Tarasis Dot Net

John Williams, who turned 85 today, has written so many wonderful, bombastic, mournful, jubilant and terrifying pieces of music that its hard to really nail down faves, but these are ones that I often return to. (Never mind the adaptions of music that he has done for Musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, Goodbye Mr Chips or Christmas music for concert arrangements, his concertos or his early jazzy Johnny Williams phase). Hell he’s still writing new music, admittedly at a slower pace than before, but it still tugs at the heart.

Note that these are NOT in order and I’ve largely avoided the obvious album picks (Indy Series, Star Wars):

Full playlist:

• The March from 1941 – 1941
• Fascinatin’ Rhythm – Rhythm in Motion
• March from The Midway – The Midway
• Wild Signals (or The Conversation) – Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Crimebuster – Heartbeeps
• The Land Race – Far and Away
• Omaha Beach – Saving Private Ryan
• Viktor and His Friends – The Terminal
• The Train Robbery – The Missouri Breaks
  (I struggled between this, The Chase and the Main Title) /
• Training Montage – Space Camp (arguably there are better tracks on the album, but the chameleon like shift in style / sound just stays even after all these years. Otherwise I would say Spacecamp (track 8 on Intrada album) or Re-entry)
• The Turbulent Years – Nixon
• Anderton’s Great Escape – Minority Report (this is slightly cheating due to its similarity, to Zam The Assassin Chase Through Coruscant from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones )
• Finale – JFK
• The Shark Cage Fugue – Jaws (or Tourists on the Menu its so not what you think when you think of Jaws )
• Banning Back Home – Hook (lovely jazzy number, film version is a quite different and thanks to La La Land is available. Hook’s another I could choose multiple tracks. Ultimate War (parts 1-3 from LLL release, but for lack of that on Youtube here is the original album release track )
• Making The Plane – Home Alone (though honestly the whole album, particularly the La La Land release! Particularly for the Christmas music arrangements)
• Christmas at Carnegie Hall – Home Alone 2 (I would choose the later half of We Overslept Again / Holiday Flight but I prefer the alternative version of Holiday Flight and the beginning is like “Making the Plane” above 🙂 )
• Jim’s New Life – Empire of the Sun
• Catch me if you can – Catch me if you can
• Call of the Champions
• Summon The Heroes
• Follow Me – Always (this piece is in the middle of the suite, honesty the whole suite is delightful – I have a real soft spot for this movie)
• The Soccer Game – Stepmon (Isabel’s Horse and Buggy is another choice)
• Preface – Superman 2 (this is a cheat as its a Ken Thorne piece based off of Williams’s music)
• The Cowboys Overture
• The from Checkmate – Checkmate

I could go on and add the Amazing Stories Theme, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, stuff from A.I. and on it goes.

I freely admit I am often more drawn to the Marches or his upbeat, catchy or wild music and struggle with his darker / atonal music 🙂

Sometimes we all do daft things, well at least I do, and a few weeks ago I got involved with a couple of Telltale Games fan videos created by a bloke on the TTG Forums called Silverwolfpet.

He has done a whole bunch of videos before (seriously checkout him out onYouTube) and he decided for Xmas (with the approval of Alan from the TTG forums) to do a tribute video and posted about it in the Back To The Future forum (which if you don’t know, TTG are doing a 5 part adventure game based on Back To The Future, its worth checking out). In a fit of insanity I asked if it was too late to join in, was told it wasn’t so recorded my voice and a video of me miming the words and sent them along.

Here is the completed video that was released a couple of days ago:

(direct to YouTube)

You can hear me in a couple places where you don’t see me, particularly toward the very end. BTW Here are my original video & audio recordings (excuse the phone & doorbell in the audio, I didn’t hear them during playback as I had the backing track enabled which masked them out)

Anyway, related to this, is another video I ended up doing for Silverwolfpet. I had been going to bed the same day I recorded the above video but checked the TTG forum one last time (1am) and so a message from SWP asking if I could step in at the last moment for someone else. It was supposed to be hush hush but could I record some lines and actions. Having enjoyed the other recording I accepted and got my lines. I was supposed to be Doc from BTTF and needed to dress in something he might (hence the Hawaiian shirt and dressing gown, come on what else am I going to come up with at 2am).

It was slightly awkward as SWP needed me to yell, so off to the basement I went and recorded my stuff (a few times mind you) and half an hour later synced the video of the iPhone 4 (recorded of the front cam so I could see what the heck I was doing) and uploaded it for SWP.

The final result is this:

(direct to YouTube)

You’ll have to excuse the dreadful Doc Brown impression, give me a break it was 2 in the morning and I didn’t think to check YouTube for a BTTF clip with Doc Brown 🙂