The Way Podcast 12/20/2012: The Monkees "HEAD" OST Vintage Vinyl

On tonight's podcast I played the entirety of the Monkee's innovative soundtrack to their heavily psychedelic 1968 film HEAD. The soundtrack consists of six Monkees songs interspersed with dialogue and sound-effect samples from the film. The soundtrack was partially edited and mixed by a young Jack Nicholson, who also wrote the script for the film, purportedly under the influence of LSD. I used my original vintage vinyl copy and it sounded great!

Stream the podcast here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/archive-complete/1356048001.mp3

The Way Podcast 9/13: The Hired Hand OST Cut W/ Film Dialogue + Alex Cox's Straight To Hell OST Mash-Up

On this week's episode of the Way I explore Peter Fonda's directorial debut The Hired Hand (1971), a hallucinatory Western starring the aforementioned Fonda and the legendary Warren Oates, who gives one of his best ever performances. The two play best friends who give up their drifter ways to head back to Harry Colling's (Fonda) family ranch, which he had abandoned years ago. Although the story and acting are quite fine, it's the hypnotic cinematography and the haunting, hallucinatory film score composed by Bruce Langhorne that make the movie something special. The twisting, kaleidoscopic visuals coupled with the sparse score move the film along at a drifitng, stream-of-consciousness pace that is very striking. On the podcast, I play a mash-up of dialogue from the film played along side Langhorne's magnificent score.

The second half of the show is another western mash-up of dialogue of soundtrack and dialogue this time from Alex Cox's notorious 1987 cult western Straight to Hell. The film is almost the polar opposite of something like The Hired Hand. Gritty, plot-less, endlessly violent and noisy as hell, Straight to Hell was the result of director Alex Cox and his punk-rock buddies Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, the Pogues, and others hanging out on old film sets in the desert in the south of Spain and shooting what has to be one of the most bizarre, yet entertaining movies I've ever seen. The soundtrack is excellent as well, think Ennio Morricone gone Punk. Major contributions from a group called Pray For Rain, who do soundtrack work exclusively, in particular for Cox's movies. The Pogues, Joe Strummer, Zander Schloss and Elvis Costello also contribute to the soundtrack as well. The mash-up was done improv, on the fly so the result is much like the movie, chaotic and noisy. Hope you enjoy it all the same though. The link to stream the episode is below, and you can right click and hit it "save as" to download as a .mp3.

The Way: September 13th, 2012

The Way Podcast: 8/16; The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Mash-Up/Joe Strummer's "Walker"

In keeping with the theme of last week's show, this week I explore the ultimate Western soundtrack, Ennio Morricone's iconic score for Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly but with a new twist. Instead of relying on the original theatrical trailers for dialogue to superimpose on to the music, I used the actual film for the source of all the dialogue and sound effects. I basically mixed the entire set live on the fly so there are some moments where there is some clashing audio, but I'm mostly pleased with the result. The mash-up took up about the first half-hour of the show and the rest of the show I played tracks from Joe Strummer's soundtrack for Alex Cox's '87 Neo-Western Walker. Strummer's soundtrack is rustic and melancholy and often very pretty, clearly influenced by Dylan's soundtrack for Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The show is a bit different from what I've done in the past, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless, it was a fun challenge for me. Listen to the stream by clicking the link below and right click and hit "Save As" to download it. Enjoy!

The Way, August 16th

The Way Podcast: August 10th; Art-Western Soundtracks

Probably one of my favorite shows I've done recently, and one of the more "conceptual" shows I've attempted, this week's episode was dedicated to my some of my favorite Western movie scores from the 60s and 70s. I interspersed each set of three film scores with bits of dialouge from the original theatrical trailers from the movies and try to give some background on the songs being played and what kind of scenes the songs were used in. The movies chosen were "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid", with a score from Burt Bacharach, "Once Upon A Time In The West", with a score from Ennio Morricone and my personal favorite movie and score, "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", with a beautiful soundtrack from Bob Dylan. The link to stream the podcast is below, enjoy!

The Way: August 10th, 2012