185. "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group, performed by Tomoyasu Hotei
The original version of "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group would not make the top 200. It's a good song, and I'll listen to it when it pops up on the radio, but there's a good chance I'll punch a radio button to see what else is playing. If a song parks the radio dial, there's a good chance it could make the top 200. But the Edgar Winter version of this song only makes me tap the brakes a little bit, not jam on the parking break. It just seems to be missing that extra level of UMPH! that I like to hear in my rock songs. For years I wanted to like this song because I had enjoyed watching Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster on the Friday night KID Cash Calls movie of the week. (I actually won $10 cash from the show!)
Give cash now!
I also LOVED the movie Young Frankenstein, even though I had been forced to watch it on a Halloween date my junior year in high school. During a church meeting, Ruth Christiansen found out that I'd never been kissed, and she was interested in being the first. Of course, and army date of 8 people watching Young Frankenstein in her basement with her mother in the room really was not the recipe for the level of romance needed for me to give up my membership in the Virgin Lips Club.
But all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s, I never really took to the "Frankenstein" song until I heard it the 00s played by the Japanese guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei. He came to my attention after I heard his excellent guitar work on "Battle Without Honor or Humanity"on the radio, which had been featured in the 2003 movie "Kill Bill." (Dumb movie. Smart song.) I decided that song was worth purchasing on iTunes, and as iTunes purchases tend to go, I also ended up sampling some of his other work, and ended up discovering this rock monster. Tomoyasu won't let me embed the video below, but here's the link to the song that he put up on the interwebs.
I've said a number of times that my goal as an instructional designer is to figure out how I can do to a college course what Tomoyasu did to this song--make it at least four times better than the original. Maybe if I listen to this song enough, I'll figure out his secret, and then I'll know how to design instruction that ROCKS!
"Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you!"
186. "The Theme to the Man from Snowy River" by Bruce Rowland
This song was on another movie soundtrack tape that Elder Boehm had when we were together in Östersund. On this top-200 list, it edges out "The Theme to Somewhere in Time" because it's from a movie that I actually saw about 6 times before my mission. Today, saying that you've seen a movie 6 times means you maybe saw it in the theater once and then 5 times on video after that. But that's not how things worked in the early 80s. Yes, VCRs were available in the early 80s, but they cost a bit of money, and my folks didn't buy one until after I left for Sweden in 1985. That meant if I liked a movie and wanted to see it more than once, I had to go to the theater to see it. Yes, the Downey Theater made literally tens of dollars off me in 1982 from the tickets, and a whole lot more off of my favorite movie-watching treat, Peanut M&Ms mixed with Cherry Nibs.
When Elder Boehm brought out this tape, I couldn't have been more excited. Because I'd seen it so much, I could imagine the movie scenes associated with the music. It was like I could watch the movie in my mind, and since watching movies was against the mission rules, listening to this soundtrack was the pinnacle of rule-abiding entertainment. It also had a nifty piano opening and goose-bumpy "Waltzing Matilda" trumpet parts in it. Elder Boehm knew I liked it so much that he gave me his soundtrack when I left Östersund, and I listened to it throughout my mission.
While a lot of people prefer "Jessica's Theme" as the top song from this soundtrack, I like the ending titles from the movie more because you can hear the trumpets playing the "Waltzing Matilda" part in it, which reminds me of how my father served a mission in Australia. Also, it brings back memories of how much my friends and I liked all things Australian in high school, especially Paul Hogan!
187. "The Theme to Somewhere in Time" by John Barry
I didn't see the movie "Somewhere in Time" in the theater when it came out in 1980, nor did I hear the song on the radio--at least that I can remember. I don't remember hearing any songs on the soundtrack until August of 1985. That's when, after the two most hellish months of my mission, I was rescued from insanity by Elder Boehm, who became my companion in Östersund. He had the soundtrack to the film on tape, and we listened to it a lot at night after tracting. Whenever I hear any of the songs from that soundtrack it instantly triggers very strong memories of my time in Östersund.
John Barry wrote a lot of outstanding music for the cinema, and is most notably credited for giving the James Bond movies their distinctive orchestral sound. I will admit the "Somewhere in Time" theme is probably not his best work, but it is still very good. The same can be said for the movie--it isn't the best work of Christoffer Reeves or Jane Seymour, but it's still a solid movie, especially for one featuring mental time-traveling as a plot device, something that at its core is kind of a stupid idea for a movie, don't you think?
188. "The Fountains of Rome - 4. The Villa Medici Fountain at Sunset" by Ottorino Respighi
If you like flying-floating songs, this classical orchestral piece will blow your MIND! Erik played it for one of his regional orchestral concerts, and I thought it was the most beautiful songs I'd ever heard him take part in performing. It is the song I hope to hear when I die and my spirit floats up into heaven.
Of course, I realize I'm making a very big and probably false assumption that the direction I'll be going after death is up, not down. But I hold out hope that there's a chance that some miracle might happen, and I'll die performing an act that is so altruistic and heroic that it will make up for a lifetime of crappy behavior. My reward will be hearing this song as my spirit separates from my body and rises through the sky until I'm greeted by female angels in white robes that smile at me and speak Swedish and offer me plates filled with different types of "bullar," which are Swedish rolls/buns that taste like this song sounds.
Swedish angels! Wait…did I just die?
Luciabullar! Saffron-scented bread shaped in the letter S (for Santa Lucia) and accented by two raisins.
Kanelbullar! Just the smell of these cinnamon buns will let me know I'm in heaven.
Most musicians want two things for playing their music: money and awards. "Maple Leaf Rag" is the only song that I ever played that got me both.
Mom and Dad insisted that I take piano lessons while I was in elementary school. I'm not sure why I wasn't able to whine my way out of it or why my poor playing didn't discourage them. I played mediocre at best at the piano recitals and the Lava Hot Springs nursing home performances. "Daren, you have to practice that piece until you memorize it! You don't want to embarrass yourself in front of all those ancient gomers in Lava that have Alzheimers and can't remember anything at all, much less your memorized piano piece! Now practice for an hour a day for the next month until you can play it right!"
Fortunately, the lessons tapered off after Dad volunteered me to the Bishop to play the hymns in the opening priesthood meeting every week. Chad Cole had been the priesthood pianist for as long as I could remember, but he was about to graduate, and they needed a replacement. The first hymn I learned to play was "Sweet Hour of Prayer," because it's pretty slow and four of the five lines are almost exactly the same, which makes it one of the easiest hymns to play. And I played it repeatedly week after week until Dad complained about it, and he forced me to learn other hymns. I never did become good at playing any of the hymns. Few were mistake-free and played at the right tempo. But because I had to prepare to play a hymn every week, my piano playing did improve over the years, and I'd dabble from time to time with the sheet music my folks bought for my sisters to play. One book they bought was a Reader's Digest version of classic songs. Like any other Reader's Digest product, the songs had been shortened and simplified. But they still sounded good to me, and I liked to play a few of them because they either sounded really funny or sounded so serious that they had some comical value when played at the right moment--like the "Funeral March."
No other song in the Reader's Digest book had more show-off potential than "Maple Leaf Rag." It sounds like something that would be played as the background to a Charlie Chaplin silent film in which hilarious things keep happening to the Little Tramp. I remember playing it for the Hatch and Nielsen clan one summer, and they seemed mildly entertained by it, so I kept practicing it until I memorized the opening part and could play it at breakneck speed. Little did I know that this was the song that would be the one that would earn me a pocket portrait of a dead president.
I got the gig to play the song one day when my father complained about how the Bishop and his counselors and a lot of the other priesthood brethren were coming in late to the opening exercises. Now, nothing in the world incites the wrath of Earl like starting a church meeting late. I suggested in jest that maybe I should play "Maple Leaf Rag" to put a little pep in their step so that they'd get into the chapel faster. To my surprise, my father thought it was a great idea, and promised to pay me $20 if I played it in church that week as a priesthood prelude song. That may not seem like a lot of money now, but the internet's inflation calculator tells me that $20 in 1980 is worth the same as $61.23 in 2015. And that's pretty good pay for what I knew would be about 1 minute of piano playing.
When priesthood meeting came around, I plopped my Reader's Digest book on the piano music stand and started to play "Maple Leaf Rag" as fast as I could. Dale Hatch was the first to run into the chapel. He reached me at about the same time that the Bishop came through the chapel doors. I like Dale a lot, so I was a bit embarrassed that he was the one that told me to stop playing, but I really wanted that $20, so I kept at it. He quickly removed the book from the stand thinking that would end it, but I just kept playing my memorized piece. He then closed the keyboard cover, which ended the performance. I heard my Dad laughing in the audience and say loudly, "Maybe that will get everyone in the chapel to start the meeting on time!" The bishopric was not amused. They gave me a bit of a tongue-lashing right then at the piano, and I apologized and promised not to play it anymore, and I think I then played "Sweet Hour of Prayer" for the opening song. I got additional tongue-lashings by the bishopric after the meeting ended. And I was relieved of my piano-playing responsibilities for a few weeks after that. In particular, Dale was pretty disgusted with my behavior. But then Dale found out (probably from Ivalue via Chris) that my father had promised to pay me $20 for the stunt. After that, he understood my motivations a little better and forgave my insolent behavior towards him, and actually chuckled about the incident as we talked about it later in life.
The award for my playing came at the end of my senior year in high school. I needed to play or sing a song as part of the musical talent portion of the Mz. Marsh Valley pageant. I selected a medley of songs to play, including "Maple Leaf Rag" on the piano, "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips" on the ukelele, and "The Rose" on the tuba. I figured that it would look really funny for me to play "Maple Leaf Rag" really fast while wearing a dress.
When I made my way to the piano during the pageant, I tried my best to look ladylike as I descended the stairs in front of the stage. As I did, Doug Armstrong--one of my distant cousins on the Armstrong side of the family--was sitting in the second or third row by the piano bench, and he yelled out, "Hey gorgeous! How about a date!" A number of people in the audience laughed out loud at this, but I didn't react to him. I just took my time in sitting down at the bench and opening the keyboard cover while the laughter died out. I then put my fingers on the keys of the piano, turned my head to look at Doug straight in the eye, and in a loud, high-pitched lady-like voice said, "Fresh!" The audience roared in laughter, and a few second later I started pounding my way through "Maple Leaf Rag" as fast as my fingers would fly. I remember hearing some of the people up front go from laughing to gasping. Their reaction was like, "Woah! Daren can play the piano like that without any music?!"
The rest of my musical performance went well. My falsetto impression of Tiny Tim was well-received, and my emptying of the tuba spit valve got the gross-out "Eeeewww!" response I was hoping for. (I'd put a half cup of water in the tuba just to make sure it looked like a lot of spit was being emptied out on the stage floor.) The crowd's reaction after I blasted out the final low notes on "The Rose" was exactly what I had been searching for my entire school career as a class clown--laughter mixed with cheering mixed with applause. It was extremely satisfying and was everything I had hoped to get out of the competition.
I think my performance, especially the Maple Leaf Rag piece, exhibited enough musical talent for the judges to award me the grand prize--the Mz. March Valley trophy. I was a bit stunned at the end of the pageant when they gave it to me. My vote was for Sheldon because his trombone piece was excellent and he could also play music by just blowing into his hands! His hands were literally a musical instrument! Doesn't anyone else think that is worthy of the grand prize?! I really wasn't trying to compete for the Mz. Marsh Valley like some of the other guys. Like Sheldon, I entered the contest to just to see if we could make people involuntarily laugh so hard that snot would fly out of their noses. I didn't even wear a wig like the others because I thought I would look more hideously comical if I just had really short blonde curls instead of long flowing hair. I remember that some of the other guys (not Sheldon) looked really disappointed in the dressing room after the show, and the girls they had helping them were actually crying because they didn't win. I felt kind of bad because I really didn't want to win it. I only wanted to make people laugh. But such are the vagaries of beauty pageants. Sometimes the ugliest and least-talented ones will win.
For the last five years or so, I've been toying with the idea for a movie screenplay in which the protagonist is a man in his 50s that works as a DJ at a "Classic Rock" radio station. One day he is called into the boss's office and is told that the station management has decided that in 6 weeks they will switch to a format that features "adult" contemporary music that is really targeted to the 13-to-21 audience. The protagonist responds in anger and goes into a tirade about how all of these Taylor Swift wannabes have no talent or intelligence at all and shouldn't be allowed to drive, much less make music. At that point, he suddenly passes out. He is rushed to the hospital by his boss, and when he awakes, the doctor tells him that he has a very advanced case of brain cancer. The doctor says that the only way he will live is if he goes through a series of experimental treatments involving radiation and very precise robot-assisted brain surgery. As with many brain surgeries, this surgery is done while he is conscious and able to communicate with the surgical staff. During the surgeries, he has some very vivid experiences in which he hears songs that transport him back to a time that he associates with the music. He imagines that he's interacting with people from that time, which he does to try to make sense of his life choices and find meaning in the things he has done with his life. The song the protagonist hears during his first surgery is "We've Only Just Begun," which takes him back to the early 70s when he was just a boy.
I chose that song to be the first in the story for three reasons. First, Karen Carpenter's voice is so incredible that it is a little beyond belief that she was able to sound so good without any electronic sweetening in the sound booth. But the live version of the song in the video above shows that it's all genuinely her.
Second, the lyrics of the song express a wonderful mix of love and hope and belonging. I usually don't cotton to songs with such a sweet message. But Karen's voice is so beautiful, and the way she sings it is so sincere, I can't help but think, "Maybe there is reason to hope!"
Third, the song came out in 1970, and triggers a lot of those early 70s memories of being with my family, and when we'd hear this song or other Carpenter songs on the radio my older sisters would turn it up and say, "Be quiet! This is a good song!" While "Close to You" was a much bigger hit for The Carpenters, and I like it very much too, I like the piano and trumpet parts on this song more. And that's another thing that will get songs on the top 200 list--good piano or trumpet parts.
Well, that's the beginning of my movie script--a big lead-in to this song, during which the protagonist has his first flashback/time-travel experience. For this scene, the protagonist watches his mother dance with the boy's stepfather at their wedding reception. In the middle of the song, the "little girl next door"--who is about a year older--comes over and makes the boy dance with her, too. The girl tells the boy that its a good thing for his mom to get married after the death of the boy's dad last year. The girl assures him to not worry about the new stepfather, because she lives next door and she'll keep an eye on him and make sure that the man treats the boy and his mother well. Then the boy's mother cuts in and dances with the boy during the last part of the song.
Okay, enough of the storyline for the movie. I just have one other thing to say in praise of Karen Carpenter. Her talent with music went well beyond her mesmerizing voice. She could also play them drums damn good! Here's a video featuring Karen playing drums…a lot of drums…more drums than you have probably ever seen on a single television program. Also, she somehow manages to magically clone herself in the middle of the drum solo--a feat that the audience applauds--and then turn it into a drum duet. But don't worry, she merges with her sister-clone at the end, thus helping us avoid a number of extremely difficult philosophical quandaries about the nature of the Self. Oh, and keep your eyes pealed for a guest appearance by a very sexist John Denver!
191. "Rock Around the Clock" by Max Freedman and James Myers (Jimmy De Knight)
We played it too loud. We played it too fast. We played it our own way without paying any attention to the band leader. It was the perfect pep band song.
It was exhilarating to be immersed in the moment of performance and feel the energy of the band flow out into the audience. We rocked this song like no other. And that's saying something. Because we played a lot of songs very well, including…
The Peter Gunn Theme
I never saw a single episode of Peter Gunn, but DANG! This theme song is good!
The Stripper
I originally thought that I remembered Sheldon stripping to "Night Train." But I was reminded that it was really this song that had people in the audience wondering, "Why is that trombone player wearing long gloves?"
Don't Stop Believin'
I think Banyas got a guy to write an arrangement of this song for us. I doubt anyone else has the same one. That means we're special.
Eye of the Tiger
The wrestlers loved this one, too. It is a worthy successor to the Theme from Rocky, and the only reason it didn't make this list is because it had lyrics, so I didn't listen to it on my mission. But there are very few pep band songs that ooze raw determination and sheer guts like this one.
The Tide is High
Why we ever started playing this song as a pep band song is a mystery to me. Apparently, we were running low on reggae. But it had some very nice parts for both trumpet and trombone, and that's enough reason for me to play it.
Celebration
People loved this song, and it was always fun to play it, except when we were in the middle of the song and the opposing team scored a touchdown, and we'd end up playing in celebration of the rival's domination of our own team. "Yeah! We're losing! Waaaah-HOO!"
Bugler's Dream (Olympic Theme)
The opening part of this song is a goose-bumping bugle call that we played in many a concert.
The Raider's Theme from Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark
A whip-crackin' movie theme for the trumpeters.
The Theme from Star Trek the Motion Picture (the first one)
Dammit, Jim!
When the Saints Go Marching In
Loved playing this one like Louis!
Okay. It's kind of a cheat to list so many pep band songs that I love that are NOT listed in the top 200, but they certainly deserve honorable mention. Without these to round out our playlist, people would have gotten really bored hearing us play the top 10 over and over and over.
Playing in the school band for 7 years gave me an appreciation for music that I don't think I would have ever developed without that experience. Today, I can hear a song--especially movie themes and rock songs with a little brass in them--and think, "What would it be like to play this song?" and I'll get goosebumps just imagining what it would have been like to play it in front of a crowd with all of my friends in the band playing with me.
