Doin' the Friday Shuffle
1. "Wave" - Antonio Carlos Jobim - Antonio Carlos Jobim's Finest Hour
Trust me; you know this track. Jobim is kind of singular, isn't he?
2. "Why Was I Born?" - Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Jerome Kern Songbook
Sweetly plaintive rendition of the wistful standard.
3. "Go Away" - Living Colour - Stain
One of the hardest rock songs I own, all crunchy, head-banging guitars and angry singing.
4. "Road So Clear" - Cassandra Wilson - Belly of the Sun
It's not that Cassandra Wilson is a bad songwriter, but just that her covers are so good that you almost wish she's just record them.
5. "Drive" - Burkhard Dallwitz - The Truman Show (Film Score)
Paranoid, skittery, almost-funky track from the point in the film where Carrey's Truman has effectively kidnapped his wife and is desperately trying to leave the island.
6. "Angela (Theme from "Taxi")" - Bob James - Touchdown
This is the only TV-theme I've hunted down and bought. Such a wonderfully sweet/melancholy piece of soft jazz. And I usually have no patience for soft jazz.
7. "Cathedral" - Thomas Newman - Road to Perdition (Film Score)
Quiet, slow, moving theme from the underrated film.
8. "Ofyn Pripetshik" - Mandy Patinkin - Mamaloshen
This is from Patinkin's all-Yiddish album, and it's a tender and nicely essayed rendition of an old Jewish folk tune (the same melody pops up in John Williams' Schindler's List score).
9. "Shawshank Repemption" - Thomas Newman - The Shawshank Redemption (Film Score)
One of my all-time favorite cues. This is the music used when Andy (SPOILER ALERT--SPOILER ALERT!!!) escapes from Shawshank. The triumphant, horn-blasting bit at the end is brilliant in how it manages to mix that sense of triumph with a real sense of loss and tragedy as well. Newman doesn't let us forget that Andy may have escaped, but that he still lost a huge chunk of his life for a crime he didn't commit.
10. "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" - Jeff Buckley - Grace
This song has a little bit of a sea-shanty air to the accordion-fueled opening, which soon gives way to a strong, ailing ballad.
1 comment:
Completely agree. My favorite moment from the score is the stoic theme that accompanies our introduction to the prison. I used that piece in college as part of my character prep for a play I was in, listening to it right before every performance. Remarkable mood-setter.
My favorite Shawshank story is that that final scene on the beach you reference is a STUDIO intrusion. Darabont's screenplay, and his first cut, ended with the shot of the bus driving off into the distance, leaving the questions of whether or not Red ever DID get to Mexico unresolved. The studio went nuts and insisted on the coda, telling Darabont that the audience deserved to see Red and Andy come back together. Darabont was dead-set against it and fought the studio mightily before finally giving in. A case of the studio being right!
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