{"id":2068,"date":"2011-03-13T00:51:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T05:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2015-09-25T20:42:29","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T00:42:29","slug":"main-title-blow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=2068","title":{"rendered":"A Brief Glimpse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

A Brief Glimpse<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Main Title to Blow-Up<\/em> by Herbie Hancock (1966), encountered 1967<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a>\u00a0| See Bobby Hutcherson cover of music with stills here<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My mother\u2019s diary reports that I first saw Blow-Up<\/em> on Saturday, February 25, 1967 with my friend Keith, and again with my best buddies Stefan and Walter the following Saturday.\u00a0 It was far from unheard-of for me to see a movie more than once, but this one really seized my imagination \u2013 and my ear.\u00a0 I\u2019m betting I dragged Stefan and Walter.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the imaginative front, as I recorded in my journal, I responded to Michelangelo Antonioni\u2019s movie because it was Continental in sensibility, there was gorgeous photography, I liked the surrealism, and, oh yes, there was this bit about the \u201csexual candor,\u201d as I labeled it.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve already mentioned<\/a>, I\u2019d seen some on-screen nudity the preceding year with Dear John<\/em>, and now there was this: Vanessa Redgrave topless, and David Hemmings romping on purple paper with Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, plus Sarah Miles making love.\u00a0 But if this movie was largely about sex, it sure wasn\u2019t about intimacy.\u00a0 Call it the anti-Dear John<\/em> in that department.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\"Source:<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In what seemed like a panoramic view of the Swinging London of that era, it seemed that intimacy, accountability, reality itself, had all gone missing.\u00a0 The conversations were truncated and stripped of context, people only\u00a0had sex with people they didn\u2019t like, and the meaning of everything seemed to be constantly shifting.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to play faux na\u00eff<\/em>; I\u2019d been seeing other films with that hard, disenchanted European perspective.\u00a0 But this seemed to nail it down.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was personally quite the optimist, and didn\u2019t subscribe to that outlook myself, but I was braced by the exposure to it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 More important was the music. I walked home whistling the main title theme. \u00a0I\u2019d recently become a member of one of the record clubs that were popular then \u2013 I think the Columbia Record Club.\u00a0 This was one of my selections. \u00a0I must have listened to that yellow-covered LP dozens of times.\u00a0 I still have it today.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The big draw, of course, was the main title and the rest of the source music and score by Herbie Hancock.\u00a0 Unbeknownst to me, Hancock was providing me a brief (far too brief) glimpse of the main current of jazz at that moment: modal jazz.\u00a0 If you listen to that main title, at least as rendered on the LP,[1] you\u2019ll hear that about half of that brief minute-and-a-half is taken up with powerful rhythm guitar and then blasting trumpets doing complicated things that resonate with the G-major 7th<\/sup> and G-minor 7th<\/sup> chords Herbie Hancock is laying down on the piano.[2]\u00a0 This willingness to work away at single chords for extended musical passages, along with not worrying much about orienting entire pieces toward single keys, is the hallmark of modal jazz.\u00a0 I heartily recommend the discussion of the crystallization of the modal jazz phenomenon in Ashley Kahn\u2019s book, Kind of Blue <\/em>(2000)<\/a>.[3]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Source:<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While Hancock (shown here as he looked in 1967) and his sidemen serve up a wide variety of jazz in a brief compass on the album, including some very accessible sort of lounge-y stuff, the main title and its companion, what\u2019s called the closing title,[4] are harder-edged, and clearly black.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think a white-led group could have given us that sound in 1966, when the score was recorded.\u00a0 (Of the seven musicians that I think I can hear on that cut, only one was white.)[5]\u00a0 Though racial generalizations are always dangerous, I think it\u2019s safe to say that black and white jazz musicians of that era were largely involved with separate projects.\u00a0 Bop and modal jazz were deliberately off-putting to an ear trained to expect Western melody, and they made great technical demands on the players.\u00a0 Many of the players and composers were self-consciously pursuing a kind of racial authenticity.[6]\u00a0 This was, after all, the beginning of the era of Black Power as slogan and ideal.\u00a0 And a sort of hard, somewhat inaccessible, and technically dazzling musicianship was the stylistic weapon of choice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Later on, I could have illustrated that point with examples.\u00a0 For instance both Freddie Hubbard (whom you hear in that title music) and Maynard Ferguson were great trumpeters, but you\u2019d never mistake the one for the other, and part of what made their sound distinct was that Hubbard was black and Ferguson white.\u00a0 Ditto pianists Herbie Hancock and Dave Brubeck.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know enough then to make such comparisons.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Later on, I also asked myself why Antonioni put\u00a0Hancock’s music in\u00a0Blow-Up<\/em>.\u00a0 How is that<\/em> music properly the theme for this<\/em> movie?\u00a0 Reflect, there is no jazz club pictured that I\u00a0could discern\u00a0(even though Ronnie Scott’s<\/a>, for instance,\u00a0already enjoyed worldwide fame),[7] no jazz musicians (indeed, the only musicians pictured are the proto-punkish rockers, the Yardbirds).\u00a0 In fact, there are hardly any African or African American faces to be seen (two black nuns in the early going stand out, but nuns don’t bring jazz to mind).\u00a0 If this was supposed to be the theme music of this story, what was the commonality?\u00a0 I’ve never come to a convincing answer.\u00a0 Some of Hancock’s score makes it into the story as source music<\/a>, which tells us that Thomas, the antihero, is a Hancock fan.\u00a0 And, as is mentioned in the first endnote, it appears the Hancock score that made it into the movie was actually recorded in New York.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The best I can come up with is that the world of Blow-Up<\/em> was hip and modern, and so was the sound of Herbie Hancock, and perhaps Antonioni thought as well he could create the same kind of splash with an African American jazz score\u00a0as Louis Malle had done in 1958 with Miles Davis’ contribution to Elevator to the Gallows<\/a><\/em>, which snagged a Grammy nomination.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever prompted Antonioni to invite Hancock into the movie, I was blown away by what Hancock did there.\u00a0 Because I didn\u2019t know what I was hearing, I didn\u2019t know how to look for more of it then (more about this in later entries).\u00a0 I had no one to teach me about it, and the rock was blaring so loudly in my ear (it was<\/em> 1967, after all) that it\u2019s no wonder I laid down that thread and didn\u2019t pick it up properly again for some years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Most of my Theme Songs stand out as reminders of something else.\u00a0 But my moment with the Blow-Up<\/em> music was important for itself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing much came of it right then.\u00a0 But a marker had been laid down.\u00a0 Notice had been served that something remarkable was happening in the vast world of jazz, something I would need to get to know, someday.<\/p>\n

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[1]\u00a0\u00a0 Renting the 2004 Turner\/MGM DVD to bring myself back up to speed to write this entry, I discovered to my surprise that pretty much all of the music on the LP is either differently mixed from the way it is mixed in the movie, or perhaps comes from alternative takes.\u00a0 \u00a0It emerges that the DVD is a butcher job which, among other things, supposedly\u00a0leaves out the entire first scene (which I barely remember), and a lot of the crucial scene in which the murder is discovered (which I remember better).<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 I say supposedly as to that first scene, because I recently found my old copy of the published edition of the script (1971)<\/a>, and I have to report that that scene isn’t in the script as published.\u00a0 Meaning either that it had already been cut by 1971 and not by Turner\/MGM, or that memory is playing tricks on me, and on the person who wrote the just-hyperlinked comment.\u00a0 (And for another thing, I could have sworn I remember seeing Vanessa Redgrave completely topless; funny how such things stick in the mind.)\u00a0 Meanwhile, there were apparently two competing recording sessions; reportedly, Herbie Hancock did not like the product of a London session, and so redid the score with a group of musicians in New York<\/a>.\u00a0 Given both the unreliability of the DVD and the fact that the score was recorded twice, I cannot be certain whether differences between its sound and that of the soundtrack album are owing to the album using material from outside the movie, or Turner\/MGM taking liberties with the sound of the movie (perhaps using the London takes instead of the New York ones?).\u00a0 Neither would surprise me.\u00a0 I can only discuss the place of the album in my life and the development of my musical ear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]\u00a0\u00a0 I oversimplify when characterizing the chords, I\u2019m sure.\u00a0 Hancock is a master of chords that you can\u2019t quite tell what they are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]\u00a0\u00a0 Check out Pages 66-75 especially.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]\u00a0\u00a0 Not heard on the above-mentioned DVD.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]\u00a0\u00a0 I think I can hear Ron Carter on bass, Hancock on the piano, Jimmy Smith on organ, Jack De Johnette on drums, Freddie Hubbard and Joe Newman on trumpets, and Jim Hall on guitar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[6]\u00a0\u00a0 It led Hancock himself, for a little while, to an absurd place.\u00a0 His funk albums of the 70s are, in my opinion (and I know there are those who differ), a big embarrassment.\u00a0 I\u2019m convinced that part of what motivated him (in addition to the wish to make some money doing what was hot) was a desire to do the black thing.<\/p>\n

[7]\u00a0 The Yardbirds are playing in what apparently was a recreated<\/a> Ricky-Tick club, where some American jazz was reportedly to be heard<\/a>.\u00a0 However Ricky-Tick was devoted to all sorts of music like the rock music on display in the scene, and the Yardbirds were Brits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo Sources: Movie image: http:\/\/i577.photobucket.com\/albums\/ss218\/Jedimoonshyne9\/BlowupLarge2.jpg<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0 Hancock image: http:\/\/www.herbiehancock.com\/#media.php<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for commercial images<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big draw, of course, was the main title and the rest of the source music and score by Herbie Hancock. Unbeknownst to me, Hancock was providing me a brief (far too brief) glimpse of the main current of jazz at that moment: modal jazz. If you listen to that main title, you\u2019ll hear that about half of that brief minute-and-a-half is taken up with powerful rhythm guitar and then blasting trumpets doing complicated things that resonate with the G-major 7th and G-minor 7th chords Herbie Hancock is laying down on the piano. This willingness to work away at single chords for extended musical passages, along with not worrying much about orienting entire pieces toward single keys, is the hallmark of modal jazz. For me, a marker had been laid down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2411,2422,2425,2426,2409,2421,2419,2380,2414,2321,2437,2427,2416,2439,2410,2430,2415,2432,2431,2423,2436,2428,2412,2438,2420,2440,2429,2434,2417,2418,2433,2424,2435],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-2411","tag-ashley-kahn","tag-black-jazz","tag-black-power","tag-blow-up","tag-bop","tag-columbia-record-club","tag-dave-brubeck","tag-david-hemmings","tag-dear-john","tag-elevator-to-the-gallows","tag-freddie-hubbard","tag-gillian-hills","tag-grammy-awards","tag-herbie-hancock","tag-jack-de-johnette","tag-jane-birkin","tag-jim-hall","tag-joe-newman","tag-kind-of-blue","tag-louis-malle","tag-maynard-ferguson","tag-michelangelo-antonioni","tag-miles-davis","tag-modal-jazz","tag-ricky-ticks","tag-ron-carter","tag-ronnie-scotts","tag-sarah-miles","tag-swinging-london","tag-vanessa-redgrave","tag-white-jazz","tag-yardbirds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5484,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions\/5484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}