When you watched Charlie Daniels with that fiddle, the dust was flying off the strings. He would flip that bow around like it was freaking Harry Potter’s wand. He was going into battle when he played and you would follow him anywhere. He was like a general up there. | | | | Ennio Morricone in Rome, July 3, 2017.
(Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | “When you watched Charlie Daniels with that fiddle, the dust was flying off the strings. He would flip that bow around like it was freaking Harry Potter’s wand. He was going into battle when he played and you would follow him anywhere. He was like a general up there.”
| | | | | | rantnrave:// Traditionally, the music is the last major element completed for a film, written and recorded, more often than not, after everyone else has finished shooting and editing. The picture dictates the score: the emotions, the rhythms, the milliseconds of timing, etc. The great Italian composer ENNIO MORRICONE was fond of working the other way, especially in his legendary collaborations with director SERGIO LEONE, who sometimes didn't start writing his scripts until Morricone handed over the music, as if he were writing video treatments for Morricone's strange symphonies, which he sort of was. "I’ve always felt that music is more expressive than dialogue," the director once said. "My best dialogue and screenwriter is Ennio Morricone." There could hardly be a more fitting epitaph for Morricone, who died Monday at age 91, leaving behind more than 500 film and TV scores. The music in those spaghetti westerns in which he first made his name is loud, memorably melodic, unusually (and beautifully) orchestrated with such instruments as guitars, whistles, flutes and ocarinas, and evocative of frontier landscapes that may not have existed until Morricone and Leone invented them. It's also evocative of the stories that take place there; you might well be able to follow the story of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY simply by sitting in darkness and listening to the music. His scores were not the type to slink into the background. "The best film music," he told the BBC in 1995, "is music that you can hear. Music you can’t hear, no matter how good, is bad film music." The spaghetti westerns established a particular reputation that followed Morricone for the rest of his career, straight through to QUENTIN TARANTINO's western THE HATEFUL EIGHT, for which he won his only competitive ACADEMY AWARD when he was well into his 80s—he had been handed his lifetime achievement Oscar a decade earlier, which is the reverse of how it usually works, but, again, he was fond of working the wrong way. But the hundreds of scores he wrote in between encompassed a classically broad range of styles, from the nostalgic CINEMA PARADISO to the Europeans-in-South-America culture clash of THE MISSION (considered by many to be his masterpiece) to the epic romantic sweep of Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. From jazz to pop to "one of the best albums of 1971." And so.much.more [<--this link is a treasure trove] music that, no matter where you are and no matter where it is, whether opening a METALLICA concert of sitting inside a JAY-Z song, you can most definitely hear. RIP... As a fiddler, CHARLIE DANIELS could outplay the devil, as he may have mentioned once or twice. As a session guitarist, he was in great demand by the likes of BOB DYLAN, LEONARD COHEN and RINGO STARR in the late '60s and early '70s. He played his way onto the GRAND OLE OPRY and into the COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME with a long career that bridged the worlds of country, country-rock, Southern rock, bluegrass, longhaired hippiedom and longbearded far-right conservatism, often in the course of a single night. He wrote "(WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS IS) A FEW MORE REDNECKS" and covered Dylan's "THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'" and was, by all appearances, sincere in both. "All these things, they're just all part of my life," he said. He was a hell of player. He used TWITTER for strange, perhaps indefensible, purposes. He was, to quote someone else on Twitter, "a complicated guy." RIP... RIP also MICKEY DIAGE—an advertising and marketing executive who spent her entire 40-year career at the CAPITOL RECORDS tower in Hollywood, working with the likes of FRANK SINATRA, the BEATLES and RADIOHEAD—NICK CORDERO, LOUIE PATTON, J. MARVIN BROWN, SHARON PAIGE and BILL FIELD. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Resident Advisor | | Matt McDermott speaks with Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond, HAUS Of ALTR head MoMa Ready and journalist Miles Bowe on the online record store that's changing underground music. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | Despite rosy predictions at the start of the year, new analysis from industry number-crunchers suggest labels may now see their global revenues decline in 2020. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Morricone was known for his scores for such films as "The Mission," "A Fistful of Dollars" and "The Hateful Eight," for which he won an Oscar in 2016. | | | |  | The Washington Post | | The composer’s powerful legacy includes ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ with an intro that moves us to tears. | | | |  | The Tennessean | | Charlie Daniels, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame who sang "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," recorded with Bob Dylan and was a vocal supporter of U.S. veterans, died Monday morning after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. He was 83. | | | |  | Medium | | If the Allman Brothers represented forward motion, Lynyrd Skynyrd appeared to represent a backlash to progression. Between these two extremes lay Charlie Daniels. | | | |  | Los Angeleno | | A music lover and a veteran music journalist discuss iconic Black guitarists from Prince and Tom Morello to Chuck Berry, Slash, Lenny Kravitz and more. | | | |  | Variety | | As the coronavirus pandemic triggered bans on large gatherings across the U.S., independent music and comedy venues were among the first to shut down. And per each state's guidelines, they'll be the among the very last to reopen. | | | |  | GQ | | The rapper's posthumous debut album 'Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon' is a reminder of what might have been. | | | |  | The Forty-Five | | As discussions around the return of live music begins, many are wondering how their anxiety will ever allow them to return to the gigs they once loved. | | | | | Rolling Stone | | Insiders say radio giant iHeartMedia and radio analytics company Mediabase are poised to remove the word, which has been controversial in industry-wide discussions around systemic racism. | | | |  | Essence | | As the revolutinary radio format celebrates 40 years, a look back at its creator Cathy Hughes and legendary host Melvin Lindsey. | | | |  | Texas Monthly | | Khruangbin draws from a vast palette of sounds and traditions, making them a quintessentially Texan band. | | | |  | MusicAlly | | The podcast economy boom is now so great that not only did Spotify pay $100m to secure the exclusive licensing deal for the enormously popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, news of the deal added more than $1bn to the streaming company’s market cap. | | | |  | Atlas Obscura | | Tupelo, birthplace of The King, is the global hub for aspiring Jailhouse Rockers. | | | |  | The Atlantic | | The industry has been proclaiming the importance of Black lives while hypocritically protecting alleged abusers. | | | |  | Beatportal | | Julia Toppin dives deep into the history of jungle and investigates the marginalization of women in the jungle and drum & bass scene. | | | |  | American Songwriter | | With recent news from Elliot Mintz and others who know her well that Yoko, who is 87 now, is not in great health, and rarely leaves her home at the Dakota, it seemed a good time to bring this. A two-part interview with her conducted in 1992. | | | |  | The New York Times | | Returning with a new band, Jarv Is, the onetime Pulp leader explains how David Bowie saved his life and why he can’t give up songwriting - yet. | | | |  | Music Industry Blog | | Labels are releasing an unprecedented volume and velocity of music to try to keep up with streaming – especially the majors. But it is a Sisyphean task, no matter how many times you roll that boulder up the hill, the next one needs rolling up all over again and the hill gets steeper every time. | | | |  | The Daily Beast | | The pioneering female rocker-and subject of the new documentary “Suzi Q”-writes about paving the way for other women and teaching skeptical men a lesson they’ll never forget. | | | | | The Washington Post | | In 1983, I joined the Columbia Record & Tape Club. I remain a cassette-carrying member. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Ennio Morricone conducing the Munich Radio Orchestra | | | | Composed for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966). | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
