OPENING TITLES - "Just the Music"
Just a note before I start. There is quite a lot to write about from Mark Kermode's Surround Sound. So as I did for Greg Doran's My Shakespeare, I will give each chapter it's own post. Mark starts at the beginning with his early years when he became interested in the music in films. Starting with 2001 and Silent Running. He says that in the latter, Joan Baez had two songs of which Rejoice in the Sun is his favourite movie soundtrack song of all time. So we gather that from a young age, Mark has always loved music in movies. He runs through many of his fvourite soundtracks, too many to mention.
Mark talks about his five years at Scala Radio and meeting Simon Mayo with whom he still works on their podcast. There is a section on female composers of film scores. One example is Eiko Ishibashi who scored the wonderful Drive my Car (2021). "My favourite soundtrack of that year, and one of the finest of the 21st century" says Mark.
This first chapter seems to be, as Mark puts it, "a seemingly endless list of composers". As he says "my own personal experience of film music is both scattershot and shambolic". (I would not argue with that given the first sixteen pages of the book). Better is the description of the racks of vinyl records at 58 Dean Street where it was "an education" for all those film soundtracks. (This is well before the internet). He goes on to talk more about his five years with Jenny Nelson at Scala Radio. Jenny presented Classic FM's "Saturday Night at the Movies".
But Mark's favoured brand of music was .... skiffle. (See posts of 28th February and 28th March 2018). He talks about Neil Brand and his "peerless ability" to perform improvised piano accompanyment for silent cinema, and who had joined Mark's skiffle group (The Dodge Brothers) to play for old movies at the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Finland. The band also had a gig at Glasonbury playing to a silent movie.
