# Showing some love for the '70s! (John Williams & others)



## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

Like many of you here, I love John Williams. He's no doubt one of the most prolific composers [of his field/time] in any sense of the word. But if you'd ask me for what scores/era I like THE MOST, it's got to be the 1970s. Something about that sound, the melodies, the string runs, coupled with some jazz/disco/funk influences... It combines both classical influences and modern ones and does it so flawlessly! My favourite scores of his are from that era:

_(in no particular order):_



*1. Cinderella Liberty*



*2. Jane Eyre



3. The Towering Inferno*



*4. Earthquake*



*5. Superman*

-------------------------------
P.S.: While writing this thread about John Williams, I actually thought why not make it about scores from the 70's in general? So much great music from that era! I encourage to share YouTube links to YOUR favourite score cues in the comments below! Let's share  Just make sure to share specific cues (to grab interest), not just full albums. The very end of the 60s and very early 80s are allowed.


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

And a few cues by other composers:



*Franco Micalizzi - The Visitor: pure 70s, orchestra, wah-wah guitars, vocals, one of my favourites, alongside with this:*



*Luis Bacalov - The Last Chance*




*Lalo Schifrin - Sudden Impact*



*Ron Goodwin - Where Eagles Dare*


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

The Earthquake soundtrack is quite a gem imho. It's one I wish was added to concerts of his work more often!


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

Sidenote: At 27:43 in the Earthquake video, he re-used that idea in Jurassic Park.


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## Consona (Oct 13, 2020)

Speaking of The Towering Inferno, I remember listening to the main title for the first time recently, realizing the first 30 seconds alone are more interesting than hours upon hours of all that stuff were are getting in movies today.

Williams' abilities to handle and develop a musical idea are from another world.




I wouldn't fricking know what to do with that motif after the first 10 second  if someone demanded that piece has to be in the 70s fashion.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Mark_Kouznetsov said:


> He's no doubt one of the most prolific composers in any sense of the word.



Personally, i think it's not a good thing to present subjective valuations as absolute facts.
JW's influence and achievements in the realm of film scoring are undoubted; his relevance as a composer _per se _however is a matter of massive controversy (specially outside of the USA).


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## ism (Oct 13, 2020)

Great stuff, but no “Theme to Gilligan’s Island”.


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

The Towering Inferno and The Earthquake are like two siblings, many similarities, yet different.


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> Personally, i think it's not a good thing to present subjective valuations as absolute facts.
> JW's influence and achievements in the realm of film scoring are undoubted; his relevance as a composer _per se _however is a matter of massive controversy (specially outside of the USA).


what "*massive* controversy" are you taking about? Never heard of it. Ever. And I do live outside of US. Sounds like whoever these people are (internet?) they are more concerned of being "edgy" and disliking someone based on his popularity. Many things can be categorized as "controversial", like not being vegan or using real leather or something. This world is full with strange people.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Mark_Kouznetsov said:


> what "*massive* controversy" are you taking about? Never heard of it. Ever. And I do live outside of US. Sounds like whoever these people are (internet?) they are more concerned of being "edgy" and disliking someone based on his popularity.



I was speaking about the his reception in the academic world of music (which doesn't take place on the internet). And it's neither about being "edgy" nor "disliking" him, but it's rather a discussion about his artistic relevance besides film.
p.s. i don't say that one has to care about any opinions that contradict the own one, i just mentioned that these opinions exist.


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

H


Living Fossil said:


> I was speaking about the his reception in the academic world of music (which doesn't take place on the internet). And it's neither about being "edgy" nor "disliking" him, but it's rather a discussion about his artistic relevance besides film.
> p.s. i don't say that one has to care about any opinions that contradict the own one, i just mentioned that these opinions exist.


He's well received in the academical world. I think you're talking about the old general stigma that was present years/decades ago about film music not being real classical music and looked down upon? Which it is not, it's true. But it also kind of is (could be, at times). Taking in consideration modern times, neo-classical music is also not "real classical music" and can be also looked down upon by elitists and purists. JW just recently had a concert in Vienna, not to mention the fact he's constantly supported by Deutsche Grammophon, it's as classical as you can possibly go for a film composer.


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## Consona (Oct 13, 2020)

Academic duds can kiss their bungler asses. They can only wish they could compose even 5 minutes of Williams' most frolic near tongue in cheek pieces like Indiana Jones theme.

Their squeaky post-modern bullshit isn't even good for scaring stray dogs away.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Mark_Kouznetsov said:


> He's well received in the academical world. I think you're talking about the old general stigma that was present years/decades ago about film music not being real classical music and looked down upon? Which it is not, it's true. But it also kind of is (could be, at times). Taking in consideration modern times, neo-classical music is also not "real classical music" and can be also looked down upon by elitists and purists. JW just recently had a concert in Vienna, not to mention the fact he's constantly supported by Deutsche Grammophon, it's as classical as you can possibly go for a film composer.



First, i'm not interested in a controversy, i'm just stating a (different) perspective.

Second, you shouldn't overestimate the things you mentioned (concert in Vienna with AS Mutter, Deutsche Grammophon etc), since as you may have heard, the concert industry (or: the classical music industry) too is interested in gaining customers and revenues etc. (specially since the pre-Rock-generation is getting old). But that's basically an other (long) topic.

Third, i'm not sure if you're aware of it, but it seems that you give your personal taste the status of absolute truth. Who has an other view is an "elitist" or a "purist". I know lots of musicologists of all generations and rarely one of them would include JW in a list with the 30 most important composers of the 20th century. According to you it has to be due to them being elitists and purists. But i can reassure you they are usually not. Maybe take into consideration the theoretical possiblity that there are simply people who have a deeper understanding than you (i don't know if it's possible in reality, but theoretically it is) and who come to a different conclusion than you.

However, your argumentation reminds of those typical 9GAG scenarios where people can't understand why photorealistic street paintings aren't considered relevant art while some pictures of Picasso and others are.
(By this I'm not comparing JW to photorealistic street painters, i'm referring to the perception) 

BTW, personally, i don't care too much about the canon of valuation.
Also, i have experienced in my own views and valuations that they change.
Those lists of top achievements have rather a place in sports, where there is no much room in discussing wether 9 seconds is faster than 10.

p.s. however, i didn't want to derail this thread...as soon as i have some spare time i'll give a listen to some of the posted examples.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Consona said:


> Academic duds can kiss their bungler asses. They can only wish they could compose even 5 minutes of Williams' most frolic near tongue in cheek pieces like Indiana Jones theme.
> 
> Their squeaky post-modern bullshit isn't even good for scaring stray dogs away.




I'm glad you're not a politician in a nondemocratic country.
Dismissing a group of people categorically without the slightest insight in their specific motives just because they have a different opinion is not cool. 

P.s. if you equal musical academia with "squeaky post-modern bullshit" than you simply aren't aware of the heterogeneous nature of musical academia.


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

So... the Midway soundtrack is quite the gem as well imho!


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## Consona (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> I'm glad you're not a politician in a nondemocratic country.
> Dismissing a group of people categorically without the slightest insight in their specific motives just because they have a different opinion is not cool.
> 
> P.s. if you equal musical academia with "squeaky post-modern bullshit" than you simply aren't aware of the heterogeneous nature of musical academia.


For sure.

Share some examples that challenge Indy, Star Wars or Jurrasic Park, no problem.


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

Oh look, it's John Williams showing us how harmonicas and orchestras can get along quite well when they try:


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Consona said:


> Share some examples that challenge Indy, Star Wars or Jurrasic Park, no problem.



???
I understand that you get emotional if you are confronted with the fact that your idol possibly is not everybody's idol. But still try to understand what i wrote.
I wrote that there are lots of different musicologists in the academic world who have absolutely different focusses, preferences etc. Some focus on avant garde music, some focus on neo-tonal composers, other focus on semantics and other on renaissance music. Some of them are intelligent, some maybe not that much. Some have a narrow taste, others not. Etc.

What kind of examples am i supposed to share???
And: what could be possibly the sense of doing so?
If Indiana Jones etc. are among your favorite soundtracks i doubt that you would in a sudden prefer some other music. Since in that case you would have preferred the other music right from the start.
I really wonder how grown up people can fail to recognise the subjective nature of their preferences in taste....

ps. just realize my initial post is derailing the thread and that wasn't my intention. Maybe better pm for further non on topic stuff.


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> ???
> I understand that you get emotional if you are confronted with the fact that your idol possibly is not everybody's idol. But still try to understand what i wrote.
> I wrote that there are lots of different musicologists in the academic world who have absolutely different focusses, preferences etc. Some focus on avant garde music, some focus on neo-tonal composers, other focus on semantics and other on renaissance music. Some of them are intelligent, some maybe not that much. Some have a narrow taste, others not. Etc.
> 
> ...



What are you smoking? You came here to point out some "massive controversies" for some reason, now you're talking about top-30 composers of the 20th century? Who cares what various critics say? Pineapples on pizza are also massively controversial. What I care about what other composers in general say. Critics are someone who couldn't make it themselves. These are the same people that wouldn't include Herrmann, Ives, Mahler, Wagner or others composers in their time on whatever list you're talking about. The biggest critics are the ones who achieved less in their careers than the people who they critisize. Because people who achieved more will never critisize those who stand below. It doesn't prove anything. Also, I never mentioned him as the best composer ever or on somebody's list. The reality is that YOU came to this thread and started this whole "controversial" thing. All I said is that he is prolific, obviously in my opinion (because I was the one who wrote it, duh!). But you went full Anton Ego on me...


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

I'll just leave this over here...


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## nolotrippen (Oct 13, 2020)

Tice said:


> So... the Midway soundtrack is quite the gem as well imho!




Great score. Horrible movie (except for all the Tora Tora Tora they used). But isn't that usual? How many bad movies did Barry, Goldsmith, et. al. score yet the music isn't bad just because the movie is. David Raskin said that movies would be much better if everyone involved put as much care in as the composers.


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

nolotrippen said:


> Great score. Horrible movie (except for all the Tora Tora Tora they used). But isn't that usual? How many bad movies did Barry, Goldsmith, et. al. score yet the music isn't bad just because the movie is. David Raskin said that movies would be much better if everyone involved put as much care in as the composers.


From what I've seen, deeply caring is pretty much a requirement for a composer. You have to be so expressive in a way that is always going to be personal to one degree or another. Many of the great film composers are known for being deeply caring about their fellow human being. That's no coincidence. You can't musically accompany people's stories if you don't care about people. And if you care, you do your best.


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Mark_Kouznetsov said:


> These are the same people that wouldn't include Herrmann, Ives, Mahler, Wagner or others composers in their time on whatever list you're talking about.



Ok, i should have known better....and not started participating in this thread.

Besides from you mixing up critics and musicologists i don't even necessarily disagree with some of what you write in this last post, specially the quoted sentence. (it's sometimes even more interesting the other way round, looking where the valuation of former superhero composers like Lully and many others is nowadays). it would be interesting to know what the future will think. (Or maybe not. Maybe, in 100 years from now, Kanye West is considered the best composer who has ever lived.)
Nevertheless, my initial statement was (in other words) that JW's reputation as a composer outside of his status in the film world is controversial. That's something i experienced in (countless) discussions with high caliber musicologists, so in order to change my mind i had to lie.


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## Consona (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> ???
> I understand that you get emotional if you are confronted with the fact that your idol possibly is not everybody's idol. But still try to understand what i wrote.
> I wrote that there are lots of different musicologists in the academic world who have absolutely different focusses, preferences etc. Some focus on avant garde music, some focus on neo-tonal composers, other focus on semantics and other on renaissance music. Some of them are intelligent, some maybe not that much. Some have a narrow taste, others not. Etc.
> 
> ...


All those avant-garde or neo-whatever styles. I know them very well.

I work at the local art gallery. There's a lot of paintings that people from all around the Europe buy for some serious buck, while those paintings themselves look like a dog's puke smeared across the wall (literally!), while people who make it can't even draw and shade some fcking hand holding an apple (I know that first hand). Modern art my ass. "I do only abstract art because.....", yea, yea, because you can't properly draw even a fricking egg.

It's all semi-random low effort stuff.

Sometimes, I wonder how those people have the nerve to put their own name under that daub.

There are even videos to show the visitors how it's done. The guy just literally pours the paint across the horizontal canvas, takes a plank and smears all the paint from one side to the other, waiting what comes out of it...

...and then there's Sistine Chapel.



Okay, I'm trolling a little.  Let everyone does whatever they want... Explore all the various techniques and whatnot.

I won't just say it's some good highly valuable art. 


The only value this art has is broadening forms of expressions, which is good, and bringing the question, what else can we acknowlege as art? Is this even art?.. But that was done before more than 100 years already.
All these dog puke artists thrive due to the fact this post-modern society made those things trendy and desirable. The actual craft is nonexistent. Thank god some people are still interested in being able to do things people during renaissance or baroque were doing, I know some great young painters who can do amazing stuff. Once you can paint like Michelangelo, you can do smeared dog puke, but not vice versa.


Let people make their drony ambient noises or squeaky celli solos (because that's what we got at the vernissage of one of our exhibitions, a post-modern cello solo without even a hint of melody or any musical idea, it was so painful to listen to, if I hadn't been an employee of the gallery I would have fucking charged that maestro and crushed his fricking cello under my feet), let people do all this shit, but don't expect me saying it's better than Goldsmith's or Horner's Star Trek or Williams' Star Wars.


I know it's about the world-view, some peope like amorphous ambient indistinctive stuff, I value intention, craft and articulated ideas. I think it's harder to make something strong and elaborate than homogenous and generic. Or course, for some people baroque paintings are all generic and homogenous and they want to gawk at some smeared dog puke... and it all goes round and round and round over again.

But no squeaky random post-modern cello solo is better than that hilariously over-the-top near tongue in cheek Indiana Jones theme piece. That's for sure!!!!!


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## Rob (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> Ok, i should have known better....and not started participating in this thread.


Get outta here before it's too late!


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

@Consona : as mentioned in my post above, my critique against your argumentation is mostly because of the absolutistic nature of your critique. In many cases i would agree with what you write about modern art galleries, in other cases i wouldn't. 
With regards to JW, i think it's sure to say that the outstanding quality of his melodic ideas can't be denied.
Neither his art of voice leading or instrumentation. (when i wrote that i had lots of discussions with [great] musicologists, i didn't mean that i automatically agreed with them. I guess that would have made most of those discussions much shorter...)
I think many of the critique has a lot to do with his (alleged) eclectic writing (which, btw. is at least to some degree objectiveley dismissed by the originality of his musical ideas). That's an everlasting debate. 
But i also wrote that in my opinion it's pointless to overestimate the value of valuation.
And i indeed think that it's quite subjective to decide if one prefers the Darth Vader march or a piece like 
Grisey's wonderful "Vortex temporum". But it's possible to state in an objective manner that a) the Darth Vader march has become part of the collective memory of our society while b) "Vortex temporum" had a huge impact in the field of spectral music. 
And still, it's a subjective choice with which of these pieces one resonates more.
And yes, there is a right to resonate with something one likes 

...in hindsight, it was the wrong thread for stating my initial remark. Sorry for that.


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## Tice (Oct 13, 2020)

Btw, I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed similarities between the Fury's soundtrack and Harry Potter's soundtrack...


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## Living Fossil (Oct 13, 2020)

Mark_Kouznetsov said:


> But if you'd ask me for what scores/era I like THE MOST, it's got to be the 1970s. Something about that sound, the melodies, the string runs, coupled with some jazz influences... It



Ok, now that i have listened to the examples you posted, i feel ashamed a bit by nitpicking beforehand... 

And i have to state that i fully agree with what you write here. Indeed, it seems that this kind of sound that incorporates jazz influences has disappeared a bit over the last years. Maybe it would be interesting to evaluate a bit why this happened. Sometimes i think our time can hardly deal with duality of emotion.
I always liked the combination of nostalgia with subtle subtext, but it seems to me that the actual Zeitgeist asks rather for more one dimensional statements.


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## tc9000 (Oct 13, 2020)

Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver score:


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## HeliaVox (Oct 13, 2020)

This:



All the memories


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

HeliaVox said:


> This:
> 
> 
> 
> All the memories



Fun!


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> Ok, now that i have listened to the examples you posted, i feel ashamed a bit by nitpicking beforehand...
> 
> And i have to state that i fully agree with what you write here. Indeed, it seems that this kind of sound that incorporates jazz influences has disappeared a bit over the last years. Maybe it would be interesting to evaluate a bit why this happened. Sometimes i think our time can hardly deal with duality of emotion.
> I always liked the combination of nostalgia with subtle subtext, but it seems to me that the actual Zeitgeist asks rather for more one dimensional statements.


Now, when I re-read my initial post I kind of understand your words. I added the prolific part later and kind of lost/didn't finish my initial thought and I see that it may sound like I'm assuming "of all time" or comparing him to Beethoven. This was not my intent


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

JW - Cinderella Liberty (from Vienna)


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## Mark Kouznetsov (Oct 13, 2020)

Jerome Moross - The Big Country


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## Consona (Oct 14, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> @Consona : as mentioned in my post above, my critique against your argumentation is mostly because of the absolutistic nature of your critique. In many cases i would agree with what you write about modern art galleries, in other cases i wouldn't.
> With regards to JW, i think it's sure to say that the outstanding quality of his melodic ideas can't be denied.
> Neither his art of voice leading or instrumentation. (when i wrote that i had lots of discussions with [great] musicologists, i didn't mean that i automatically agreed with them. I guess that would have made most of those discussions much shorter...)
> I think many of the critique has a lot to do with his (alleged) eclectic writing (which, btw. is at least to some degree objectiveley dismissed by the originality of his musical ideas). That's an everlasting debate.
> ...


Shit, I just googled Vortex temporum.





Spoiler



Just for the record, I quite agree with you.
I've read enough stuff to have no opinion on anything.  It's just this post-modern "nonsense" has grown way too strong for me to just sit by and saying I'm ok with it.


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## robcs (Oct 15, 2020)

Can’t believe I’d forgotten this 70’s gem


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