Van Dyke Parks rides the range

[NightHider]

I was recently watching the Robert Duvall 2006 western BROKEN TRAIL and was surprised to see a music credit to Mr. Van Dyke Parks.  He did a real nice job capturing the sound of the west - wish it was available on CD.  In reveiewing his history at imdb, I see that he has been involved in more than 30 tv productions over the years.  I didn't know that. 

On a sidenote, I always felt Brian too would have been great at capturing the emotion needed to produce fantastic film scores and I continue find many similarities in the work of he and Ennio Morricone. 

While I know Brian had at least several tracks pitched to the studios that never really stuck,  I always wondered how  getting involved in film scoring might have changed the BB history by giving Brian some direction and confidence in his work when he most needed it.  Either way it was a real missed opportunity for the film industry...

[PS]

Van Dyke's scores are often very interesting and always have a little Song Cycley feel to them here and there (and, yes, they are very hard to find). Speaking of Westerns, I am particularly fond of his tracks for Wild Bill (which I was able to find, on a privately distributed limited edition release - the strings on the dream sequences are amazing) and Goin' South, his first. He worked for Jack again in The Two Jakes, in which he also appears. And I like his arrangements of Harry's songs in Popeye (which he also appeared in). Has anyone seen VDP in the Harry doc? I am also warming up to his interesting orchestral work on Joanna Newsom's YS (a great record), which I thought on first listenings might have been too overactive and mixed too loud in some places. Like the BW Suite, there is sometimes a too cloying use of what might be called a "Disney vibe"...

Brian and Morricone: yes! I've thought of this many times, particularly in terms of his unique orchestral color and odd combinations (Cabinessence verses, for example, could have been EM's) and his uncanny feel for the lost art of the perfect melody (and wordless vocals and backgrounds). The Morricone score that reminds me most of Brian is the highly idiosyncratic Giu la testa/ Fistful of Dynamite (aka Duck You Sucker). The "chomp chomp chomp" motif is pure Brian. I was very happy to see Morricone finally honored at this year's Oscars (though Clint really fumbled what should have been a graceful, fun and glorious presentation) - he has composed nearly 500 scores (!) in just about every genre. I consider him to be one of the 20th (and 21st) centuries greatest composers.

I believe that Terry Melcher once said something to the effect (and Bruce did as well) that Brian should have been given MacArthur-like "genius"grants to just go off and compose orchestral music pieces, apart from pop and commercial considerations. I often fantasize about what that might have been like (circa 67-71). And I have frankly been surprised over the years that he was not more interested in the coloristic and unique possibilities of combined timbres and alternative tunings of samplers and synthesizers as they arrived after the Moogs (and wasn't it Bernie Krause who did the interesting work on Cool Water?). BW's use of synths were, frankly, often very pedestrian, in terms of unique sounds and combinations. He grew up with the subtleties and the coloration of real (great) musicians playing real instruments, so I imagine that sampling just didn't cut it for him. But when I arrive at unique keyboard textures in my studio and start playing some BW-like riffs, I wonder why he just uses that Yamaha as a guard rail. Why wouldn't he want a Pro Tools HD set-up and racks of hard and softsynths, samplers, Altiverb, crazy plug-ins and a great programmer/engineer by his side, even just to get down ideas outside of his piano based composing - would he have been interested in these electronic possibilities if they were available in his Laurel Way/heady days? Would the Baldwin still have ruled the day (he obviously did pick on the unique use of the Theremin...)? Again, I surmise that having the sounds of real intruments and real chambers are where his ideas about color and space in sound had their foundation, and that's what has always stayed with him.