sometime

MOJO's Top 100 Soundtracks of All Time List (via *.*)

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Comments: sometime

I was keeping that poll a secret. Actually, I don't know why.
Posted by Tony.T at February 2, 2005 03:02 PM

It caught my eye because of Ipcress.

Interesting choices, but once again "all time" seems small time.
Where is Steiner? Under construction maybe.
Posted by boynton at February 2, 2005 03:10 PM

I've found a good soungtrack CD to be excellent writing music. You've got 40 minutes or more of music ebbing, flowing, waxing and waning around a prevailing theme, without demanding the focus of a symphony but delivering a more coherent and sustained mood than 10 or so seperate songs.

My current writing faves are the soundtracks to "Chinatown", "Bladerunner", "Once Upon A Time In Aamerica" (Did you know Leone and Morricone went to primary school together?) and "Barbarella"- which is playing now. The Bob Crewe Generation Orchestra rocks my commentating world.

Now I need to go away and put on the "Master and Commander" soundtrack while I polish the wording of Victoria's bid for the SEA 4000 Air Warfare Destroyer contract.
Posted by Nabakov at February 2, 2005 10:37 PM

Alas, I've never been able to write (or read) while listening to any music of any genre at all. Silence.

If I could, M&C would be up there. There's a bit of Bach as I recall?
Posted by boynton at February 2, 2005 11:28 PM

Rilly? Write in silence?

Does not compute for me. I need music, a view, animals underfoot. In fact the more distractions the better, Anything to postpone cracking open that empty screen.

Why this comment alone has just put me off writing about compenent supply chains for Tenix Williamstown for another 150 seconds, while also listening to Led Zep III and getting cat fur on my ankles.
Posted by Nabakov at February 3, 2005 12:06 AM

animals underfoot: yep. (the more labrador-like the better. A terrier is too brainy and watchful. A blue heeler's pointy ears will always distract)

A view? Jury's out on that. I've read of writers getting neurotic about minimising distraction to the point of incarceration. But I do like space and light. Sun.

But Silence.

(well- the snore of a sonorous labrador was fine)

Painting/drawing/jigsaw on the other hand, needs music - and enhances listening to the nth.
I'll keep soundtracks in mind.

Posted by boynton at February 3, 2005 12:23 AM

Y'know, its intriguing that every chat I've had with a proper-like writer (including perhaps one day m'self), and every good book I've read by writers about writers, very rapidly moves on from talking about what and why you write to how you write.

Real nuts, bolts and roots stuff. Do you set a task of 500 words a day regardless? Do you do six months research and six months writing? Do you plot it out graphically first? Longhand or word processor? Do you revise yesterday's output daily or only once you have a good draft. How do you edit a 8th draft? Work at home or rent an office?

Perhaps it's because it's such a solitary yet potentially fertile occupation, that so many writers who are serious wanna talk about the tools and not the garden. Screw the rainfall, come into my shed.

And that's another 240 seconds of postponing my paid writing work.
Posted by Nabakov at February 3, 2005 12:56 AM

The Ipcress File music. It still makes the small hairs stand on end.

I can only have ambient stuff on when I work. Brian Eno's 'Discreet Music' is noodling away as I type this.
Posted by Dick at February 3, 2005 10:39 AM

It's quite a strange phenomenon, Nab, when you think about it, or lacking in essential phenomenology. I wonder how much of the genre is actually enlightening or useful.
(Though I might study a Popular Mechanics Guide to World Literature, his nibs discussed earnestly.)

I must seek out a Barry CD, Dick. I heard a bit of it at that other site and sounds fantastic.

It's a shame but I can't even have ambient.
Posted by boynton at February 3, 2005 01:20 PM

I'm with Nabakov. I mostly blog to music. Especially soundtracks. Barry and Morricone in the main. But Elmer Bernstein and Lalo Shifrin also go good.

There's a coincidence, Dick. I was listening to Brian Eno this morning. Another Green World followed by Taking Tiger Mountain. Then Roxy Music's Siren.

PS: Fish or bird?
Posted by Tony.T at February 3, 2005 04:07 PM

I'd say bird, if I understood the question.

I'm sure I read once a study that showed concentration levels are highest with silence...
(mentioned in the best fox "People Say" tradition")
It certainly confirmed my prejudice/incapcity anyway ;)

Who knows - it could be that a soundtrack, for the reasons outlined by N, is the most compatible genre for thinking work?

But then a nice bit of birdsong would be ok too, I imagine.
Posted by boynton at February 3, 2005 04:39 PM

"Then Roxy Music's Siren."

Snap! Listening to it right now.

A nearby CD shop had a post new year sale so I filled some more gaps in my record to CD transition, and picked up a bunch of Roxy Music albums (along with Led Zep, Iggy Pop, Elgar, Delius, Duke Ellington and Peter Sellars) that I haven't really heard in their entireity since they came in vinyl.

I'd quite forgotten there was more to "Siren" than "Love Is The Drug" (and the footsteps still sound cool on the intro) - like "Both Ends Burning" and "She Sells".

But "For Your Pleasure" is my favourite bit of Roxyarama. In fact, that whole Roxy Music/Eno/Manzanera/Fripp axis is one of my favourite art rock clusters.

Gotta go now, The Bogus Man is here to blow up my body.
Posted by Nabakov at February 3, 2005 09:22 PM