Sometimes, as the first day of a new semester begins at Penn, I think of how very close I came to saying no to this opportunity all those years ago.
It would have been one of the greatest mistakes of my life.
And so, again, on this bitter cold day, we begin. We're focused on home this semester. We're reading Annie Dillard's
An American Childhood, George Hodgman's
Bettyville, and Ta-Nahesi Coates's
Between the World and Me, not to mention John Hough on dialogue and countless excerpts (countless as of now, anyway, because I can never tell what's going to inspire me before and during class). We'll be tapping into the new Wexler Studio—recording some of our work. We'll be laying the groundwork for the
Beltran evening on March 1—all invited—during which time we'll be visited by my writing friends (and worldly talents) Reiko Rizzuto, A.S. King, and Margo Rabb. We'll hear from former students. We'll write letters to the people in our lives, in Mary-Louise Parker and Ta-Nahesi style.
And today, if all the machines are working, we'll start out with
this.
I can't tell you why or how we'll use it.
You'll just have to imagine.
Meanwhile, before any of that, I get to share an hour with Nina and David, who will be writing their theses with me.
How lucky I am.
Scribd, the eBook subscription service, and Hal Leonard, a songbook publisher, has formed a new partnership. The Scribd library now features sheet music.
Subscribers can access thousands of sheet music pieces. Some of the selections include Adele’s 21 album, a collection of preludes by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the Frozen soundtrack.
Here’s more from the Scribd blog post: “Sheet music has long been one of the most requested features from the Scribd community, and music has been important to us to from the day we opened our doors. In fact, legend has it (and YouTube confirms) Scribd’s first $17 in revenue came from founder and CEO, Trip Adler playing his saxophone on San Francisco’s streets.”
Now’s the moment to be a fan of the Bond songs. SPECTRE, the new film, comes out this November. That means we’ll hear an official unofficial leak of the title song sometime this summer. Everybody’s been guessing who the singer is. Twitter says it'll be Sam Smith or Lana Del Rey. Sam Smith says it isn’t him and claims that he “heard Ellie Goulding was going to do it.” The Telegraph wants to know why no one has considered Mumford and Sons (don’t answer that). Even Vegas is paying attention. Who would you put your money on?
The post Who will be singing the next Bond song? Who should be? appeared first on OUPblog.
Today, 5 October, we celebrate James Bond Day, and this year has been a great one for 007. In January, both song and score for Skyfall won Grammys, and 18 September marked the 50th anniversary of the general release of the film Goldfinger in UK cinemas. Shirley Bassey’s extraordinary rendition of the title song played a key role in its success. In these extracts from The Music of James Bond, Jon Burlingame recounts the stories behind some of the great title songs.
Goldfinger
More significantly, the public seemed to be paying equal attention to Goldfinger’s bold, brassy Barry score. “The musical soundtrack is slickly furnished by John Barry, who also composed the title song,” noted Variety’s film critic; its music critic later praised the album as “the strongest Bond film score to date.” In the United Kingdom, the soundtrack album made the charts on October 31 and reached number 14. But in America, it appeared on December 12 and rocketed up the charts, reaching number 1 on March 20, 1965. It edged out the Mary Poppins soundtrack (which in turn had displaced Beatles ’65 at the top) and remained the most popular album in America for three weeks.
Goldfinger would be the only Bond soundtrack album to reach the top of the charts. Barry was nominated for a Grammy Award, and although there was no Oscar attention—for Barry, that would come later, and not for James Bond—there was the satisfaction of worldwide commercial success. United Artists Records released Barry’s driving rock instrumental of Goldfinger (with Flick on guitar) and, a few months later, an LP titled John Barry Plays Goldfinger (acompilation of his arrangements from the first three Bond films plus a handful of easy-listening tunes).
Thunderball
The whole song was written over a mid-September weekend. And Welshborn singer Tom Jones, an old friend of Black’s who had already had two top-10 hits earlier that year (“It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?”), quickly agreed to sing it. Black liked his “steely, manly voice.” Britain’s New Musical Express announced Jones’s signing on September 24, and they went into the studio on October 11 to lay down the track.
“I was thrilled to bits when they asked me to do Thunderball,” Jones remembered many years later. “There was a connection, because Les Reed, who wrote a lot of my big songs, was John Barry’s pianist. The most memorable thing about the session was hitting that note at the end. John told me to hold on to this very high note for as long as possible.” Jones’s now-legendary final note lasts nine full seconds, and in the isolated vocal recording he can be heard running out of breath, although that last part is buried in the final mix with the orchestra. “I closed my eyes, hit the note and held on,” Jones said on another occasion. “When I opened my eyes the room was spinning. I had to grab hold of the booth I was in to steady myself. If I hadn’t, I would not have passed out, but maybe fallen down. But it paid off, because it is a long note and it’s high.”
Diamonds Are Forever
Eighteen years earlier, Marilyn Monroe had sung “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” to iconic status in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Black’s words would make a Bond song equally famous. “Diamonds Are Forever” is more about fleeting relationships and less about the permanence of those shiny jewels that are often the remnant of a love affair—although one phrase in particular would result in the song becoming slightly infamous, and possibly costing it an Academy Award nomination.
It’s in the second verse: “hold one up and then caress it / touch it, stroke it and undress it.” “Seediness was what we wanted,” Black would later explain. “Sleaziness, theatrical vulgarity. It had to be over the top.” Or, as Barry himself would reveal in numerous interviews 20 years later, that particular verse was more about male genitalia than about precious stones: “Write it as though she’s thinking about a penis,” had been Barry’s advice to Black.
Moonraker
Williams met with Sinatra and his longtime aide “Sarge” Weiss at Sinatra’s office on the old General Services lot in Hollywood. “The amazing thing is, there was nothing there to play the demo on,” Williams recalled. “Sarge finally came up with a rusty old portable radio with a cassette player, mono, salty from the beach. And that’s what Frank heard the song on. And he loved it. ‘Marvelous, Mr. Paulie, marvelous.’ This from Music Royalty to me, and I was thrilled,” Williams said.
Sinatra opened a briefcase, which contained his datebook (and a .38, Williams noted), and they discussed possible dates for recording. “I left his office walking on air. We were all delighted. Then Frank was out. I don’t know what happened but, I was told at the time, Cubby and Frank had a big fight and he was history.”
No one remembers for certain why Sinatra ultimately declined to sing “Moonraker.” It may be that he had second thoughts, or that his ambitious Trilogy album was already in preparation and he preferred to concentrate on that. The story of a falling-out between Sinatra and Broccoli may be apocryphal, because Frank and Barbara Sinatra were all smiles at the New York premiere of Moonraker on June 28.
Skyfall
The final honors to come their way were the Grammy Awards, nearly a year later because of the later eligibility period of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Both song and score were nominated and, on January 26, 2014, both won. Newman was present to accept his award. Skyfall had been a worldwide sensation: it became the highest-grossing film ever in Great Britain, taking in over £94 million in just six weeks. It eventually earned more than $304 million in the U.S. to rank as the fourth highest-grossing film of 2012. Its final worldwide box-office tally of $1.1 billion propelled it to the no. 8 spot among all-time box-office leaders.
Its title song had become the first Bond music ever to win an Academy Award, its score only the second ever nominated. By the end of 2013, the Adele single had gone platinum, selling over 2 million units, while Newman’s score album had sold over 30,000. Sam Mendes was signed to direct the next Bond film, set for release in October 2015. Bond, and Bond music, was bigger than ever.
Image credit: Golden Girl © Eon Productions, 1964
The post Temperamental artists, unexpected hits, and Bond appeared first on OUPblog.
Welcome back, book lovers. It's that time of year again. No, we're not talking about "Alfred Nobel Day" (which is a real thing that we didn't make up. According to Wikipedia, it's observed every year on December 10th). Today brings us the first installment of the annual Overlook holiday book giveaway. If you missed out on last year's opportunity to win copies of some of our favorite 2011 Overlook
Millennials are growing up in a time of uncertainty. They aren’t sure when (or if) they’ll find a job after high school or college, how they’ll pay their bills, or where they’ll be in five years. Looking to the future is scary, so instead,... Read the rest of this post
There were few surprises at the Grammy Awards this year, including Adele taking home (six awards, winning in every category in which she was nominated. The Grammys tried to reach out to a young audience with a showcase of electronica music, which... Read the rest of this post
Spotify just got even cooler with an enhanced version of Spotify Radio (which lets users create unlimited stations by artist, track, or genre, receive recommendations with an improved feature, and skip as many songs as they wish. This should make... Read the rest of this post
Vial of Youth was
animator and illustrator Adele Thomas' 2005 graduate film based around the myth of 16th Century Hungarian Countess Erzsebeth Bathory, with a twist. The Countess was known to have bathed in the blood of young women to prolong her youth and beauty.
Adele's animated film received an award at the Pacific Film and Television Commission's QLD New Filmmakers Awards in 2006. It also screened at the International Animation festival in Argentina.
It’s graduation season, and what will college students (be doing now that they’re leaving school? 85% are moving home with mom and dad, according to one study. Sorry, IKEA, but next quarter isn’t looking so good. What other options... Read the rest of this post
thanks for this fascinating giveaway. these books are wonderful. bencanada1(at)yahoo(dot)com