Tag: John Barry

  • Movie Sequel Clones

    A special brand of clones are movie theme songs. Or more precisely sequel theme songs. Often film studios exploit a sequel as “the same film but with more explosions”, likewise they give the soundtrack the same treatment for a quick cash in. And like you try to keep the characters the same, you want to keep the audio backdrop the same and recognisable. Sampling, covering, a tribute and some times blatantly stealing become justified.

    The most famous and often cloned song are obviously the James Bond opening songs. Don’t confuse these with John Barry’s James Bond theme song however, since this usually precedes the opening credits. No, the big epic songs by famous musicians usually have a distinct style that not only use the same instrumentation but often roughly the same build-up. Compare You Only Live Twice (1967) by Nancy Sinatra and The World Is Not Enough (1999) by Garbage for instance. It should be noted that, though performed by a wide range of artists, all of the recent themes are the work of composer David Arnold and the Bond films are heavily formula driven.

    While the first Rocky film from 1976 has a signature theme song by Bill Conti (Gonna Fly Now), the band Survivor did the theme song for Rocky III in 1982; Eye of the Tiger. When Survivor got asked to also do the music to Rocky IV in 1985, the composed a similar song in composition and feel: Burning Heart. When the job of composing the soundtrack for Rocky V in 1990 came to some one else, the first thing you notice in the track by Joey B. Ellis is the fact that it indirectly samples Eye of the Tiger again in Go For It while the style of the track is very similar to The Power also from 1990 by Snap. Snap was also on the full soundtrack of Rocky V.

    Like with Rocky, theme songs often get updated to fit the current popular style of music. When the original Ghostbusters film from 1984 got a sequel in 1989 with Ghostbusters II, the theme song from the original, Ray Parker jr.’s Ghostbusters, got a hiphop treatment by Run DMC also titled simply Ghostbusters. The original Mission: Impossible theme song to the 1960’s tv-show fitted perfectly in its time with the James Bond-style spy tune. When it got made into a film in the 1996, the Mission: Impossible theme was quickly adapted by U2’s Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen to a more electronic version. When Limp Bizkit got to do it in 2000 their song Take a Look Around again borrows from the original but with a totally different spin.

    The list of example is endless. Feel free to comment about the ones you know, love or despise.

  • Sneaker Pimps – 6 Underground

    Sometimes I use this weekly column as an excuse to point out a song I love. The Sneaker Pimps scored a few hits in the mid-nineties. Most notable of those is the song 6 underground from 1996. The song itself leans heavily on a sample from the soundtrack of the 1964 film Goldfinger by James Bond-composer John Barry, however it’s not the epic main-theme from Goldfinger that featured Shirley Bassey.

    The other prominent sample is the “a 1-2, a 1-2”. That comes from De La Soul’s Breakadawn from 1993 and that track contains a ton of samples: A Quiet Storm (1975) by Smokey Robinson, Sang and Dance by the Bar-Kay’s  (1970), I can’t help it (1979) by Michael Jackson and Yes We Can Can (1973) by the Pointer Sisters. Of course the irony here is that the Sneaker Pimps used a tiny part of the lyrics of that song that De La Soul had written themselves.

  • Fatboy Slim – the Rockafeller Skank

    I’ve touched upon the work of Fatboy Slim before. I actually don’t want to devote too many posts in this series to him (or Daft Punk or DJ Shadow for that matter), because that could go on forever. Suffice it to say, most of Norman Cook‘s work consists of copy-pasting other people’s work together to form something new, without actually adding any instruments or vocals himself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it can be annoying if you keep digging up the exact same originals.

    Take the massive 1998 hit The Rockafella Skank. If I say “Right about now …”, you say “the funk soul brother”! Cause you know the song. Or do you know the intro Lord Finesse did in 1997 on the song Vinyl Dog Vibe by The Vinyl Dogs? Cause that’s where the lines come from.

    You’ll also instantly recognise the Just Brothers’ Sliced Tomatoes from 1965 in the song.  In ’65 it was just a B-side, but it got promoted to single in 1973. And then it got sampled.

    Years before that, in 1960, a film entitled Beat Girl came out.  Apart from now legendary actor Christopher Lee, it also featured opening music by the John Barry Orchestra. Which you will also recognise as part of The Rockafeller Skank. If you think that tune sounds a lot like the guitar riff on James bond, you would be right. John Barry also scored the first James Bond film Dr. No two years later in 1962, even though it is credited to Monty Norman for legal reasons.

    That leaves one more sample: The Art of Noise’s version of Peter Gunn from 1986. The irony here is that The Art of Noise were pioneers in the use of samples. Not only is Peter Gunn a cover from the theme by Henry Mancini (who also did the Pink Panther theme) the late 1950’s detective series, it also uses a sample by Malcolm McLaren, though you got to listen really hard to hear that.

    So as you can understand, Idon’t really like to dig too much into Norman Cook’s back catalogue, cause it just becomes a very long who’s who in sampling history. All the samples put together and you get The Rockafeller Skank:

    (original video can’t be embeded sadly)