MAY 2018




SB: What is your favorite song?

AM: Jeannie Becomes A Mom, Caroline Rose. I think you know by now that it's hard for me to get past the 1st song of the month if it's really good and put it there just to screw with me. 

SB: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

AM: I almost used Post Animal this month! Hilarious. I think I know Porches, too, otherwise you got me. 

SB: As you're very aware, movies wouldn't be movies without incredible scores and songs behind them. Excluding musicals, what are some of your favorite music movie moments of all time and why?

AM: It’s interesting you ask this question the week after my Jazz History professor covers Henry Mancini’s career. Apparently the studios didn’t realize he was such a savant and were under the impression everyone they hired to write music was going to be able to dip in and out of different genres the way he did. Oh how wrong they were! One thing I learned that really stuck with me is that he apparently was very vocal about understanding that music was there to support the story and images, not eclipse them. I really liked that. 

Immediately my mind went to caper movies and the score for James Bond (swoon) and the little jingle in Catch Me If You Can. I really love suspense compositions. Then I thought about source music (another term I learned in class, which = licensed music, not composed music) and I snapped to My Cherie Amour in Silver Linings Playbook. I think it's really incredible when source music and compositions/scores jive together. It's so out of my depth and I'm just in awe of the artists that make that happen.

One thing I think I might tend to do more than my film peers is obsess about dialogue more than music, though. I think I notice when music is really well done (Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here is a great, current example) but I always notice when the dialogue is mediocre or good or exceptional. 


AM: What is your favorite song?

SB: This was another solid month of "oh, this is definitely it....no, wait, now it's this one..." but I'm going to have to go with Icancherishyourassandyourmind by Parallelephants. First off, both of those names are incredible, but secondly - it's weird and has a ton of layers that all play so perfectly together. 

AM: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

SB: Show Me The Right and Zone are the only tracks I've heard before. 

AM: Summer is coming. What's one summer fantasy you've never experienced -- growing up as a kid or now as an adult -- but always wanted to? What song from this list would you play as it happened?

SB: Ok, so technically this isn't specifically a summer fantasy (I don't think mine are reliant on seasons) but I'll imagine it in the context of summer. As you could probably distill from my Daft Punk rant last month, I'm a huge fan of music production...the process, everything. One of my biggest fantasies is to one day be a music producer (most likely helping someone else vs getting to a badass level on my own). I love (and fantasize) about the moment a producer shows the song to the artist and the reaction he or she has. There are actually a lot of great videos on YouTube where this happens and I could watch them for days. In fact, when I hear a great song, I often start it over and before I hit play, I imagine that I'm in the studio showing the artist how it all came together (nerdy, I know). Then I hit play and imagine the reaction. The second part of the fantasy is that months later, I'd be out somewhere (in this case because it's summer I'm in a Miami night club or on a beach somewhere) and this song would come on and I'd get to see people's excited reactions to it and then watch them enjoy it unknowingly in front of the person who created it. I imagine you doing this someday to your movies (in disguise). In this case, I'd have to go with Zone by KingJet. I can see people having fun to that song.