtracks

Happy Pi Approximation Day!

Prior to his solo career, Richard Barone fronted Hoboken, NJ new wavers The Bongos who had a minor hit with Numbers With Wings. His first solo album, a low-key live recording called Cool Blue Halo (1987) featured nice performances of the Beatles' Cry Baby Cry and Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World.

In 1990 he released Primal Dream, the second of his 4 solo albums. The third, Clouds Over Eden came out in '93 and Between Heaven and Cello (a live recording with cellist Jane Scarpantoni who appeared on CBH and PD) was released in '97.

Seems I totally missed hearing about a spate of Bongos reunion shows a couple of years ago. Reports are that were very cool. There's also much love for Bongos back catalogue reissues.

When Primal Dream was released, it went into heavy rotation on my walkman (though it did not enamour me of the Bongos, though I went back and listened to them at the time and still was not grabbed, despite their fine critical appraisal), and didn't come off for about 2 years.

I recall that Clouds Over Eden was quite beautiful, but it didn't have the punch of songs like Opposites Attracting and River to River. Barone handles slow and beautiful as well, exemplified by a sweet cover of VU's I'll Be Your Mirror.

Enjoy Primal Dream (RS/320)!

Scaramouche!

Victor Young's fine score to George Sidney's 1952 film of Raphael Sabatini's 1921 novel Scaramouche.

The tale takes place during the French Revolution and the soundtrack buckles swash appropriately.

Enjoy!

Part I
Part II (rs/320)

The Constant Nymph

Now, I know these soundtracks I've been posting are kind of random. That's how I got them, I listen to them for the first time in the days or week before posting the link. It was the oddness of how they were all part of the same (apparently failed, as the label no longer lists them in the catalogue) reissue series.

I'm not posting in any order either, as there's not really one to be had.

That said, this week's post is Erich (Elizabeth and Essex) Korngold's soundtrack to the 1943 CharlesBoyer vehicle The Constant Nymph.

It's a convoluted love story in which Boyer plays a poor composer the fourteen year-old daughter of whose mentor falls in love with him. The director, Edmund Goulding, later took on Maughm's The Razor's Edge (so-so, IIRC, as the movie sidesteps some of the book's trickier religious themes) and Of Human Bondage (both in 1946).

This string-heavy music is, not surprisingly, pretty melodramatic. I imagine Douglas Sirk's movies to be similarly soundtracked.

This is one that's probably more interesting if you know the movie, but the music is quite moving in its way.

This CD also includes an unused alternate take of the vocal Tomorrow.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold's The Constant Nymph (320/rs)