Misidentified White Person of the Week

Wow, I didn't know Richard Mulligan, a.k.a. Burt Campbell from Soap, died twice.

From the News tab on Yahoo!'s front page tonight:


It's Robert Mulligan, not his brother Richard, Yahoochies.

Confused? You won't be, after this acoustic performance of the theme from Soap.

AFOS: "Yule Log" playlist

Happy holidays.

This week, I'm streaming the 2005 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Yule Log" (WEB71), which consists of music from holiday-related movies and Christmas TV specials.

This is a reedited version of "Yule Log." I removed from the episode a Crash score cue by Mark Isham and a Family Stone score cue by Michael Giacchino and replaced them with Shirley Walker's cues from Batman: The Animated Series' "Christmas with the Joker" episode. The "Christmas with the Joker" tracks are part of La-La Land Records' new two-CD B:TAS set, the perfect Christmas present for anyone who's a B:TAS fan.

Ep WEB71 airs Monday and Wednesday at midnight, Tuesday and Christmas Day Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.


1. Danny Elfman, "What's This?," The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney
2. Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Christmas Time Is Here (vocal)," A Charlie Brown Christmas, Fantasy
3. Cowboy Timmy, "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo," Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics, American/Columbia
4. Joel, Crow and Tom Servo, "(Let's Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas," Clowns In The Sky Vol. 1, Best Brains, Inc.
5. Paul Reubens, Catherine O'Hara and Danny Elfman, "Kidnap the Sandy Claws," The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney
6. Michael Cohen, "The Hebrew Hammer Theme" (from The Hebrew Hammer), thehebrewhammer.com
7. Danny Elfman, "Introduction (Titles)," Edward Scissorhands, MCA
8. Badly Drawn Boy, "I Love NYE," About a Boy, ARTISTdirect/Twisted Nerve/XL/BMG
9. John Ottman, "The Fair/Main Titles," Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, La-La Land
10. Michael Kamen, "Gruber's Arrival" (from Die Hard), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, Varèse Sarabande
11. Thurl Ravenscroft, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas), How the Grinch Stole Christmas & Horton Hears a Who!, Turner Classic Movies Music/Rhino Movie Music
12. Dick Shawn, "Snow Miser" (from The Year Without a Santa Claus), A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, Nick at Nite/Sony 550 Music/Sony Wonder
13. George S. Irving, "Heat Miser" (from The Year Without a Santa Claus), A Classic Cartoon Christmas, Too, Nick at Nite/Sony 550 Music/Sony Wonder
14. Shirley Walker/Lolita Ritmanis/Michael McCuistion, "Nutcracker Suite Medley" (from "Christmas with the Joker"), Batman: The Animated Series, La-La Land
15. Shirley Walker/Lolita Ritmanis/Michael McCuistion, "Pie in Batman's Face/Dangling Hostages Saved/Deck the Halls" (from "Christmas with the Joker"), Batman: The Animated Series, La-La Land
16. Badly Drawn Boy, "Donna and Blitzen," About a Boy, ARTISTdirect/Twisted Nerve/XL/BMG
17. Mick Jagger and Joss Stone, "Lonely Without You (This Christmas)," Alfie, Virgin
18. Leon Redbone & Zooey Deschanel, "Baby It's Cold Outside," Elf: Music from the Major Motion Picture, New Line

Now playing on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel:

Batman: The Animated Series soundtrack: A Walker to remember

As a fan of Batman: The Animated Series, I've waited 15 years for the score cues from the groundbreaking show to be released on an album. Now the wait is finally over, thanks to La-La Land Records' Batman: The Animated Series score compilation, which the label released as a limited edition two-CD set on Tuesday (a week after Warner Bros. Records double-dipped the Dark Knight soundtrack with additional score cues). I'll be adding some of the music from La-La Land's release to rotation on A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Assorted Fistful" block.

Modeled in tone after Tim Burton's somber-looking, dark-humored Batman films but much more faithful to the comics, Bruce Timm's B:TAS was the first American superhero cartoon show that felt cinematic. B:TAS writer/producer Paul Dini, who scripted the landmark, Emmy-winning Mr. Freeze revamp "Heart of Ice," says in the soundtrack liner notes that the show's crew constructed each episode like a mini-movie.

The B:TAS crew must have heard Peter Bogdanovich's anecdotes about how Samuel Fuller mentored him during the making of the low-budget 1968 thriller Targets ("Never think about limitations! Only think about what you want!") because like Fuller, they clearly didn't let a TV budget stop them from doing what they wanted. They brought a cinematic approach to everything, from the way they paced the dialogue--B:TAS' minimal and terse dialogue was different from other superhero cartoons, especially the '90s Marvel shows, like Saban's X-Men and Marvel Films Animation's Spider-Man, which had nonstop, hurriedly delivered, Speed Racer-ish dialogue--to the original score music. Unlike past superhero cartoons, B:TAS didn't recycle the same four or five score cues or repurpose creaky old library music. Shirley Walker and her team of B:TAS composers, which included Lolita Ritmanis and Michael McCuistion, composed an original score for every ep and used a full orchestra at a time when most other animated action shows relied on chintzy-sounding, cost-saving synthesizer music.

Danny Elfman's B:TAS main title theme, a reworking of his own brooding and dashing-sounding main theme from the Batman movies, set the tone for the show's "dark swashbuckler" sound. Walker, who conducted Elfman's 1989 Batman score and worked for him as an orchestrator, wrote a new eight-note theme for the Batman character that sounds equally thrilling and kickass. It eventually supplanted Elfman's theme in the opening titles when Warner Bros. Animation made B:TAS into a feature film (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm) and then brought the show back to the airwaves under a new title, The Adventures of Batman & Robin.

Walker and her composers crafted a different motif for each villain. Mr. Freeze was accompanied by a mournful waltz (which can be heard during the 14-minute "Gotham City Overture," track 1 on the first disc), Two-Face was represented by an eerie soprano recorder melody ("Harvey's Nightmare/Dent's Soap Box" and "Bruce Wayne's Nightmare/Two-Face Remembers"), and the Penguin received a lumbering brass theme to match his bluster ("Birds of a Feather").

The Joker is such a beloved adversary that Walker gave him not just one but two motifs, a carnival-style melody and a secondary "Fanfare for Rocky"-style crime spree theme that was used only during the "Last Laugh" ep. The liner notes refer to the Joker's "Last Laugh" crime spree theme as "a hip-hop jazz theme," but it doesn't really sound like hip-hop. It's a middle-aged white person's idea of what they think a hip-hop beat sounds like. As an FSM Board poster says, it's more rock/funk than hip-hop. Still, Walker's "Last Laugh" theme is a lot of fun, and like all the other cues, I'm jazzed to finally have it on disc.

After a solid film and TV score career that saw her alternating between the Timmverse and James Wong/Glen Morgan productions (Space: Above and Beyond, Final Destination), Walker died in 2006 and didn't live to see her B:TAS material get the kind of release that La-La Land has devoted to it. Though this release is loaded with over two hours of music, it's missing Walker's memorable Catwoman theme from "The Cat and the Claw, Part I," the first B:TAS ep that ever aired, Carl Johnson's lively score from the excellent "Beware the Gray Ghost" ep with special guest voice Adam West, and McCuistion's Lawrence of Arabia-style epic score from the "Demon's Quest" two-parter, which gives me hope about a Volume 2 from La-La Land.

The final track on the La-La Land album is a fitting tribute to Walker, in which she gets to finally speak, via an archival recording of her explaining her eight-note Batman theme and playing it in different variations on the piano. The subtle differences between each variation--like when Walker alternates between a somberly played second half of the theme and a more uplifting second half--are incredible. They show how much care was put into the music and the show itself.

AFOS: "Spirit of '99" playlist

1. Stan Marsh, Kenny McCormick, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, Sharon Marsh and Sheila Broflovski, "Mountain Town," South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Atlantic
2. Michael Kamen, "The Eye of the Storm," The Iron Giant, Varèse Sarabande
3. David Newman, "Prologue: Galaxy Quest Clip," Galaxy Quest, Super Tracks Music Group
4. Randy Newman, "Zurg's Planet," Toy Story 2, Walt Disney
5. Rolfe Kent, "Election," Election, Sire
6. Canibus with Biz Markie, "Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee," Office Space, Interscope
7. The Dust Brothers, "Stealing Fat," Fight Club, Restless
8. Thomas Newman, "Still Dead," American Beauty: Original Motion Picture Score, DreamWorks
9. Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke, "Liquid Moon," The Insider, Columbia/Sony Music Soundtrax
10. Angelo Badalamenti, "Country Waltz," The Straight Story, Windham Hill
11. Carter Burwell, "Subcon Chase," Being John Malkovich, Astralwerks
12. Bill Conti, "Glider Pt. 1," The Thomas Crown Affair: Music from the MGM Motion Picture, Ark21/Pangaea
13. Danny Elfman, "End Credits," Sleepy Hollow, Hollywood
14. Don Davis, "Main Title/Trinity Infinity" (from The Matrix), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, Varèse Sarabande
15. James Newton Howard, "Malcolm Is Dead," The Sixth Sense, Varèse Sarabande
16. The People of South Park, "Mountain Town (Reprise)," South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Atlantic

New AFOS episode: "Spirit of '99"

Because this is episode WEB99, the show will consist of selections from scores to the most noteworthy and inventive films of the year 1999, including Office Space, Election, Fight Club and a film I like a little less than the other three but Laurence Fishburne was such a badass in it: The Matrix. John Frizzell's score for Office Space was never released, so Office Space will be represented here by Canibus and Biz Markie's closing credits shout-out to Johnny Paycheck, "Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee."

"Spirit of '99" begins streaming tonight at midnight and repeats tomorrow and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

WEB100 will be the last AFOS episode in the current format

I've decided to end A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series after producing and hosting 100 episodes for the AFOS channel since January 2003.

Yep, I'm cancelling my own show rather than letting the bastards who run... Oh, wait a minute, I'm the bastard who runs the channel. All by myself. Never mind.

This doesn't mean I'm going away for good. It just means I'll no longer be doing shows under the AFOS: The Series title and format. My voice will still be heard on the channel and I'll continue to be "announcing song titles and making cracks, even if [it] is pre-recorded!," as one listener said to me about my voice in an e-mail a few years ago. (I'll still stream the earlier eps too. Ep WEB63, which is called "Feel the City Breakin'," is the earliest ep that doesn't make me cringe when I play it back.)

The time has come to switch to a new format for my on-air self, like the less constricting and more new releases-oriented "AFOS A-Go-Go" format I experimented with in September and November. I should have given the program a name change a long time ago. Having both the program and the channel share the same A Fistful of Soundtracks name confuses listeners who appear to be under the assumption that AFOS is a 24-hour program as opposed to a 24-hour channel. (I originally conceived AFOS as an audio archive of continuously looped episodes from my program's terrestrial radio years. But I found myself going in another direction, and that was to diversify the programming--without veering too far off from the channel's film/TV music format--and make AFOS sound more like an actual radio station, hence my interspersing of themed blocks like "The F Zone" and "Soda and Pie" with newly recorded eps of AFOS: The Series.)

In each AFOS ep, all the film or TV score tracks are connected by a certain theme, like most recently, Batman villains or monster movies. I've gotten tired of doing that one-theme-per-ep format. Writing the copy for each of these themed eps takes me forever to do. I often get hit with writer's block. Writing copy for a show in which the tracks don't have a unifying theme--like during "A-Go-Go"--is much easier for me.

Plus I'm not a creature of habit. I get bored with routine after awhile. I became bored with my last job after a couple of years (but I stayed with it for a few more years because the money was good). As for my job before that one, I got bored with it after about half a year (plus having to type your newspaper articles inside an office building that lacks air conditioning kind of puts a damper on your morale).

In the case of AFOS: The Series, which was a way for me to continue doing the same program I used to do on terrestrial radio in the late '90s and early '00s, you could tell when my interest in it started to taper off--when the program went from weekly to monthly to bimonthly to whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it-ly.

I've lately been listening to the kickass Scion Radio channels programmed by L.A.'s Root Down club and KCRW's Garth Trinidad. For his channel, GT records about two and a half hours of content and then has them looped over and over again for the entire month.

I'm thinking of switching to a format like the Root Down crew's or GT's, except instead of recording new segments once every month like they do, I'll do it probably every other week or whenever I can find time to get on the mic or whenever I have any space left on my hard drive. Morning Becomes Dyspeptic and the DJ-less "Assorted Fistful," "Soda and Pie," "Chai Noon" and "F Zone" blocks will remain on the AFOS schedule so that listeners won't have to hear so much of my annoying voice (listeners have told me they don't mind my voice, like the person in that aforementioned e-mail, who said, "I've *gasp* ventured into other soundtrack stations. They aren't as fun to listen to as Fistful though... There's something nice about having someone announcing song titles...").

Here's what coming up on AFOS: The Series: Ep WEB99 will flash back to the year 1999 and stream selections from scores to the most memorable films that were released during that standout year for cinema. And then like 100 Bullets, I'm ending it at 100. The final ep under the AFOS: The Series title and format will be a doozy: all 22 official Bond opening title themes in chronological order.

If you frequently listen to the channel, thanks for choosing AFOS.

Oh yeah, and change your links from jim.aquino.com to www.live365.com/stations/sookie_sook or afistfulofsoundtracks.blogspot.com. jim.aquino.com is as dead as Lindsay Lohan's movie career.

Movie soundtrack iPod shuffle meme

I got a kick out of this meme in which I got to be the music supervisor for the movie about my own life ("If your life were a movie, what would the soundtrack be?").

1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.

Opening credits:
Jan Hammer, "Crockett's Theme" (from Miami Vice)

Waking up:
Devo, "Freedom of Choice"

Average day:
Los Amigos Invisibles, "Pipi"

First date:
The Clash, "Charlie Don't Surf"

Falling in love:
Herbie Hancock, "Bring Down the Birds" (from Blow-Up)*

* Deee-Lite sampled the bass line from this track in "Groove Is in the Heart."

Love scene:
The Reverend Horton Heat, "In Your Wildest Dreams"

Fight scene:
Blondie, "Heart of Glass"

Breaking up:
Living Colour, "Love Rears Its Ugly Head"

Getting back together:
The X-Ecutioners, "Play That Beat (Lo-Fidelity All-Stars Remix)"

Secret love:
Eminem feat. Jay-Z, "Renegade"

Life's okay:
Tangerine Dream, "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)" (from Risky Business)

Mental breakdown:
Maxine Nightingale, "Right Back Where We Started From"

Learning a lesson:
Trick Daddy, "Let's Go"

Deep thought:
The Who, "Bargain"

Flashback:
Madvillain, "Figaro"

Partying:
Elvis Costello, "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (live)"

Happy dance:
Magazine 60, "Don Quichotte"

Regretting:
Los Straitjackets, "Espionage"

Long night alone:
De La Soul, "Supa Emcees"

Death scene:
Portishead, "Glory Box"

Closing credits:
Sonny Rollins, "He's Younger Than You Are" (from Alfie)

---------------

Hear the Slap Shot theme "Right Back Where We Started From" and "Don Quichotte" (a memorable part of the Northern Exposure episode "Jules et Joel") during the "F Zone" block, which airs Mondays at 4am, 9am and 3pm, Wednesdays at noon and Fridays at 5am, 9am and 3pm on A Fistful of Soundtracks. "The F Zone" streams kickass existing songs that have been used in films and shows.

"Crockett's Theme" and "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)" can be heard during both the "Assorted Fistful" block and the "Soda and Pie" '80s block, which airs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at noon on AFOS.