Soundtrack Saturday

It's nearly the end of July so we're seven months into Soundtrack Saturday and I've not yet posted anything by Ennio Morricone, the composer, orchestrator and musician who is possibly the greatest film score/ soundtrack artist of all. Just listing some of his film works shows his importance and range- all of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, The Thing, The Mission, The Untouchables, Cinema Paradiso, The Battle of Algiers, Days Of Heaven, various Tarantino films, Once Upon A Time In America.... 

It is his scores for Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy that made him a household name, startling and instantly recognisable pieces of music that are as much part of the three films as any of the actors, scenery or action. The budgets were tight and there were insufficient funds for a full orchestra. Instead Morricone made use of sound effects (whip cracks, gunshots, whistling, voices) and unlikely instruments (Jew's harps, Fender guitars) to soundtrack the three Spaghetti Westerns- 1964's A Fistful Of Dollars, 1965's For A Few Dollars More and 1966's The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. It's probably fair to say more people have heard the theme tune and know the music than have seen all three films. They used to be classic late night television. I lapped them up, watching them over and over. Leone's films and dialogue and Morricone's soundtrack music crossed over into pop culture and music, sampled and borrowed/ stolen far and wide. 

This is a twenty five minute mix of music from Ennio Morricone's Dollars Trilogy, eight Morricone Spaghetti Western pieces plus a surprise cover version at the end. It may be among the most atmospheric and original twenty five minutes of music you press play on today. 

Twenty Five Minutes Of Ennio Morricone's Dollars Trilogy

• Watch Chimes (Carillon's Theme)
• The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
• A Fistful Of Dollars
• For A Few Dollars More
• Chapel Shoot Out
• The Ecstasy Of Gold
• The Strong
• Father Ramirez
• The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

The cover version at the end is Wythenshawe guitar slingers Johnny Marr and Billy Duffy in 1992 paying tribute to the famous guitar lines from the soundtrack to the film of the same name, recorded for an album in 1992 called Ruby Trax, commissioned, compiled and released to mark the fortieth birthday of the NME. 

What Do I Get Out Of This?

Wythenshawe Park, 70 acres of green, open space in South Manchester with a 16th century half- timbered hall and statue of Oliver Cromwell at its centre, played host to a 30, 000 capacity gig headlined by New Order on Saturday. Nadine Shah who kicked things off in fine style, her band playing repetitive, crunching post- punk/ indie rock with Nadine's theatrical, huge voice the c point.  Greatest Dancer from this year's Filthy Underneath was a highlight, booming out in the late afternoon sunshine. Having spoken passionately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, she spends the last few minutes of the final song screaming the word 'ceasefire' into the mic as the band kicked up a glorious racket, before leaving the stage to squeals of feedback. 

Roisin Murphy is on shortly after, a singer with connections to Manchester- she lived here during the late 80s and early 90s. Her set is a well honed and highly entertaining forty minutes of dance music and costume changes, Roisin the queen of Wythenshawe Park. 

One outfit has her wearing a massive oversized, square biker jacket, another a black top hat and robes with a life size model of a baby on a necklace which she ignores until the instrumental break at which point she stands centre stage cuddling it. Later on she is bedecked in a giant, head- to - toe red frill. Her songs sound equally impressive, Moloko's The Time Is Now getting a rework and Incapable from 2020's Machine both stand out, the latter a long extended disco- house groove. Sing It Back is fused with Murphy's Law and she closes her set by sauntering through Can't Replicate and then having a huge amount of fun with an onstage camera that is feeding directly onto the big screen behind her, finishing with an extreme close up of the inside of her mouth.

Incapable

Local lad Johnny Marr takes the stage at 7.30, the venue filling up. Johnny grew up round here- 'Wythenshawe Park, Saturday night', he says between songs with a rueful grin. Johnny and his band are on it from the start, electrifying and plugged in to the crowd, playing eleven songs that span his career, from The Smiths to Electronic to his solo albums. Second song in he plays the clanging riff that intros Panic and we're putty in his hands. Generate is sparky post- punk pop. This Charming Man sends the crowd into a spin, dancing and singing the words from a song he wrote with a man from Stretford forty years ago back at him. 

In the middle of the set he switches to acoustic guitar and plays Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, a long finger picking introduction before singing it very sweetly. I have a bit of a moment during this song, tears and everything, something that has been happening to me a gigs since Isaac died. He follows Please, Please, Please... by introducing another Wythenshawe lad, 'the king of the Wythenshawe guitarists' according to Johnny, Billy Duffy to the stage and they drive into How Soon Is Now, Billy finding space for a Cult- like guitar solo as Johnny and the band shimmer and surge through the song.

The final pair of songs are equally crowd pleasing- first Electronic's 1989 single, the sublime pop of Getting Away With It (Bernard doesn't appear to sing this with him alas) and then the mass singalong of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, a song that despite the doom- laden lyrics with death arriving by being crushed by ten ton trucks and double decker busses, is a song of optimism and survival, an anthem for the young and not- so- young everywhere. 

Getting Away With It

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Prior to New Order's appearance DJ Tin Tin raises the temperature with a set of songs, played from a table and decks set up at the front of the stage with A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This sounding great as the sun went down. Then, five minutes of dry ice, films of gymnasts and divers and orchestral music pave the way for New Order. It's dark by now, the lights on, the stage dramatic and dark, as Bernard walks to the centre and straps on his guitar. The venue is rammed by now. We have a spot down the front to the right. They open with Academic from 2015's Music: Complete and then go into Crystal (the highlight of 2001's Get Ready, a post- reformation song that showed they still had what it takes). The crowd have come from near and far. Half of Manchester seems to be here, teenagers and sixty- somethings. The two young men next to us have flown in from Cologne specifically to see New Order who according to our new German friends 'never come to Germany'.

From there, the next run of songs is close to perfect. All the idiosyncrasies, fragilities and temperamental equipment of 1980s New Order are long gone- this is a fully fleshed out, massive sounding hits machine with backing projections, smoke and lasers. Regret. Age Of Consent. Ceremony with Gillian switching from keys to guitar. Isolation, a Joy Division song containing one of Ian Curtis' darkest lyrics set to urgent, pummeling electronic post- punk. Then, slowing things down slightly, Your Silent Face. They play a couple of recent songs (Be A Rebel, the song with the most un- New Order song title ever) and then a superb, sky- scraping Sub- culture, 1985's Lowlife song/ single, the instant hit of the keyboard line, Stephen's drums and Bernard's words about 'walking in the park when it gets late at night' and having to submit filling Wythenshawe's space completely. 

Sub- culture

Bizarre Love Triangle (possibly their greatest single) seguing into Vanishing Point (possibly their greatest album track) and True Faith (again, possibly their greatest single). Blue Monday. Temptation (possibly... oh you know). It's all about the songs and the feelings they provoke. 

The encore is a Joy Division mini- set, Ian's face projected onto the screen behind them, the presence that is always hovering somewhere around the band. Atmosphere. Transmission. Love Will Tear Us Apart. 

Transmission (Live at Les Bains Douche, December 1979)

They've come a very long way since crawling out of the wreckage of Joy Division, from their faltering debut as New Order at The Beach Club in Withy Grove to this massive gig at Wythenshawe Park. They've made groundbreaking records, done it their own way, survived record company collapses, bankruptcy, the demolition of nightclubs, deaths, break ups and fall outs. Tony Wilson once said that Joy Division/ New Order were 'the last true story in rock 'n' roll'. It felt that way on Saturday night in a way, more than just a big gig, a band and an audience who have grown up together, whose songs mean so much to each other and who had come home. 

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Johnny Marr and Billy Duffy were mates from Wythenshawe, south Manchester before either of them got famous. Billy, a few years older, sold Johnny his first amp and gave him a pink shirt stuffed in the back of the amp that Johnny had been pestering him about. Marr formed The Smiths (Duffy having introduced him a couple of years earlier to Morrissey at a Patti Smith gig at the Apollo). Duffy became guitar-slinger in The Cult. The picture above shows the pair reunited in 1990 backstage at a Depeche Mode gig at a baseball stadium in L.A. Electronic were about to play support, despite not having worked out how all the songs went. The pair recorded a cover version of Ennio Morricone's famous spaghetti western theme in 1992 for an NME cassette celebrating the music paper's 40th birthday, the two duelling it out over a drum machine.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Breaking Rocks In The Hot Sun

Today, from 11 til 2, I shall be manning the book stall at Park Road Nursery's summer fair. Not exactly breaking rocks I know. And the weather forecast for M33 is for heavy rain and not hot sun. Last year the big sellers on the stall were various celebrity autobiographies in hardback (prices ranged from 30p to 50p depending on my judgement), a book on pond care and a dvd boxed set of five Steven Seagal films. But that was very much just the tip of the iceberg. The Quakers, Park Road, Sale- pop in if you're free, say hello and leave with some quality literature.

I Fought The Law is one of the great rock 'n' roll songs, written by Sonny Curtis and The Crickets. I'm not sure The Bobby Fuller Four's version has been bettered- as Paul Simonon pointed out, it's the way those guitar chords are so 'light and feathery'. I played this at a mate's wedding and it went down a storm. Bobby Fuller met a very sticky end, found dead in his car with foul play suspected though the verdict was suicide.

I Fought The Law

The Clash's version is superb- from Topper's opening salvo through to Joe's impassioned delivery. The breakdown on the line 'robbing people with a -dum, dum, blum, blum, blum, blum- six gun' is especially thrilling. This live version is The Clash at their most black-clad glorious. Best bit- when the three man front line step up to the mics in sync to bawl out the opening line.



It's been covered endlessly, the 60s girl group version by The She Trinity being one of my favourites ('He fought the law and the law won'). Most recently Johnny Marr has been encoring with it and doing it very well too. As evidenced here in San Francisco, along with fellow former Wythenshawe resident Billy Duffy.