Every day I'm shufflin'

Even though trying to keep track of the nearly 64 hours of music that are stored in A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Assorted Fistful" playlist (plus the two hours of music that make up AFOS' "Rock Box" playlist) can occasionally be a hassle, running AFOS(*) is a pretty simple task. I just hit "Shuffle" and Live365.com does the rest.

(*) It's AFOS. No bloody FOS or FFOS. It's always been AFOS. I've always wanted to shorten it to just AFOS because the acronym AFOS can stand for many different phrases besides A Fistful of Soundtracks, and I once jotted down a list of 12 of them (examples: "Ample Focus on Scores" and my personal favorite, "Asians Fucking Owning Shit"). The current iTunes Radio description of "Fistful of Soundtracks" is nine years old (it's taken from a summary of AFOS that I typed into Live365.com when I first launched AFOS over there in 2002, back when Live365 wouldn't let radio stations have names longer than 22 letters for some stupid reason). iTunes has never bothered to replace the old description with a present-day one.

Sometimes, weird things I have no control over start to happen on AFOS when it's in shuffle mode.

Mel Gibson, who's so famously fond of Jews, gets followed by a Jew.

Yeah, I like "Eye of the Tiger" too, Live365, but I don't like it as much as you do apparently.

Same thing with the movie Wild Things...

... or the end credits music from Thor.

Two different incarnations of Batman getting streamed back-to-back always amuses me...

... as does Angel, Batman and Zorro getting streamed in the same hour. (Angel is like the Batman of the Whedonverse. Batman was modeled partly after Zorro. Also, in DC's pre-"New 52" continuity--I'm not sure if it's been changed in the current continuity--Bruce Wayne lost his parents to a mugger after they attended a Mark of Zorro screening. If it were a Legend of Zorro screening, all three Waynes would have lost the will to live and killed themselves afterward.)

Live365 occasionally does screwy things to the Bollywood-centric "Chai Noon" block. Das racist!

Shuffle mode sometimes results in nifty unintentional double shots or triple shots like:

Brian Tyler Fast and the Furious sequel theme double shots.

Pam Grier movie theme double shots.

Jim Kelly movie theme double shots.

Themes from movies about Bruce Lee movies getting streamed in the same hour.

Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek double shots.

Galaxy Quest/Star Trek double shots.

Trek/Galactica/Galaxy Quest triple shots.

J.J. Abrams/Michael Giacchino collabo triple shots.

Christopher Nolan/Hans Zimmer collabo double shots.

End credits music quadruple shots.

"Movies with Run in the title" double shots.

"Unexpectedly gory L.A. movies" double shots.

Live365 once caused a weird pattern in which a theme from a Spike Lee Joint ended up getting followed by a Cowboy Bebop track--twice in a row. I hope someone on Deviantart was listening to AFOS during that hour and thought about drawing a Spike Lee/Spike Spiegel mash-up someday. Make it happen, Internet!

Wilfred the Matt Damon-loving dog must have tried to sabotage Live365 during this hour.

The Palace: So This Is Where the Asians Hang Out? begins June 14 and concludes June 20 at afistfulofsoundtracks.blogspot.com

I hate inking my own webcomic. It takes forever to do. Instead of adding ink directly onto each original sketch that I did in blue pencil, I place a tracing pad sheet over the sketch and redraw it in ink. (Even though the time-consuming process drives me crazy, I prefer to do it this way because when I scan the tracing pad sheet, the redrawn strip looks more dirt-free and clean than the version that's in pencil, so I don't have to do too much digital editing.) If one of my knuckles brushes up against a newly inked line or letter, it can smudge, so I have to wait a few minutes for the ink to dry before I resume inking. I bet this is what shooting a makeout scene with a temperamental actress who hates being touched by you must be like: a lot of stopping and starting and having to make sure your knuckle doesn't brush up against her boob because if it does, she'll throw a fit and refuse to come out of her trailer, and everything's ruined.

While scripting most of The Palace's STIWTAHO? arc a couple of months ago, I Netflixed DVDs of the surreal early '00s Britcom Black Books. A former colleague once blogged about his enjoyment of the show, and he mentioned that one of its running gags was the lead character's hatred of cell phones--something I really identify with--so I always wanted to check out Black Books, but I kept putting it off. I finally got around to Netflixing the show and enjoyed the hell out of it.

I was surprised to find that Black Books covered some of the same ground I've covered in my webcomic. The Dark Knight watercooler talk ban that Connor--an Irishman like Bernard Black--enforced at his business in The Palace's In the Shadow of the Bat arc is like any one of Bernard's various rules at his bookshop ("No mobiles, no walkmans, none of that or any of the others...").

When I came up with the concept for The Palace, I set it at an independently run art house/repertory theater that's barely scraping by instead of a successful multiplex that shows current blockbusters because struggling or failing always makes for more interesting material than being at the top (a reason why I got bored with Entourage). Black Books star/co-creator Dylan Moran must have been aware of that too. He said he set his show in an indie bookshop because he was fascinated by the theme of doomed enterprise. "Running a second-hand bookshop is a guaranteed commercial failure. It's a whole philosophy," said Moran in a 2000 Guardian article. "There were bookshops that I frequented and I was always struck by the loneliness and doggedness of these men who piloted this death ship."


Is it me, or is Bernard a dead ringer for Spike Spiegel?

One of my favorite AFOS e-mails: "Film music is fun and vital"

Here's an excerpt from a listener e-mail I was lucky to hold onto before my PC died last year. From August 18, 2005, Vincent Bernard, who sometimes posts comments here and says he prefers A Fistful of Soundtracks over Sirius XM's Cinemagic channel, explained to me why he can't stand most film and TV score music DJs and was spot-on about them:

... all those other film music DJs are the most unhip, unfunny bastards I've ever had the misfortune to hear. They make film music out to be some kind of once-removed relative of classical music, which it isn't! Film music is fun and vital, and not beholden to the rules of classical which is one of the reasons I love it. You make it even more fun with your commentary, giving us a little well-researched history and your opinions of new as well as older music. You've introduced me to CDs full of new music. Artists I've never heard of like Yoko Kanno (I now own all the Bepop albums because of you) Riz Ortolani, Gert Wilden, Jerry van Rooyen (all from your "Sleazy Listening" ep.) You've even rekindled my interest in some of the old masters like Herrmann, Barry, Morricone and Schifrin.

Adrian Younge's recent Black Dynamite score, which I've been praising--and streaming--constantly, would probably never get any airplay on the channels or programs that Vincent finds irritating because it's not classical music. The Black Dynamite score, my favorite score from last year, is film music at its most fun and vital.

Robert Emmett is a great example of a DJ who champions film music without taking it so damn seriously (another example: the Wax Poetics magazine folks, who put together an incredible film music-themed issue at around the time their record label division released the two Black Dynamite soundtrack albums). Emmett hosts The Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show (Saturdays 9am-noon on KFJC or at the Los Altos Hills station's spot on the iTunes Radio dial, under Eclectic) and was once one of several guest programmers whom I enlisted to assemble special "Movie Music Mixtape Month" playlists for the college radio incarnation of AFOS. The playlist he submitted to me was as eclectic as his Norman Bates playlists. It ranged from The Misfits to Intinti Ramayanam. Norman Bates, a program I first tuned into when I was in high school, is a must-listen--even though it's often sprinkled with Broadway show tunes, which aren't my cup of tea (the only musicals I can stand are either satirical ones like South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut or musicals that come out of Bollywood).

Font memories

As part of his transition to HD last week, Craig Ferguson finally updated his show's opening title sequence, which used to be such a creaky-looking, misleading opening sequence (it made it look like The Late Late Show was all sketch comedy, when the sketches really only comprise two percent of the show--that's like if SNL opened with credits that consisted of nothing but shots of Seth Meyers reading the fake news).

The Late Late Show logo also experienced a makeover, which has been lesser-liked than the spiffy new opening ("The old logo was fun and distinctive, but the new one is somewhat bland"), while fontophiles have been more harsh towards the Ikea catalog's font switch from Futura to Verdana, according to a Gray Lady article that letterer Janice Chiang forwarded me. Branding is everything, which is why my picky self has constantly changed my radio station's textual logo over the years. I first used the Fistful of Soundtracks logo on flyers I made for AFOS the college radio program and then placed it on the AFOS sites, the covers of CD copies of episodes I burned for friends and the Microsoft Word files of the home-recorded program's episode scripts. Like what TrekMovie.com did in March with the many different Star Trek opening title fonts from 1966 to 2009, here's a brief history of AFOS fonts.


1997-1999: I wanted a dope font that both screamed "spaghetti western" and looked like something that came from poster art for a '60s or '70s European movie that was scored by Ennio Morricone, whose non-Sergio Leone '60s and '70s scores were among the scores I was discovering for the first time on CD back in 1997. I found that kind of font in Wharmby. I liked how it resembled the Morricone-scored Untouchables opening titles. Of course, after a couple of years, I get tired of the same old thing, so...


1999-2000: I chose another font that I thought screamed "spaghetti western," Wide Latin. Graphic designer Matt Hinrichs of Scrubbles.net used Wide Latin for the previous incarnation of his blog's logo. This was the first logo I featured on the program's then-new site. I forgot Wide Latin was the same font that was used in the Kung Fu opening credits. I didn't want anything to do with a font that, to me, represented an annoying show that starred yet another white guy who tried to pass himself off as Asian (I know PopeyePete loves that show, but I have issues with it), so...


2000-2001: At the time, I was crazy about the italicized opening title fonts from the Pierce Brosnan 007 flicks, the Mission: Impossible feature films and the Kyle Cooper-designed Lost in Space titles.


2001-2008: I felt like switching to a font that better conveyed speed and futurism. I stuck with this font the longest. This was the last of the logos to appear at the top of the scripts I typed for myself to record because in 2008, I switched from typing the scripts on Word to typing them on the more stripped-down Notepad, where the text is presented in only one font.


2006-2009: I was in the mood for a font that crossed Cowboy Bebop with those banjo-scored '70s Sesame Street "sand letter" interstitials.


2009-?: I wanted a return to the station name's spaghetti western roots because some people still don't understand that the name's a reference to Morricone's classic collabos with Leone.

The best result of the Morricone/Leone partnership was Once Upon a Time in the West, one of my favorite flicks since high school (I first saw it letterboxed and uncut on Bravo, back when the channel was actually watchable and wasn't a dumpster for irritating reality shows and Criminal Intent reruns). OUATITW was unique for having Morricone finish recording the score before filming began so that Leone could play it aloud on the set to help get the actors into character and to synchronize camera movements to the tempo of the music.

The 1968 epic is a still-misunderstood film (here's a reason why I don't like the city I live in and can't wait to leave it: when I rewatched OUATITW in a local theater, everyone there gradually walked out until I was the only one left because these downtown assclowns who were clearly raised on Michael Bay were expecting a shoot-'em-up, and that's not what the film is, though it contains a couple of kickass action sequences, particularly the Jason Robards shootout on the train). OUATITW is also a great union of music and image, and because the score was completed before a single frame of film was shot, it's very listenable outside the context of the movie, which is why I frequently played it on my college radio program and then on my Internet radio station.

I'm glad someone suggested A Fistful of Soundtracks as the title of my program in 1997 because Once Upon a Time in Soundtracks doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.

AFOS: "Super Groover Mama Dalai Lama" playlist

Starting tomorrow, the 2003 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Super Groover Mama Dalai Lama" (WEB09) airs Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm and Saturdays and Sundays at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm for the rest of July on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel. WEB09 first aired during the week of April 21-27, 2003. I haven't aired "Super Groover Mama" on the channel since '03 and was recently surprised to find it's a pretty good early episode from my archives.

I took the ep's title from a lyric in the album version of "Ask DNA," which Yoko Kanno and lyricist Tim Jensen wrote for the opening titles of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (an animated feature that had a better title in Japan, Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, which resumed the Bebop TV series' tradition of naming eps after classic rock tunes). "Ask DNA" is one of 10 original opening theme songs on the WEB09 playlist that are either quirky, out-of-place or incomprehensible (during the "Thunderball" recording session, Tom Jones asked John Barry "What's a thunderball?"--something I wondered too when I first heard the song but hadn't seen the movie yet--and Barry responded to Jones with "Just sing it, Tom").

There's a mistake during this ep. I said Jon Brion's terrific "Here We Go" is from the Punch-Drunk Love score. Actually, "Here We Go," the vocal version of Brion's main Punch-Drunk Love theme, isn't used at all during the movie (however, Columbia Pictures used "Here We Go" during its Punch-Drunk Love TV spots). I didn't know "Here We Go" wasn't in the movie because I hadn't watched it yet when I recorded WEB09.


1. Seatbelts featuring Raju Ramayya, "Ask DNA" (from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie), Ask DNA, Victor
2. Jon Brion, "Here We Go," Punch-Drunk Love, Nonesuch
3. Isaac Hayes, "Buns O'Plenty" (from Three Tough Guys), Double Feature: Music from the Soundtracks of Three Tough Guys & Truck Turner, Stax
4. Tom Jones, "Thunderball--Main Title," Thunderball, EMI/Capitol
5. Elmer Bernstein, "Frankie Machine" (from The Man with the Golden Arm), Crime Jazz: Music in the First Degree, Rhino
6. Elmer Bernstein, "Autumn in Connecticut," Far from Heaven, Varèse Sarabande
7. Randy Newman, "A Fool in Love," Meet the Parents, DreamWorks
8. Yoko Kanno, "N.Y. Rush," Cowboy Bebop: Blue, Victor
9. The Dust Brothers, "Hessel, Raymond K.," Fight Club, Restless
10. Badly Drawn Boy, "Something to Talk About," About a Boy, ARTISTdirect/Twisted Nerve/XL/BMG
11. Willie Hutch, "I Choose You" (from The Mack), Pimps, Players & Private Eyes, Rhyme Syndicate/Sire/Warner Bros.
12. Queen, "Flash's Theme," Flash Gordon, Hollywood
13. Craig Safan, "Confrontation," Thief, Elektra
14. The MASH, "Suicide Is Painless" (from M*A*S*H), Movie Music: The Definitive Performances, Columbia/Epic/Legacy
15. The Five Blobs, "The Blob" (from The Blob), Sci-Fi's Greatest Hits Vol. 3: The Uninvited, TVT
16. The Hollies and Peter Sellers, "After the Fox," After the Fox, Rykodisc
17. Mark Mothersbaugh, "Kite Flying Society," Rushmore, London
18. Simon Brint, "Julverset," Monarch of the Glen, BBC Music
19. Howard Shore, "The Riders of Rohan," The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Reprise/WMG Soundtracks
20. Curtis Mayfield, "Freddie's Dead (instrumental version)," Superfly: Deluxe 25th Anniversary Edition, Curtom/Rhino
21. Michael Brook, "Bar-B-Que," Charlotte Sometimes, Visionbox Pictures
22. Semiautomatic, "Can't Spell," Better Luck Tomorrow, MTV Films
23. Duran Duran, "A View to a Kill" (from A View to a Kill), The Best of James Bond: 30th Anniversary Limited Edition, EMI
24. The Dickies, "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (from Killer Klowns from Outer Space), Sci-Fi's Greatest Hits Vol. 3: The Uninvited, TVT
25. Bernard Herrmann, "Prelude/Outer Space/Radar" (from The Day the Earth Stood Still), Sci-Fi's Greatest Hits Vol. 3: The Uninvited, TVT
26. John Williams, "Finale and End Title March," Superman: The Movie, Warner Archives/Rhino
27. John Williams, "Love Theme from Superman," Superman: The Movie, Warner Archives/Rhino
28. Jerry Goldsmith, "End Titles (Your Zowie Face)" (from In Like Flint), In Like Flint/Our Man Flint, Varèse Sarabande

List habit

Matthew from the Culture Kills blog says he would like me to post what my 10 favorite film scores are.

That's too much pressure, Matt! I dig so many of them. Scores come in many different categories or genres (film, TV, synthesizer, 80-to-100-piece-orchestra, blaxploitation, espionage, poliziotto, lederhosen porn...). It's too broad a question, and it'd be difficult to narrow them down to 10.

I don't spend much time on Facebook(*) anymore (mostly because I now prefer the more stripped-down Twitter), but there's one thing I enjoy doing on Facebook: making lists(**) of my favorite pieces of music on Facebook's LivingSocial and iLike apps.

(*) Damn, even Facebook's CFO doesn't like the new Facebook either. He hates it so much he quit!

(**) The title of this post refers to the "List Habit" tag that Kim Morgan uses for her list-crazy posts.

In LivingSocial's case, the app has you post Top 5 lists of your favorite things. So instead of a "Top 10 favorite scores" list, I'll repost the Top 5 lists of favorite score cues (or scores) under certain categories that I've been posting on LivingSocial and Twitter.

Five favorite marches from original film or TV scores
5. John Williams, "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)," The Empire Strikes Back
4. John Williams, "March from 1941"
3. Jerry Goldsmith, "Main Title," Star Trek: The Motion Picture
2. John Williams, "Main Title," Superman: The Movie
1. Terence Blanchard, "Fruit of Islam," Malcolm X

God, the Oscars are a joke. How could they not nominate Terence Blanchard for his 1992 Malcolm X score, which is filled with awesome themes like "Fruit of Islam," the cue he wrote for the film's Harlem march sequence? What was the score that won in 1993? Oh right, Aladdin. Give me a break.

Gene Roddenberry dug the Star Trek: The Motion Picture march so much that he recycled it for Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987. TV composer Dennis McCarthy wrote an updated arrangement of the march, and it was performed by an orchestra that was smaller than the 90-piece orchestra that performed it back in 1979. That explains why the TNG version lacks oomph. I prefer the original 1979 rendition. I like how the brass sounds jazzier.

Five other favorite marches
5. Ennio Morricone, "March of the Beggars," Duck, You Sucker
4. Jerry Goldsmith, "Attack," Patton
3. Elmer Bernstein, "Main Title," The Great Escape
2. Elmer Bernstein, "Stripes March"
1. John Williams, "End Credits," Raiders of the Lost Ark

Five favorite film scores frequently sampled by beatmakers
5. The Mack (Willie Hutch)
4. Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)
3. Trouble Man (Marvin Gaye)
2. Enter the Dragon (Lalo Schifrin)
1. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (David Shire)

Five favorite Danny Elfman film scores
5. Dead Presidents
4. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
3. Mission: Impossible
2. Batman
1. Midnight Run

Five favorite original TV themes
5. It Takes a Thief (third season version) (Dave Grusin)



4. I Spy (Earle Hagen)



3. Barney Miller (Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson)
2. The Persuaders! (John Barry)
1. Cowboy Bebop (Yoko Kanno)



Listeners like Portland film critic and CulturePulp artist Mike Russell have told me they became Yoko Kanno fans after hearing her Cowboy Bebop score tracks on my station.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, what's the crappiest original TV theme of all time? I was going to say Enterprise, but then I remembered the Diane Warren-penned "Where My Heart Will Take Me" wasn't an original work. It was recycled from Patch Adams, of all movies. (In a sketch I wrote for A Fistful of Soundtracks' 2002 Halloween special, gangbangers torture a hostage by subjecting him to the Enterprise theme.)

The worst original TV theme is Joanie Loves Chachi, hands down. Click at your own peril.

Williams Street does Blu-ray-less Venture Bros. fans a solid

Here's some good news for budget-conscious Venture Bros. fans like myself who want avant-garde composer J.G. Thirlwell's Venture Bros. score album but don't intend to buy either the Blu-ray release of the third season (which, unlike the DVD release, will include the album as an extra) or the vinyl version of the album. Williams Street Records will make The Venture Bros.: The Music of J.G. Thirlwell available on its amusingly retro site (which spoofs the primitive designs of sites like the ones Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block blog about on The Vintage Web). The label will begin shipping the CD on March 24.

The $12 CD version will contain 20 tracks, which are all listed here (no OSI theme song, unfortunately), while the $18 LP version will contain 16 (to accommodate the higher fidelity) and come with a coupon for a free digital download of the album.

Thirlwell's work on The Venture Bros.--particularly that wonderfully over-the-top opening theme--is the craziest-sounding original score music I've heard on an animated show since Yoko Kanno's genre-straddling music for Cowboy Bebop.


"Go Team Venture!"