Episode 59: Ennio Morricone's "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"

You know that five-note coyote howl. You may even know the classic film it helps power. But what do you know about the man behind those iconic moments?

For our final exploration from our 2024 calendar, reflect with us on the genius of a maestro who could make magic with a mere fistful of notes, who poured forth from his soul a foundation upon which much of 20th century popular culture was built.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter (@tunedig) for daily listening recommendations, and check out more episodes at tunedig.com.

Episode Transcript

Cliff (00:00):
Today we're talking about the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad,

(00:02):
and The Ugly by Ennio Morricone.
This will be easy and also alittle scary at the same time.
Making extraordinarily called shotsabout how important this piece of music
is and how important it is for people tobe able to listen to it and dissect it.
And enjoy it and in the middle isgoing to be a bunch of stuff that I got

(00:23):
once again really excited about Whilethinking about this record or album
or soundtrack or however it is We wantto frame it and I didn't expect to I
thought it was going to feel like achore And once again, it didn't and now
i'm stoked about all kinds of stuff.
I didn't expect to be especiallybecause I made the Quote mistake, I
guess of watching a documentary aboutIneo recently and now I now I love him

Kyle (00:49):
I feel that I knew he was and is, capital I, important and was sort of
vaguely aware of what we'd be gettingourselves into I also, because of that
Like you was a little bit like this onewill kind of be a chore a bit of a labor

(01:11):
of love But it's the end of the year.
It's the end of the calendar andFelt right to go out on a big call it
cinematic note pun intended I guess Thismight be the most objectively important
overall artist that we've talked about.

Cliff (01:31):
I figured we were gonna say it exactly.

Kyle (01:34):
I feel like we've done some really heavy hitting ones this year.
Thinking about like theRavi Shankars of the world.
But I just don't think itgets any bigger than this.
And After watching a bunch of video ofhim, I think he would be embarrassed
by that and rebuke that vigorously.
But I think he would also be excited.

(01:55):
I think we would align on the pointof excitement for everything that this
unlocks, not only about music, butabout film, but about popular culture,
but about American and world history.
This one's exciting because it'sjust about as deep a well as you
could possibly arrive at with a mapin the shape of one little album.

Cliff (02:19):
Yep and the more I learned about him and his process and approach
and thought and planning and path tocomposition it I became more enamored
with him as an artist in ways thatI, once again, didn't really expect.
I mean, we always naturally grow somesense of, at a base level, appreciation

(02:44):
and then eventually some sort ofadmiration for some aspect of, pretty
much any artist that we talk about.
It's hard not to when you spend thatmuch time with their art but this was
at a fundamentally different level.
To see someone Work on music so intentlyand intentionally and then have everyone

(03:07):
in his orbit who could describe himwould just talk about how he was an
exception to every rule that he, hetruly bore down and went to work and
the way that he approached things.
the descriptions from peoplewho are closest to him seemed.
So different from the usual attempt todescribe a sort of Pseudomanic episode

(03:32):
of people getting really really intenselyinto the music that they're trying
to do and crank it out Like he he wasmethodical And you can not only see his
brilliance early in his career But thenhe seemed to build on literally every
step from the moment He was a child intobecoming better and better and better
at Effectively finding the empty spacethat existed in the progression of where

(03:56):
music could go and especially how musiccould be associated with cinematography.
And it was like he was constantlyfinding like, Oh, well, your problem
is you didn't just have someone hit asoup can with a spoon on the three beat.
And if you had just done that, youwould transform it into this piece
of music that's now immediatelyrecognizable by people who don't

(04:18):
even care about this stuff.
And so, to see that level ofintentionality and depth in creativity,
and then think to like, 100 percentof boneheaded people know exactly
the title track of this, whether theycould ever spot it or name it or not,

Kyle (04:34):
Any human alive can name that tune in one note, two notes.
I definitely want to hear more fromyou, you know, as, as we go on, on
the process stuff and some of thetechnical aspects, because I think
the rabbit hole took me other places.
but you know, just to kind of ground us,we are talking about arguably the most

(04:55):
famous film composer of the 20th century.
and by extension, ever, and A number ofpeople, to your point, stress this among
the most prolific and inventive composersperiod of music as many as 500 film works
a hundred classical pieces, other piecesof songwriting for pop music or direct

(05:17):
music or what other people called it.
in like truly almost every genreand musical style imaginable,
Unbelievably prolific.
Also you'll notice at the top of hiswiki, the Omri designation, the order
of merit of the Italian RepublicItaly's highest ranking honor.
It seems to be at least if nota step above being knighted

(05:41):
in the United Kingdom.
Um, and then just in terms ofraw global association between
an artist and a country.
We're talking for sure at thelevel for Italy, uh, Fela for
Nigeria of Ravi Shankar for India.
And you know, I don't know that we'vecovered many other artists who like
really represent iconically a country.

(06:03):
That, I mean, that, that justlike barely scratches the surface.
What else?
I know we don't, we don't want to listall the easily Google able accolades,
but I feel like what else stood outto you that made you go right away?
Like, Oh, holy shit.
This guy's Top tier?

Cliff (06:18):
It's hard to look past listening to how people described his eventual
relationship with cinematography becauseI think his specific relationship with
Sergio Leone which we'll obviouslytalk about a lot here, but watching
that become sort of an apex of adirection in his career was really

(06:39):
impactful to me because, who knows,I mean, this is, This is a podcast.
Our job is to basically project ontothings, uh, using the things that are
going on for us personally in our livesanyway that no one will ever know about.
And so I'm sure I'm probably thinkinga lot about the effectiveness
of someone's intentional careerarc and to see it here where.

(07:02):
You know, we'll, I'm sure we'll talk aton more about this, but the level of
collaboration that took place specificallyon this soundtrack and for this movie
was a direct result of every other bitof work that he had done up until this
point to effectively prove to expertcinematographers, the music matters
more than you could ever have imaginedand every moment that you don't spend

(07:24):
making your film with and around it.
The music, the more time you waste makingmovies less good than they could be.
Like, there's a, there's anentire multiple form of art.
It's not one plus one,it's something squared.
If you are able to think about allthese pieces working together now, and

(07:45):
To see and think about a musician, andespecially one that, it'll be hard to
describe his persona in audio form.
You should definitely check an interview,a video, something so that you can see
his demeanor in response to people.
Especially as he becameincredibly well known.

(08:05):
They would tell him like, youknow, you, you've done something
amazing, you know, you, you justdid something no one else has done.
You basically made a pop hit out of asoundtrack and he like, he can barely
kind of hold his neck straight up.
He's sort of like looking downat ankles his literal response to
one of those in, in one of the,the clips was like, I got lucky.

Kyle (08:26):
mm-Hmm.

Cliff (08:26):
so to.
To hear someone who has simultaneouslythat much intention but is also humble
and unable to just exclusively givehimself the credit, uh, for, you know,
the amount of respect that he had earnedin that moment I don't know, it, it
really inspired me to think differentlyabout, So there's certainly a lot more

(08:49):
to discuss for sure, but I think seeingthat impact and knowing that he began
convincing people of how important musicwas even beyond himself really gives
the feeling of him being like a stewardor an ambassador of music and of the
possibilities of music in a way thathas, I don't know, messed with my heart

(09:09):
a little bit in a good way, honestly.

Kyle (09:11):
Mm.
I I love the idea of callinghim a steward, you know, of all
the nearly innumerable awardsthat he was honored with.
The one that stood out to me wasthe Per Artem a Aada Metal, which
translates to through Arts to God.
So literally stewarding, channelingart and beauty to the world.

(09:35):
that award, as you might've guessedfrom the Latin is presented by the
Pontifical Council for Culture,like AKA literally the Vatican.
Um, and that committee was mergedwith the Pontifical Council for
Dialogue with Non Believers.
So the idea of being honoredfor reaching people who might

(09:56):
not otherwise believe in God.
Or something sacred in the universe andthen being so moved by the beauty that you
express That the pope is literally sayinglike you bring people closer to god with
your work uh is is frankly staggering tome like that that award and name took my

(10:17):
breath away a little and they describeit as in recognition of the achievements
which contribute to the promotion ofdialogue between the diversity of cultures
in the contemporary world and thus promoteman as an individual i read that as hey
dude your shit helps people rememberthe beauty in being alive which is like
I can see him on stage accepting thehonorary Oscar in 2007 or whatever and

(10:43):
the tears that he had in his eyes and Icouldn't imagine that type of designation
taking his breath away as well.
So he was truly a steward andI do think he felt a deep sense
of like responsibility andpride to be able to do this.
When people talked about howprolific he was, he was always like,

(11:04):
Bach did four times more than me.
Like, I did nothing comparedto, compared to a real master.
So, the curiosity and the blankslate and the like, never allowing
himself to have an ego at any pointis I think another reason that we're
both probably really endeared to him.
He just wanted to keep doing it.
He just loved it so much.
And he, he did it all the way to the end,from the beginning to the end of his life.

(11:28):
The fact that he wrote his firstcomposition at age six, started at
conservatory at age 12, completeda four year harmony program in
trumpet in six months, and justlike, kept blowing down the road
from there is really just delightful.
I am, I'm delighted to thinkand talk about this cat.
But what of the film?
what of what brings us here today?

Cliff (11:48):
Well, Kyle, this is a good movie.
Ha, I gotta tell ya.
I don't know if anyone's discoveredit yet, but it's a good one.

Kyle (11:55):
Yes.
Two, two things occurredto me watching it.
One is I had never watchedit all the way through.
So the first thing was like,Oh my god, so much of this has
permeated the public consciousness.
So much of this is pop culture, and hasbeen for decades, and continues to be.
and two, this movie is GORGEOUS.

(12:17):
Frame after frame, sequenceafter sequence, I'm like, How
the fuck was this made in 1966,and with what alien technology?
This thing Is unbelievable.
I think I had a JohnWayne picture in my mind.
Sort of a like, Hallmark moviequality for bros type aesthetic.

(12:38):
But like, Jesus man, the wideshots in this thing are Victorian.
they're unbelievable.

Cliff (12:44):
you know,
for clarity, original soundtrack lengthas a piece of music when released
alongside of this movie in 1966, originalsoundtrack amounted to about 33 minutes,
re releases You know, add up and becomean hour or longer with a ton of, you
know, extras and remasters and all that.

(13:05):
But the movie is threegodforsaken hours long.
100 percent unavoidable.
It is three hours.
And you and I talked about when we firstrealized, oh, oh, cool, cool, cool, cool.
It's about to be John Wayne centered, youknow, in a really boring shot saying like.

(13:25):
Vaguely fascist stuff at insulting typesof people, uh, and we're gonna have to
watch this for, for literally, a wholenew Avengers movie length of thing.
Like, this is gonna be bad, andnot only was it not bad, it's I
don't, I can't remember the lasttime I actively watched a three hour

(13:46):
movie that was this, like, abstractfeeling the entire time and it was a
masterclass in holding your attention.
from

Kyle (13:59):
Mm hmm.

Cliff (14:00):
The fact that it's not just a novelty, but is in
fact still engaging to our A.
D.
whatever D.
adult brains at thispoint really set me back.
I had to really think about it andwhat that meant and try to learn
more about it cause I am admittedlynot a cinephile, or whatever it is

(14:22):
that you're supposed to say when youreally, really, really like movies.
I sorta don't care that much, generally.
I respect it, but, I'lltake the music, thank you.
But, this made

Kyle (14:33):
You don't, so you don't like the banter, you don't care for the
banter between Chat Pile songs then?

Cliff (14:40):
What?

Kyle (14:41):
I kept thinking about that guy.
I kept thinking about that guyso much watching this movie,
like, what does he think of this?
I have to know.

Cliff (14:50):
That's more fun to listen to because I can watch him walk
around on stage like the imposinganimal esque person that he is.
Seems like a very

Kyle (15:00):
In swim
trunks!

Cliff (15:02):
Terrifying looking.
Yeah, it kind of similarly listeningto him say things that I would really
hate to otherwise hear out of someoneelse's mouth is a good analog for what
this movie felt like, because on paper,Oh, neat, three people are searching for
hidden gold, and they represent threeslightly different aspects of humanity.

(15:26):
And cool.
Clint Eastwood is like doingthat thing where he makes This
the same face for a whole movie.
And okay, like none of these piecesare going to add up and instead it I
am going to on purpose watch it again.
At least another time.
It was awesome.
I I needed to go back and watch severalscenes again because of how you would go

(15:50):
from nothing feels like it's happeningto, like, clips are being edited at
millisecond levels, timed with specificcinematic music that seems to have
a geometric shape similar to whatI'm looking at, and it I don't want
to like movies this much, and that'swhat this music did to this movie.

Kyle (16:11):
I feel that, and I love that.
As a guy with a Letterboxdaccount, I stand on the other
side of that divide from you.
And I appreciate that we pulledyou a little closer to the void.
It's the guy sitting in a roomsurrounded by film posters.

Cliff (16:25):
Uh huh.
See, I have
many friends such as yourself,so I'm able to occupy the empty
space and just ask you things.

Kyle (16:33):
Hey man, what happened in the movie?

Cliff (16:35):
Mm hmm.
Even having to think about why thingswere called spaghetti westerns.
Was one example of the, I mean,this whole podcast is just about the
infinite branches of things you canstart to go down when you pay attention
to art for like a second in justthe like, okay, so spaghetti Western
was like a really stupid term for,things that were otherwise filmed in.

(17:00):
You know, through Italianlocations and production as
opposed to American Westerns.
And because we're allNeanderthals here, we called it
spaghetti Westerns or whatever.
And like, just going down to like,what does that mean and what happened
and what was different about moviesthat got recorded over there,
uh, or, or created over there.

(17:21):
And why were they distinct?
Uh, and is it just like a.
TMU version of Amazon Westerns or arethey like fundamentally different?

Kyle (17:31):
if it's not shot in that one region of Italy, it's just sparkling cowboy.

Cliff (17:36):
But even the classic the further away that you go from America, the
closer you get to, oh no, no, insteadof in American Westerns where there
was like a really clear hero versusbad people, uh, well The more that you
switched over to spaghetti westerns,the more they were like, yeah, actually,

(17:56):
there's really no such thing as a goodperson, including in this movie at all,
including the person that's labeledthe good person and everything is like
anti hero and actually everybody'spretty bad and nothing's very good.
And everyone's kind of self interested.
And then really all thereis is like normal bad people
and then extra bad people.
And then what the normal bad peopledo with the extra bad people when

(18:20):
they come into contact with oneanother and might need to interact.

Kyle (18:23):
I did really particularly appreciate that.
It's like an outsider's.
piece of 360 feedback on Americaand how actually uncomplicated the
American myth is, these were thekind of people that came over here.
You can argue about how universal ornot it is about human nature, but it

(18:48):
is particularly salient about America.
Like we sent a bunch of outlaws overthere and then once more outlaws
heard about it, they decamped.
For that landmass and as they kept pushingfurther and further west they took their
Uncomplicated reptile brain desires allthe way to the west coast it made me

(19:11):
realize that and it made me think aboutwait The Civil War was fought that far
west which made me feel like an idiot Butwas not a thing that had really occurred
to me how much of a frontier that was and1860s because grown up in the American
South, you just kind of envision it all inall the battles you learn about are like

(19:32):
sort of up the east coast and maybe threeto five hundred miles inland from that.
So thinking about being thatfar out And there being serious
frontier action happening waslike, really fascinating to me.
Like I, I pulled up papers to readabout western frontier civil war action,

(19:55):
which is not a thing that I wouldhave done otherwise, but I'm fully
settling into my almost 40 year oldwhite guy with a couple of gray hairs
and his beard thing by doing that.

Cliff (20:07):
So, I think, honestly, we'll probably end up continuing to talk about,
there are so many layers of interestingthings that happened, how things get
recorded, why they ended up interesting,how composition and arrangement was
approached to begin with, I mean, EnnioMorricone was basically cited as being

(20:28):
the first arranger of music to begin with.
Because up until that point, uh, and thiswas a, a huge part of the the documentary
that I watch was like, most composersup to that point working in movies
effectively were kind of producers inthe way that we think of producers now.
Uh, or, Excuse me, not not musicalproducers, but production people.

(20:51):
Here's the request.
Here's what the person makingthe movie wants you to do.
Well, we're going to ask you to put thispiece of music inside a movie, and then
the orchestra is going to accompany themain chords of whatever this idea is.
And it's prettystraightforward and simplistic.
And What Enyo was constantly doing, whathe built his career on, which I tried

(21:12):
to hint at earlier, and I'll keep tryingto vaguely explain, is like, he kept
saying, like, basically no, fuck that,that's a really boring way of doing it,
what if I did this one extra cool thing,and then, On top of that, what if we
started with that new cool thing as likethe atomic center of this piece of music

(21:33):
and then everybody else who's going tomake music about this, they will like
respond to this thing that's happeningand the instruments will take on roles
in relation to the idea that's beingexpressed here, whether that's a Weird
sound or a sound effect that he's makingor I mean, he, he described things like

(21:53):
he heard a ladder rattle in a room oneday and was like, yeah, that's a thing.
And then made pieces of music around it.
And so.
being able to, to intentionally tryto understand why someone at that
level of brilliance is making agiven choice at all does the magical

(22:15):
thing that we always talk about thathappens with music when you let it.
Just like it, just like Infinitely sortof unfolds into a million interesting
ways of seeing a thing that'sotherwise pretty direct and simple.
But I think one of the biggest things thathit me right up top and I think would be
helpful for folks from here on out, Thisdude has more in common With a prolific

(22:41):
hip hop producer than any other sort ofarchetype of musician that I can think of.
He really directly and constantly talksabout him being the accumulation of
all the music that he's heard before.
And all the music that he studied,he thinks about music as this sort of
like creative thing that is spawningout of those moments that happen in

(23:05):
time that are a direct result of beinginspired by something you've thought
about or heard or experienced before.
And then everything is just thissort of like starts at one layer and
then adds up and adds up and adds upand then it becomes this incredible
thing that stands on its own.
And Yet is itself.
He would go on to use his own piecesof music over and over and over again

(23:28):
and interpolate them into new context.
And he would take introductions from,from Bach and Beethoven and he would just
like put them in songs and then writenew songs as a direct result of like
bringing in the equivalent of a riff.
You'd be like, go grab the equivalentof, go grab me the guitar part from Led

(23:52):
Zeppelin's The Ocean, and then I'm justgonna like, write a song that sounds
better than the other stuff that theywrote to go along with that, and that'll
be the new song, and then you shouldmake a movie around what I'm doing
there, and all that will be really good.
But don't tell me I'm smart, cause that'skind of offensive, and I'm not really
doing anything other than mashing buttons.

Kyle (24:12):
Yeah, sort of like, why isn't everybody doing this?
Two things came to mindwhile you were sharing that.
One is the, you know, I know we'vereferenced it before, the Mark Ronson
sampling his archaeology bit, butjust layers on layers on layers of
sedimentary sound and expression of ideas.
he's definitely anexpression of it in that way.

(24:32):
And then I also thought about,in Iggy Pop and Josh Homme's
Post Pop Depression, documentary.
They were like, okay, we both have donea certain sort of thing in our careers.
Let's, neither of usdo that thing for sure.
That's the only thing that's off limits,but we should try everything else.

(24:53):
And I remember him reading a diaryentry, Josh Hammi, and saying, you
know, note to self, go get a Tempeat Glock And spiel what any listed
off like 10 weird instruments and.
I thought about that while I waslistening to a lot of this and just
at the, you know, minute and a halfmark in a piece, it'll just be like,

(25:14):
Oh, here's a, here's just a dollop oforgan or here's a noise that I can't.
Discern what it is.
And is that what somebody isdescribing as an electric violin?
Is this a synth thing isthat like and what's the the
rattlesnake whatever thing called?
There's a lot of weird instrumentationthat would It would be very

(25:38):
easy for that to be silly inanother person's hands, probably.
And I think it all goes back to what youwere saying about composers traditionally
just like laying a thing on top ofvisuals, but in trying to weave it in
and making it part of the fabric andthinking of it truly as an element
of the atmosphere of the world thatit's in, which is a very interesting

(25:59):
Way to think about writing songs,bringing it back to like a, you know,
a rock and roll context or something.
I like that spirit of adventure in that.
I just envision a room full of all thesedifferent toys and you're like, it's
cowboys and desert and death and goldand I don't know seven other things.

(26:20):
Um, what if it's this and just walkingaround a room all day Just sort of
playing with sounds until they fit andjust knowing the profound amount of
technical competency you have to haveunderneath that to have the courage
to, next venture out after you firstsort of mastered the traditional form.

Cliff (26:42):
And for what it's worth I think we can, with care,
apply the word courage here.
Because one of the things I learnedfrom the documentary, once again,
it's called Inio, it's, it's awesome.
It's Italian, but you know, you cangrab the subtitles and all that stuff.

(27:02):
it's got interviews with him in it, andso you kind of hear the stories directly
from him, but one of the things thathe shared about the, you progression of
his career, and specifically being underPetrosi the Italian composer who was
his main teacher He was not okay withsome, with a composer working on movies.

(27:23):
It was not culturally anokay thing for NEO to do.
It, it's something thatpeople looked down on.
And kind of circling back a littlebit to, you know, what you were
trying to prompt me with at thebeginning of the episode, Kyle.
Like, It was this realization of theseconstant kind of concentric circles of
trajectory that Enyo had in his lifethat accumulated into all these moments.

(27:47):
He was a brilliant composer in hisown right, but had this sort of
itch to introduce non traditionalelements into his compositions.
While he was appreciated, In some senses,for his non traditional composition,
he wasn't appreciated for applyingthose compositions to cinematography.

(28:07):
And so, he basically ghostwrotesoundtracks early in his career so that
he could work on movies without theconstant badgering, pressuring, cynicism,
whatever that might come from hislarger musical community or background.
And he sort of, in a sense, like hid away.

(28:27):
But then the reason people were goingto him, who was going by a different
name in most cases to begin with,the reason people would find this
person is because he was clearly abrilliant composer who was using non
traditional elements to set things apart.
And like, just, Watching theselittle commitments to ideas in

(28:47):
avenues of creativity and watchingsomeone be so dedicated to just
like, no, I am on the right track.
I will simply keep doing thisover and over and over again
until it adds up and adds up.
And not only does You know, does the musicitself get better, but I will begin to
earn the trust of other artists aroundme who are able to collaborate and think

(29:11):
more creatively about what art can be.
Who don't need to think about compositionbeing only within the confines of
musical exclusive composition and canthink about tying it to other mediums.
And then once I gain the trust ofthat person, can I do something better
than what, you know, the sum of twoparts would have been to begin with.

(29:32):
And that's.
That is what this movie representsat least as one, one apex
type of moment in his career.
Certainly far too early in his life tocall it the best thing he has ever done.
But to see the culmination of that manythings all at once and to know that it
came from a place of relative courage.

(29:56):
For this individual, I think makes allof it even more compelling, uh, and
to me makes active listening like afundamentally different exercise when
you can, like, in a sense, trust theheart and intention of the artist.
I think we knock on this door onoccasion on different episodes
when we talk about records.
But like when you find someone who seemsto truly put themselves into what they

(30:21):
are making and you can feel that it.
transforms your ability to receiveit and it's nothing quite like it.

Kyle (30:29):
So let's, talk about the listening bit.
this has been the part I've been themost excited to talk to you about because
For the first time with this exercisewe do, thinking about how to take it
in fresh and find key moments This isthe first time I've been like is that
Possible on a couple of different levelsone because of the cultural ubiquity we

(30:50):
talked about there's almost no way youhaven't heard the two note coyote whistle
in a Western and a parody of a Westernon the Simpsons in a commercial on a tick
tock signifying a cowboy thing, right?
So like, there's no wayto be truly cold on this.
I would go out on a limb and say, buttwo, can you divorce it, especially

(31:13):
because in the, oh, was so committed tobeing so enmeshed with the film itself.
Can you divorce it?
From the visuals.
Can you just put this shit onyour headphones at the airport?
Having never seen the film, havingnever seen a frame of it or know what
it's about and just put it on as apiece of music and appreciate it.

(31:34):
Does it work?
And does that matter?
I don't know.
I think I arrived at like sort of a grayarea on it rather than one position or the
other is as a person who frankly has like.
not known how to think or feelabout film scores as a music fan.
They've always felt like this otherthing in the separate category.

(31:54):
So like, I don't know what theanswer to that question is.
And I'd be interested for your thoughts.
And then we can get into like,okay, but actually there are a lot
of great musical moments in this.
And what were some of those for you?

Cliff (32:05):
I loved it as a purely active listen with no other
Anything going on, I loved it.
I am a little concerned thatthat's more about my odd cross
section category of brain funny.
But I mean, I can say without reservation,like, I will continue to do this again.

(32:27):
It, to me, slots into the,we've talked about the band Sun.
That is sort of one direction youcan point your eyeballs in and
look at and kind of see the roadthat we're talking about here.
It is specifically non eventful.
Effectively but if you are able toput yourself in a situation where you

(32:52):
are ready for that level of like, I'mcool with it being quiet, whenever
it might need to be quiet, it is aperfect, interesting bit of art to let
come back at you because one thing wemight discuss further as well there
was a lot of inspiration from JohnCage and, you know, for someone who was

(33:12):
Pretty famous about the use of silence.
You can feel the intentional usage,perhaps even more, in my opinion, when
you're listening to it only as a piece ofmusic and not with a visual accompaniment.
Because even though they totallymatch up, for sure, the connection
between movie and music is so cool.
every other movie feels irrelevantto its music after watching

(33:36):
this, or most of them at least.
But the silence and the contrast,or I, I would say like the dynamics
in volume are, incredibly up front.
And that's distinctly enjoyable in away that you can If you want to add
like a little more contrast to drawout what I'm trying to talk about.

(33:58):
So there was a Hugo Montenegro album thatcame out in 1968, which re interpolates
the whole soundtrack and uses slightlydifferent instrumentation, uses an
orchestra and synthesizers, and ittakes a slightly different approach.
If you listen to that, you'llhear The difference in what I'm

(34:20):
pointing out here, because theydon't effectively use silence.
It is, in a sense, a popificationin 1968 of the soundtrack, which
is why it ended up being a superpopular song in its own right.
Actually, this interpolationof the title track ended up
being one of the most successfulinstrumental tracks of all time.

(34:41):
but you will notice that the silencedoesn't exist the same way anymore.
There's a low, there's either ahum or a drone ish type of cord or
something that always carries you from.
Weird moment to weird momentwithout the tension that comes
in the original bit of music.
That's like, no, no, we're beingquiet now and you don't know when

(35:05):
the coyote will approach you.
And so to say one more bit about this,if you're in the position and I mean
this seriously, if you're listening tothis podcast and you have not recently
experienced either the music or themovie and you're a huge nerd, like I'm
about to be in this moment, you canand should Exclusively listen to the

(35:26):
soundtrack first, and then go watchthe movie, because especially for
me, again, a cinematographic idiot,I may not know to notice all of the
specific ways, that Sergio Leone, shotthat movie, and it being familiar with
some of the music like draws out thefacts that you mentioned like the,

(35:50):
you know, the super wide empty shots.
Well, he's either doing in mostcases, super wide shots with little
bits of movement in the background,or extreme awkwardly close up shots
of faces, which is often how he'lllike kick off a scene or something
in like the contrast between like.

(36:12):
You can't hear anything and you're inthe middle of the desert to you are three
inches away from the nose of someonewho is probably about to shoot you is A
really cool experience to map back to anactive listening of a record like this.
So I mean, it's dork shit and I don'twant to like pretend like this is a
hundred percent worth everyone's likefour cumulative hours to do that.

(36:36):
But it was a really cool experienceand changed the way that I watched
and appreciated the movie like fromthe jump Because I got familiar with
the, the bouts of silence and gotinterested in what was about to come
up and on top of it, you know, wasable to start getting curious about.
The theme that reoccurs throughout therecord and didn't necessarily immediately

(37:00):
understand that, you know, there was threedifferent versions of that being done
for each of the three main characterswhich I would only then figure out later
watching the characters be introduced.
And like, that's justa cool experience, man.
Everything is spoiled before iteven exists in the world anymore.
And so to be able to createa little bit of treasured
moment for yourself is lovely.

(37:22):
So I'd encourage people there.
And I'm hoping this was the type ofthing you were wanting to talk about.
Cause that was my big takeawayfrom, from an active listen.

Kyle (37:29):
Absolutely.
So, walk through some of the tracksand talk about some of the moments that
stood out for you when listening fresh.

Cliff (37:39):
Let me go ahead and say something really funny that I laughed out loud.
We are already admitting to being dorks.
So here we are.
I realized that.
Here is this dude's weird coyoteimitation flute thing that kicks off the
immediate thing that everyone recognizesin the main theme and all that stuff.
He's dragging the beat!

Kyle (37:58):
Hmm.

Cliff (37:58):
All right.
When we did the D'Angelo episode, we gave,we, as best we could, you know, gave Dilla
whatever flowers we can from our moment,in each podcast episode where we can try
to point towards really important people.
But just to go and hear itin this moment and go, okay.
he's going to do a bunch of thingsthat no one knew to call a thing back

(38:20):
then because of how many things likethat he was just doing all at once.
So.
Even just listening to the super familiarbit from the title track really kind of
got me going on interesting influences.
But then, well, thiswill be a fun connection.
One band I like a lot, we've mentioneda lot Between the Buried and Me, is a
band that takes motifs, textures, riffs,whatever, and will repeat them, flip them,

(38:48):
reverse them, re sequence them throughouteither the same song or the entire thing.
Inside of the same album willreuse certain bits again and other
songs, bring them back and recall.
And it, you know, it has, it has a,a feeling of classical composition
where, you know those are the, thethings that delight you when you were
otherwise sitting and listening to anorchestra perform for a really long time.

(39:10):
And so, And I, I'm going to butchersome of these names, but that's okay.
We're doing our best here.
But in, uh, Fuga

Kyle (39:17):
I thought it was very brave that you used all the Italian names in the notes
and none of the English translations.
You did the same shit withFantastic Planet, which

Cliff (39:26):
Oh, that's right.
I'm sorry.
Yes.

Kyle (39:29):
No, no, no shade.
Genuinely very funny.
I was like, there's a design to this.
I know he hates pronouncing things,but he's going to do it anyway.
So ladies and gentlemen, the weekend,

Cliff (39:42):
But inside of Fuga Akevalo, like the he basically like halftimes the main
theme after it's been happening for a bit.
And like.
All of a sudden in thatmoment, I'm like, well, okay.
So, so every groovy, doomy metal riffthat we've ever liked that played
with the timing of itself, here it is.

(40:04):
So we've got like, before I'm even,you know, very far into a soundtrack,
I've got, I understand where J Dilla.
Is using rhythm differently, and that'sreminding me of a thing, I've got
main motifs being weirdly played within terms of their own time, so that
they sound scarier, or faster, or moreeccentric, or more accelerated And

(40:27):
then you get to El Ponte del Corde thefirst 45 seconds of this, we talked
about the, the sort of use of silence.
It's not silence, necessarily,but it's, it's a truly unnerving
experience in the first 45 secondsor so there before you, you know,
go back into something that feels alittle bit more appropriate and normal.

(40:48):
I mean, I've probably got, you know,several of those types of moments.
Uh, and, and definitely one I'm surewe'll touch on as well, I mean, the
trio is If you have to pick another songthat's not the main theme to make sure
that you listen to, that one for sure.
possibly, possibly the greatest scenethat's maybe ever been made in a movie.
Um, or at least it's reasonable to putit up there with a lot of other ones.

(41:10):
All of that's incredible, but it's almostit's almost one of the easiest ones
to appreciate because of how clearlygreat it is, whereas on so many of these
other tracks in between, like lettingyourself get invested in how quiet it
gets versus where things come out of andwhere they're panned to and what they

(41:31):
remind you of that you've already heard.
It recurs over and over again,you know, throughout these tracks.
And so I had a I had a bunch of themand we can talk about more of them, I'm
sure, but I'd like to hear yours, too,because I'm sure there was no shortage.

Kyle (41:47):
I love all the ones that you brought up and I had other ones.
so I, I appreciate that.
you know, the number of people talkingabout the film, Talk about the title
track and say something to the effectof the moment it begins, you know,
you're in for something different.
And I went and I looked up thefilms of 1966 the biggest ones were

(42:09):
Thunderball, The Sound of Music, Dr.
Zhivago, Who's Afraid of Virginia=Woolf, and That Darn Cat.
And then the year before that was MaryPoppins, also Sound of Music, Goldfinger,
My Fair Lady, and What's New Pussycat.
So like, that's the big.
pop movie experience at that point andthinking about the tones of those films.

(42:31):
The closest thing is going tobe a Bond movie for a major U.
S.
audience but this feel likean entirely different thing.
And it was critically panned atthe time, but it was commercially
successful pretty much right away.
Launched the career of ClintEastwood, was the most successful,
I believe, of the three movies.
So, um, yeah.
Films in the Dollars Trilogy, SergioLeons, the others being Fistful of

(42:55):
Dollars and for a few dollars more.
And I, I think 64 and 65 respectively.
But this was like the, this wasthe one, this was the Oh, wow.
One in the trilogy.
so the title track in the experienceof seeing that on a big screen
with the sort of bond desk, butsort of crazy title card animation.

(43:17):
Is a bit of the Jimi Hendrix are youexperience thing like, I, I cannot fathom
sitting down in a dark room in 19 66, 2days before Christmas and seeing that shit
like, it was a real back to the future.
Like, but your kids aregonna love it moment.
I, I just, it feels aliento even think about.

(43:38):
So the, the bigness of thattook me out of the how trite.
The title track and the firstthree seconds of the title track
have become at this point, acouple others that I really liked.
I didn't realize how much I liked flamencoguitar as a similar, you know, yellow

(43:59):
filter to signify Mexico motif type ofthing and how much that originated with
this sort of sort of world as well.
and I think my fascination with thesouthwestern American desert Palm desert
is pretty well documented at this point.
So naturally I loved thesong called the desert.
And interestingly, to your point aboutall of Morricone's myriad inputs at

(44:25):
around three and a half minutes inthe desert, there was a thing that
sounded like a James Brown and the JBs.
almost like it's a man's world soulheavy r& b piano stab and it happens for
like 15 seconds and then they use thatto push up into an ascent of another

(44:46):
swell of arpeggios and I liked becausethe ecstasy of gold is the thing that
I really knew on this I liked the sortof teases of that arpeggio throughout
I was also really fascinated withthe one diegetic song, the one song
where they're like actually singingwords, and that's Death of a Soldier.

(45:08):
It's the Confederate soldiersinging it in the film.
The rest of this is meant to be just forthe audience, but that is the only one
that exists in the world of the film.
And I don't know what was on theoriginal 33 minute, uh, 1966 release.
I have been listening to the 53minute one available on Spotify.

(45:28):
That feels like a good, happy medium.
so I'm not like crazyabout the song necessarily.
I love the story point, but I wasreally curious about the choice of
one track, like one piece of musicactually having lyrics and I went and
looked them up and they're beautiful.

(45:51):
think they are worth a read.
I'll read the last stanza.
There in the distance a flagI can see, scorched and in
ribbons, but whose can it be?
How ends the story?
Whose is the glory?
Ask if we dare, our comradesout there who sleep.
so that's incredible, andthat gave me writer envy.
I went and looked up, holy shit,did Eneo write those lyrics as well?

(46:13):
Um, it was a cat named Tommy Connor.
Well, who's Tommy Connor?
This is a guy that had beenwriting songs since the 1930s.
So in Neo, a heavyweight pulling ina heavyweight, uh, one of his credits
included, I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus.
And that paints the wrong picture.
If you're like, that's the onlykind of thing this guy wrote.

(46:35):
He had scores and scores and scoresof hits, but he had the range of.
I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and theConfederate Soldier Song in a Spaghetti
Western 30 years deep into his career,and I found that really fascinating.
And then the reason that I'maware of any of this at all,
and have been for 20 years, isunfortunately or otherwise, Metallica.

Cliff (46:56):
Boo.

Kyle (47:01):
You know what, as the kids are saying on TikTok right now, we
listen and we don't judge Cliff.
And that's probably, ifToondig has a mantra for the
most part, I think it's that.
But that, probably the bounds ofthat stop at Metallica, maybe.
I'm a big unabashed fanof Some Kind of Monster.
Speaking of weird music documentariesbecause that was cringe content before

(47:23):
we had catatonic youths on, on Instagram.
but the notion that they have comeout to this song in full since 1983
with only very minor exceptionsand vividly remembering seeing that
clip of James Hetfield backstage.

(47:45):
warming up his hands on the guitarand singing the song in the top of
his lungs and then cutting out tothe audience and they're all big
Metallica heads and they're all singingthe woodwind melody line from this.
I also have recently rewatched WalkHard and the like, Dewey Cox needs
a minute, needs to think abouthis whole life before he performs.

(48:08):
As silly as that is.
if I was like facing the judgment and theywere like, tell me one song to defend your
thesis that music is the most importantthing that humans have ever done, I
would show them the ecstasy of gold.
I think you can convey everything aboutthe human experience literally without

(48:33):
a word just by listening to that song.
So that was the.
right there at the end of the score.
That was the one where it waslike, no, you should listen to this
cold without watching the film.
And then when you do, and it's the wide,Tuco from behind sprint dead, sprinting
down into the huge civil war graveyard,the circular That shot is so iconic and

(49:00):
it's so breathtaking when you see itor you rewatch it for the first time in
a long time that like, if nobody everhears anything else that I've ever said
on this podcast, I would say that'slike, that's the number one piece of
music that I would encourage everyhuman animal and extraterrestrial to, to
experience to really like try to feel.

(49:23):
the core of the human condition.
That's it.
Just real casual light shit like that.

Cliff (49:27):
I appreciate you booing my boo.
I deserved it.

Kyle (49:31):
I

Cliff (49:32):
I
boo Metallica generically, but Ishould not boo Discovery through
Metallica into non Metallica things.

Kyle (49:38):
they, they just are what they are, man.
I, I get it.
There's, there's way more important shit.
But Kim, there's people that aredying, you know, like, And at some
point, if you're talking bad aboutMetallica for long enough, you're
in the company of Dave Mustaine andthat's like its own really bad thing.
So

(50:00):
I'm forever getting back to the likeBeatles or Radiohead thing that you
said a few episodes ago where you'relike any airtime that you're given this
is airtime that you could be givingsomething else you like a lot better.

Cliff (50:11):
I'll accept this miniature implicit challenge and also use Metallica as a
catalyst but one thing that extra stoodout to me and is also worth pointing
out here in terms of cold listens anddeep appreciations actually at the
moment I don't remember whether guitaris a part of the ecstasy of gold or

(50:36):
not either way, one of the positivethings I could definitely say easily
about Metallica is they got a couple ofreally good guitar players, for sure.
I'm down with that.
in this documentary, I mentioned PatMetheny was one of the interviewers, which
is like, if you don't know who Pat Methenyis and you give a shit about guitar, like
just stop the episode now, pretty much.

(50:57):
And he said, Ennio Morriconeunderstood guitars.
And it's just like, hejust said it that way.
It's just like, he understands guitars.
And the As someone who pays a lot ofattention to guitars, naturally, I tend
to like, attempt to EQ my own activelistening brain away from them from time

(51:18):
to time, to appreciate the other thingsthat are supporting it and around it.
But, a lot of times that's Orin this case, that's sort of
over indexing on my part becausethis isn't guitar centric music.
It is instead a placewhere guitar is deployed.
Flamenco guitar specifically isdeployed with incredible precision.
And that not only stood out to meon listen because it's great and I

(51:45):
appreciate it, but it was anotherthing that I kept gaining appreciation
for as I understood more about it.
Uh, and then also as Icame to learn more about.
The guitarist on that record, BrunoBattisti DeMario, who not only did
incredible work himself, but I justfigured I'll go ahead and mention
every now and then you stumble acrosspeople that you have seeming spiritual

(52:10):
alignment to, even though you'venever met them and you never will.
They don't know who you are or anything,but I read about this guy and he wasn't.
necessarily super famous orprolific beyond being known for
this record and in a few otherinstances of great performance.
But he would go on to not only becomea teacher, but he wrote a book called

(52:34):
Tarot cards, meditation, and music.
And what he does in this book is hetakes out 22 figures of the major arcana
of, of tarot cards, and he wrote uniquepieces of music to try to articulate
the relationships between tarot cards.

Kyle (52:58):
Oh, man.

Cliff (52:58):
oh, okay.
So we're okay.
So we're cool.
If we ever meet we're cool immediatelyI don't know where you're coming from
on this But like I would gladly studyunder you your tutelage for whatever
it is you would like to teach me ifI ever had the chance like even just
the people's names that you get as aresult of diving into a record like

(53:21):
especially like this one is Pun intendedI guess worth its weight in gold

Kyle (53:28):
But I totally agree with you.
Like, this is a killer guitar record.
If you just think about guitar,this is a record worth studying.
Um, and I think we boththink about guitar a lot.

Cliff (53:40):
Mm

Kyle (53:40):
You get both Led Zeppelins on this record though.
You get the classical flamenco guitarand the sort of folk aspect, the
frontier aspect, and then you get ananachronistic great electric guitar.
Like it's a choice toput electric in this.
It's the 60s.
It's obviously modeled after DwayneEddy, The Ventures, that, you know,

(54:03):
Dick Dale, that sort of thing.
But it works because It's clear thatit's expressing the essence of a
character or a spirit or an idea.
It's not trying to do a thing, or it'snot like some schlocky, like this movie's
in the sixties, so let's go electric.
and that comes from, Pino Rocheris the electric guitarist on that.

(54:26):
And what's interesting abouthim is he's Italian and his
entire career more or less was.
He was in Italy and he was also prolific.
He's got a gazillion credits of songsand things that he played on, the
province that he came up in in Italyhad American troops stationed there

(54:48):
and that led to him joining AlliedArmy orchestras in the mid forties.
Um, so he came into contact with.
What his wiki describes is Americanmusical atmosphere and jazz.
So like, uh, yeah, I mean, I can, I cansee right away where a Pat Metheny would
be interested in what's happening with aguitarist who's trained in Napoli style

(55:16):
playing and then comes into contactwith like American jazz and creates
this whole other sort of third thing,but can also play adventures type lick.
In a really ghostly ambient way, Ithink about that, that like that you
were talking about early on in thescore where they hit the bow, bow,

(55:39):
bow, like super not quite in a rhythm,but more like human steps really slow
and do me a bit of a radical choice.
and so sure, and you know, maybe hadit in his brain, but I can see that
being, you know, I don't want to impose.
A thing on what I'm not positivehappened, but I can see that being

(56:01):
a creative spark moment where hewas like, why don't you try this?
And then a really goodinventive player, was able to.
See the vision and to do a thing.
And maybe he had the idea.
Who knows?
it makes me think of when we talked aboutrain dogs, the Tom weights, Mark Rabeau
partnership, and how it was like, youknow, what if it sounded like a trimmer

(56:22):
and Mark was like, Oh, you mean this?
And then it turned intothe clap hands solo.
Um, so a lot of it felt like thatsort of a partnership in this context.

Cliff (56:32):
You teed me up for one quick extra tidbit I'd love to add, and
then I'd really like to talk withyou briefly, at least, about the
Interplay between this music andthe movie and some of the specifics
of of how well they work together Buta quick tidbit because you mentioned
jazz We mentioned Ennio basically beinga child prodigy as you would probably

(56:54):
imagine at this point And you know,we talked about maybe we haven't said
directly, you know He he grew up under avery musical family and his father was a
jazz trumpeter and One, again, one greatthing from this documentary that I felt
gave an outsized bit of insight on Ineo'sapproach to not only music, but life.

(57:19):
You know, we have talked a lotabout the use of constraints.
I am a fucking professional designer, man.
I'm obsessed with theconcept of constraints.
I get it.
The way Inio puts constraints to work asthis sort of understood basis from which
he must move and truly binds himself inwith things and then forgets about them

(57:42):
for a while is admirable and incredibleand one example of that is His dad, like I
mentioned, jazz trumpeter, extremely good.
There was this tension that hehad while his father was alive,
where he, Enio himself was anincredible trumpeter, trumpetist.

(58:03):
trumpeter.
He played the trumpet.
Anyway, he was an incredibleuser of the trumpet.
And so there's really no reason that hecan't go get the best trumpeter he knows
of to play this trumpet piece that he mayhave written for a given piece of music.

(58:23):
He knows it well.
It's going to be a prettynormal thing to include.
But there was this tension that he seemedto have with the idea that in doing so
he would, by its very nature, have toinvite his own father to come be that
person, because it was sort of unbearableto imagine saying, thinking, or implying
that there was someone else who shoulddo this part other than his own father.

(58:47):
And so he simply did not include them.
At all.
Just didn't include trumpet partsuntil his father passed away.
At which point he beganincluding it in his music.
And just, I don't know howthat hits other people.
But I feel like I understand a little bitof what it means to, like, Creatively use

(59:13):
the tension that exists in your world.
And turn it back into a constraint thatyou allow yourself to be bound in by.
Because Well, that's better.
And I can't speak for him, right, andI can't say anything more about it than
he said for himself in that documentary.
I don't know for sure that he feltthat he couldn't say that, or simply
didn't want to, or that it wouldfeel disrespectful, or anything,

(59:36):
but he simply chose not to do that.
And then, clearly clearly that was thereason, because he immediately starts
reintroducing it into his music and feelsfreed up to use whoever it is that he'd
want to use to play that trumpet part.
Applying those little moments ofinsight to trying to understand how

(59:57):
someone could come up with some of thetypes of things that we're listening
to connects some really fun dotsand really gives you that sensation.
That we get really often listeningto great music, which is like, oh, so
there is a level that I am not privy to.
And this homie is on it and he's blessingme with whatever wavelengths come out
of it, but like, just the intentionaland creative use of the circumstances

(01:00:23):
he found himself in, even like wetalked about before with You know,
not having a ton of support in writingsoundtracks for movies to begin with.
So instead of simply choosing,I do or don't do things this
way, he found a middle way.
Out of so many situations and calmly anddirectly just pursued a path that other
people didn't know how to see or didn'tknow how to tell him about, and he would

(01:00:46):
just keep going down that path until itwas clear that he was done with that road.
And Again, to me, connects him not onlywith great artists and classical composers
and all that stuff, but again, connectshim just as well to me with prolific
and deeply creative hip hop producerswho are able to, Like King Tubby comes

(01:01:09):
to mind in these moments of just likeeverything is this little bitty idea
that I'm going to do with excellence andthen build around it or put it through
things and let it grow and grow and grow.
And man, this one, this one strikes meas another masterful version of that.

Kyle (01:01:26):
in that spirit, I want to share one of my favorite process
stories that I found that, you know,may may open up to talk about a
couple of the particular scenes andthe interplay of audio and visual.
that a bit lengthy, but it isdirectly from Sergio Leone.
He said.

(01:01:47):
From Emeo, I ask for themes thatclothe my characters easily.
He's never read a script ofmine to compose the music.
It's interesting.
Because many times he's composed themusic before the script is ever written.
What I do is give him suggestionsand describe to him my characters.
There's that essence bit.
And then, quite often, he'll possiblywrite five themes for one character

(01:02:09):
and five themes for another.
And then I'll take one piece of one ofthem and put it with another piece of
another one for that character, or takeanother theme from another character
and move it into this character, etc.
etc.
And when I have my charactersfinally dressed, then he composes.
And he records it with a small orchestra,only 12 pieces, and then we listen to
it, and then we go on to the script.

(01:02:29):
I don't enter into the particularswith him, I give him the feeling and
the suggestions of the characters.
There are so many creative relationships,supposed creative relationships, that I
can't imagine two creatives of differentdisciplines giving each other access
to, You mentioned you're a designer.
It's like, why am I onlyinvited to the fourth meeting

(01:02:51):
and not the first brainstorm?
You know, like the creatives arenever in the kickoff type of thing.
But he's such a powerfulcreative partner that he, he was.
Included in the kickoff, Leon went onto say this almost cost a scandal at
one point with some of the actors whenthey first found themselves in front of
a playback recorder for the rehearsalsof the scene that was to be shot.

(01:03:12):
But I have to say in the end that someactors even prefer to dub themselves later
in the film in order not to lose the musicunderneath them while they are acting.
You'll notice a lot of dubbing partlybecause of different languages by
the actors, but even Clint Eastwoodis dubbed into English on this.
they would rather have thesoundtrack ruined by the music

(01:03:33):
and dub themselves after.
During shooting, it's veryimportant and helpful for an
actor to fall into an atmospherecreated and sustained by the music.
I've always felt that music ismore expressive than dialogue.
I've always said that my best dialogue andscreenwriter Is a neo Morricone because
many times it's more important a note oran orchestration than a line said when

(01:03:55):
you manage to express something with alook and the music instead of saying it
with words or having the character speak.
I think it's a more complete work.
So that to me is the thesis ofif you love and respect music.
you have companions inthe O and in Sergio Leon.

Cliff (01:04:14):
I want
to push.

Kyle (01:04:15):
where does, that manifest, I guess, for you specifically?

Cliff (01:04:18):
Yeah, I want to like hit the gas on this.
This is awesome.
So, to add a quote of quote, we'relike in hat on hat territory here,
but okay, a biographer of SergioLeone was talking about this movie
and talking about the relationshipthat that quote was just speaking to.
The interplay and the, the trust betweenart forms to create something even better.

(01:04:43):
And so, in a biography about Sergio Leone.
It was said that this movie, likewhen you're, when you're seeing the,
the graveyard scene, for instance,the 5, 000 grades or graves that were
set up, which apparently he actuallywanted 10, 000, but he got, he got
5, 000 and it does the trick in thatscene, quote, what we're watching

(01:05:06):
there is the birth of the rock video.
Which is, you know, said by abiographer in the squarest fucking
terms that could possibly exist.
But, effectively, right, like, what he'ssaying is like, you're watching somebody
do a music video before anyone understoodwhat that concept was supposed to be like?
To this depth?

(01:05:27):
You're watching someone actuallymake visuals to draw out the thing
that they knew about the music.
But, this is no longer part of thequote, but just adding like the
fact that it's iterative, though,in the way that you were just
expressing Kyle through that quote is.
Fundamentally, even beyond that, that'slike, you know, in the, in the multiverse

(01:05:49):
where Kanye kept his cool a littlebit longer and the versioning of songs
proliferated and became intertwinedwith making videos at the same time.
And then those would allow themselvesto create iterations out of one
another and have new versions.
That's the sort of.
Nut that's being cracked here, uh,using the technology and context of

(01:06:14):
the mid sixties you know, which is
a substantially long time ago.

Kyle (01:06:20):
15 years before MTV.

Cliff (01:06:23):
And one of the places I think, you know, speaking of that scene, like
we, we've spoken to it several times youknow, in, in addition to the final kind
of, Shootout scene with the trio, the songlaid on top of it, yes, but coming back
to this, the graveyard searching scene,that's just one of many examples here

(01:06:44):
where we get to, to draw out intentiondirectly from composition and filmmaker
and all this, where In the scene itself,again, you definitely need to go back
and watch it if you can't like visuallycall to mind what we're talking about
in this moment, but you know, he's, he'srunning in, in a circle, in a circular
graveyard with increasing intensity.

(01:07:05):
In the, the cameras are starting tofollow in a more, in a more frantic way.
And there were all these like cooltricks apparently about shooting this.
scene, which included like tying thecameras together so that they were all
turning at the same rate at the same time.
So that when it was cutting betweenshots of the actual actor versus
just B roll ish looking shots,they're moving at the same speed.

(01:07:30):
All this detail isincredible, but like, okay.
Two things about this one, thisscene, it's like objectively long.
Like it goes on for way too long.
On paper, so to speak, even when you'rewatching it it's sort of mind blowing how
long it's just sticking around and makingits own point more and more and more

(01:07:52):
without really changing anything about themotif, but simply intensifying the same
thing that's been shown and you start toget this feeling of When will this end?
It feels like it's beingstretched into infinity.
Meanwhile, the literal shape of the thingthat we're talking about is a circle.

(01:08:13):
The film is a circle.
The scene is a circle.
He's running in a circle.
And Morricone would go on to say, Themusic I wrote had a circular flavor.
And things don't ever worktogether this well anymore.
The way that you can just, like,extract an occasional scene or two
out of this, and you get to add upall the little things we've tried to

(01:08:34):
talk about so far, even just the wideshots versus close ups the speed and
the contrast of different shots, andthe way that the music works with it.
Incredible examples that you can justpull out in five and ten minute chunks
from this otherwise really long movie,too, that give you concentrated moments
of, this is what happens when people areworking hand in hand and trying to make

(01:08:56):
you feel a thing, because the music doessomething to you while you're watching
it, and gives you that feeling of ecstasythat stretches into anxiety because it
goes on for too long and feels wrong.

Kyle (01:09:12):
Mm.

Cliff (01:09:14):
ugh again, as a movie idiot, I have no idea how anyone could do
any of that stuff to begin with,but here it's incredibly impactful
and has no business being thatgood in a movie from this long ago.

Kyle (01:09:27):
Two, two things on that.
One, the length, I have thesame realization, like, God,
he's running for a long time.
But then you think, it's 5, 000graves in this graveyard and of
course it would take longer than that.
And of course you could also makethe artistic choice to truncate that
some, but then you don't get thefeel of, okay, Blondie is shooting

(01:09:50):
cannon fodder at him and he's tryingto outrun him and find the gold.
so there is the ecstasy and anxietyof being so close and yet still
being in such mortal danger.
and it's huge, you know, andyou're so close and so far away.
So it's like not the choice thatI probably would have made as
an auteur, but it is the rightchoice, I think, objectively.

(01:10:13):
And the music helps reinforce thatbecause of any portion of that we're
silent, it would lose the momentum, uh,that gives it its emotional essence.
The circles thing is interesting and Ihadn't thought about it until you put
it in the notes, but thinking about someof these like reductive minimalist movie
poster accounts online where artists arelike You know, in five shapes, can I,

(01:10:38):
with the restriction, with the limitation,uh, that I've imposed on myself, can
I give you the feel of this thing tolet you know it's a poster for Good,
Bad, and Ugly with just circle shapes?
And I think circle shapes are theright choice because you think about
tumbleweeds, wagon wheels, the high noonsun The, the barrels that he was washing

(01:11:00):
his feet in, in the middle of the desertthe first shape that you start with to
draw a coyote's head, you know, a biggercircle in a smaller circle, maybe, so
if somebody was like, what shape is thedesert, I wouldn't think about a circle,
but a circle makes a lot of sense andjust the human ability to communicate
signals that strongly with minimalnoise and also minimal information.

(01:11:25):
is a really powerful thing thathumans are able to do, and you
see it on full display here.

Cliff (01:11:31):
I'll only add because it's dark in exactly the way that makes me love things.
It was eventually pointed out you'vegot a circular graveyard full of
Civil War soldiers, ostensibly,who fought for something important.
And they're in a circlesurrounding an empty circle.

(01:11:51):
Of nothing,

Kyle (01:11:53):
Mm.

Cliff (01:11:53):
they're kind of giving you like, I mean the whole movie has this layer of, it
is satirical, but attempts to do doesn'tjust attempt it manages to do so in a
way that constantly dips below the snifftest in America because everything has to
be fucking slapstick for us or whatever.

(01:12:13):
So there, there's satire throughout,like, it is making fun of things at
every possible point, including manyof the characters themselves, but to,
to have come back to this the circularmotif of it being, like, Everyone's
reasoning is circular, everyone'smotivations are circular, we're all
running and running and running around,and generally speaking, in the middle

(01:12:36):
is sort of this like empty thing wheresomething feels like it is supposed
to be and then when we look at it,nothing really is going on there.
Except for the moments where good and badactually have to face off and ugly becomes
irrelevant, which is a fun little momentto draw out of the final scene anyway.
every little thing, every little insightthat we can draw back out like that is

(01:13:00):
multiplied by the musical accompanimentto the idea that goes along with it.
It just, everything gets Cubedand quadrupled in effect, uh,
instead of just being supportedor dragged along or otherwise, you
know, a point made to obviously

Kyle (01:13:22):
I mean, it just occurred to me that the circle at the
center of all this is death.
And the stone at the center of thatcenter is meant to be a name that gives
meaning and wealth, and has nothing on it.
Man, that's some Rick Sanchez shit.

Cliff (01:13:44):
Oh, I mean, when, when my stupid brain clicked into the final scene, I
guess I'll spoil an unspoilable movieor whatever, but like when my brain
clicked into like, okay, we had thegood, the bad and the ugly, we've already
discussed that Spaghetti Westerns asa whole are sort of taking a Anti hero
and otherwise modernistically nihilisticapproach to things by basically saying

(01:14:07):
no one is good and there's no suchthing as John Wayne, you've imagined it.
Uh, the best thing that we havein terms of good is this dude, you
know, he's basically self interested,but is distinctly not the bad dude.
Who's clearly just evil at all times.
And then the ugly is supposedly,maybe even not supposedly, the ugly is

(01:14:28):
representative of most actual people.
And like, the ugliness of how, justlike, clearly stupid we are in our own
self interest, and our own inabilityto think about how our self interest
actually excludes us from the momentsthat we need to participate in to give
ourselves the things that we need in life.

(01:14:48):
And like, that feels plain enough as themovie goes along, but then to have the
final scene where, okay, the three, thegood, the bad, and the ugly are facing
off, and all that actually kind of everhappens is good and bad actually fight,
and ugly is just standing in the middleof the circle, irrelevant, because

(01:15:08):
good's already taken the bullets outof his gun, and just like, oh, it's Oh,
everything's always this way, isn't it?

Kyle (01:15:18):
Oh man.
Or as a great video essay on theediting of that scene, I watched,
described it as a cat named Max Tolan.
if you really boil it down, if youtake away the music, it's three
guys literally staring at eachother for five full cinema minutes.
And you're like, what?
I would never want towatch anything like that.
That's crazy.

(01:15:40):
And yet you do.
And to your point, it's one ofthe most impactful scenes in the
history of 20th century cinema.

Cliff (01:15:47):
You did not expect to be surprisable at that moment,
and then it hits you anyway.
It's good.
That's your takeawayfrom the podcast today.
Cliff and Kyle say, this movie?
A good one!

Kyle (01:16:00):
Two thumbs up!

Cliff (01:16:03):
so maybe that's a good right turn into When you want to then go
into this piece of music or thispiece of art and you want to focus on
things or isolate things like we tryto talk about doing with every piece
of music that we end up talking about.
What, so let me sort of invert thequestions that you were giving me

(01:16:24):
earlier on about taking it in fresh.
What do you think are some great aspectsof music, movie or combination to actively
focus on and draw things out the nexttime you go back to it on purpose?

Kyle (01:16:38):
It boils down to two things for me.
One, that I probably wouldn't havethought about as actively if you had not
pointed it out early on, is the silence.
This is the long stretches of silence inthe film and how it's used to the limits
of physiological comfort and then isinterrupted by musical interiority mostly.

(01:17:01):
a lot of the music when I noticed it themost watching the film was, On a close
up of a person and accompanied some bitof their like trying to figure out what
the face acting was meant to signify andthey all did a lot with a little in it
throughout the movie culminating in thein the standoff scene the other thing

(01:17:24):
is you know if you have read that rickrubin book or you're in the brian nino
school of creativity we've talked aboutagain and again The idea as a practicing
creative of doing the exercise of howmany variations on a single theme you
can achieve is really provocative to me.

(01:17:45):
Not only what they did with what hedid with three characters and the three
instruments, but variations beyond thatof the two note character motifs, but
then of the arpeggio, the like, actionarpeggio, I guess I would call it,
that leads into the ecstasy of gold.
Like the, so it's thethree peoples variation.

(01:18:06):
And then the other motif that appearsagain and again is the idea that
they're all collectively pursuing,with a, I guess, four note arpeggio.
I would say those two things,silence and really masterful breadth
in repetition and constraints.
Anything else for you

Cliff (01:18:25):
I would just add on to the theme part and fill in a couple of
possible gaps for folks at this moment.
So, okay, so the, the main theme, likewe've already mentioned, Frequent Motif
used in different ways for the three maincharacters with a different instrument
used for each of these characters.

(01:18:46):
So just quickly, so that you canhear it immediately if you want to
Blondie, the Clint Eastwood goodcharacter is the flute Angel Eyes the
bad and Ocarina is representing him.
So Skeeter from fuckingDoug is stoked, I guess.
Uh, and then for Tuko, uh,ugly, uh, you got human voices.

(01:19:09):
Mostly doing the same motif.
So you can go in and try to pickthose apart and pay attention to them.
But yeah, that's, that'sa great way to do it.
We we've mentioned a bunch ofinstruments, but because of the
sparseness of the music itself, it'sto me a difficult moment to do the.
instrument specific focus thatwe like doing on some records

(01:19:31):
to really draw things out.
Um, you may, you may be waitinga long time for the next, next
time for something to come around.
Um, so I definitely think that themebased stuff makes a ton of sense.
I would maybe even say as an extensionof what to focus on or isolate, we
could actually connect this pretty andimmediately to the thing we usually

(01:19:55):
kind of end with, which is What tostart doing next if this touched any
part of your brain or spirit or heart.
And I think one of the reasons we cando that is because a lot of times we
want to make sure that we take a pitstop around the impact of a particular
piece of music and do the whole like,I don't think you quite understand how

(01:20:16):
this showed up and how important I thinkwe're probably good on that front here.
Um, we already talked about that.
This is.
Almost certainly a piece of musicyou already know, even if you don't
know that you know it, which is alevel beyond, you know, that the 99.
99999 percent of all recorded everything,which is pretty incredible but As an

(01:20:39):
extension of focusing on things likemotifs or themes or even paying closer
attention to the way that the musicinteracts with the movie, this does the
immediate kaleidoscope into a thousandother directions that you can go in.
not, least because it introduces an actualvisual element, which gives you a sort

(01:21:03):
of whole other plane of things to pursue.
But I think.
I think at this point, like, there'sso much to start talking about that
we can sort of spin the globe and putour finger on things, uh, that'll send
people in directions that it feelslike maybe the best use of extending
that original question on focus.
What you think?

Kyle (01:21:23):
I agree with that.
Totally.
And to your point, there are a whole gripof rabbit holes that we could jump down.

Cliff (01:21:31):
I'll tee you up for an easy one.
If I say this was neat, I wouldlike to hear other soundtracks by
Ennio Morricone or someone else.
Where should I start heading?

Kyle (01:21:46):
You know, the Rolling Stone, I think has a bit said no two people are
going to give you the same and the,you know, playlist and that's the joy.
If you are a film fan, film adjacent,enthusiast, or just general culture
enjoyer what I find exciting isstarting with the director's names,

(01:22:10):
that I know I have liked somethingof theirs and going from there.
So like, I think he did Days of Heaven.
He definitely did a Malick film andwas nominated for an Oscar for it.
but Bernardo Bertolucci, Roland JaffeRoman Polanski, Don Siegel, Mike Nichols,
Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, BarryLevinson, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty.

(01:22:33):
He did the score for Bulworth forthe hip hop culture movie to like put
a finer point on the hip hop thing.
Quentin Tarantino, like hedid the Hateful Eight score.
After Tarantino reused a bunch ofhis score work on other films and he
has mixed feelings on Tarantino to besure And he he won an oscar at like

(01:22:54):
86 years old or something He was 86.
He was the oldest person to ever winan oscar and that was after five other
nominations over Four or five decadesor so and an honorary It was like almost
a full decade after he got the honoraryaward that Clint Eastwood presented
him in 2007 the one thing I learned iswhen he didn't do what was asked to do,

(01:23:16):
Stanley Kubrick approached him to dothe score for A Clockwork Orange and,
the way that, you know, described it washe made the mistake of doing a courtesy
call, to Sergio Leone who said, Oh, no,we're still working on this score that
it actually already completely wrapped.
So you miss out on A Clockwork Orange.

(01:23:38):
of, uh, miscommunication,we'll say generously.
Um, but just like imagine that world.
So, not only are all of those, youknow, Days of Heaven, The Mission,
that crazy funk when he did sometimein the late 60s or early 70s, Once
Upon a Time in America, Bullworth.

(01:23:59):
Um, certainly the hateful eight for kindof a return to the spaghetti western vibe.
Any of those are ones that you can googlebut like If you think you might like the
film or the director or the vibe, there'svastly different directions that you can
go in just by pursuing, director's names.
And I would encourageyou to do the same thing.
Like don't, you can listen to thescore certainly, but then also watch

(01:24:23):
those films and just that's like 20 newdirectors to get introduced to, like
if we traffic one other idea other thanappreciating Ineo, Maybe you'll become
a letterboxed person in 2025 becauseI think the language of film is the
next best thing for my money to music.
It's complicated because it introducesnarrative and words and that's where we

(01:24:47):
get away from the purity of music's magic.
it is really a beautiful mediumand one that I've worked for years
and years to appreciate more.
Thanks to my wife who's alwaysbeen a, like, hardcore fan.
Uh, so yeah, other directors.

Cliff (01:25:02):
So let me maybe pick up from another side of the coin.
So if you are attracted to the specificmusical approaches and especially the
motif usage that we were just mentioningand the themes, one very cool pit
stop that hopefully you are already.

(01:25:24):
on track about would be like JohnColtrane and other jazz artists
who very intentionally used motifs.
you know, it, if we mentionedA Love Supreme on every single
episode, I have no regrets.

Kyle (01:25:39):
Oh no!

Cliff (01:25:41):
Oops.
That is an extension of what we werementioning in terms of reusing themes
and playing them with differentinstruments or different contexts at
different speeds, different rhythms,uh, and just really playing with
something simple over and over.
Love Supreme is a fantastic musical onlyexample of using four fucking notes to

(01:26:05):
make the greatest jazz album of all time.
Simply by playing with those fournotes in different ways on different
instruments in different time in relationto, you know, other people who are
experimenting with it at the same time.
Anything that takes you in that.
general jazz direction.
It's not only a cool offshoot of theidea, but just again, as a reminder,

(01:26:29):
so much of what we are listening tothat Ineo composed was conceptualized
through like an education in jazz,an early, deep education in jazz.
As, I mean, as that genre of music wasdeveloping so much of what we're hearing

(01:26:49):
is effectively the vibe that became jazzis a vibe that gets carried over into
these forms of composition, where somuch of the creativity is about finding
the little moment that hasn't existedyet, and the, you know, the stupid quote
about the note you don't play, all thatshit it's all This, it's spiritually

(01:27:12):
aligned with one another, that peoplecare about their moments of silence, the
note that comes after the silence, thelead up to the silence, and then how all
those things work together, and then whenyou find something good, repeat it in
different ways over and over again untilit becomes a hook, that becomes an earworm
the, the spiritual manifestation ofjazz, like cut me coming from this angle

(01:27:34):
and feeling like the approaches of jazzwere manifested in visual form through
this movie really took me somewhere.

Kyle (01:27:42):
I have primarily been thinking about, edited music and like weird weird
ways the two forms can meet each other.
Like strong, strong recommendation to go.
Seek out John Cage both as a musicianand as a teacher and there are lots of
other like intersection y moments likevisual albums other people who have done

(01:28:09):
poppy type music getting into score.
So there's like other, other rabbit holesthat I think jump out, me jump out at me
more primarily, but the jazz thing thatreally stood out to me, and this is maybe
just recency bias, but it is important.
It's a now thing that's happening and it'scurrently nominated for an album of the
year, Grammy, and that's new blue sun.

(01:28:29):
I jumped on that bandwagon prettyhard as an outcast fan and I've seen
it four or five times this year.
And, Watching ideas sort of ripple outextemporaneously in real time and watching
them evolve over a series of performances.
not growing up in the playing traditionlike you, Cliff, it's been, I came

(01:28:52):
the most armed to New Blue Sun ofany jazz experience I've ever had
of like really becoming a student ofwhat was happening and understanding
and appreciating it in real time andthen how it was evolving over time.
Um, and a couple of things aboutNew Blue Sun came to mind as I was
watching the film and listening,especially to just the album.

(01:29:14):
One is, um, the fearlessness of theinterplay of layers of how things come and
go in ways that are hard to signal and arealmost like, extraverbal communication.
I was like, whoa, that was a straight,like, I wouldn't have gone straight
from this to into this swell of thisthing or this weird hit, but I like
it and I wouldn't have thought of itbefore, but I want more of it now.

(01:29:38):
So if you listen to like the backhalf of the rope bridge, it's
kind of new blue sunny to me.
And the other thing about newblue sun is it reinforces the
more Morriconian instinct to seekout weird instrument choices.
Like The visual of Andre with a blanketcovered in different analog and digital

(01:30:03):
flutes, sure, but also the guitaristplaying through a million laptop inputs
and Carlos Nino playing the three onlylike no normal pieces of percussion,
three strange pieces of percussionand a rainstick and the spiral cut

(01:30:23):
french fry symbol thing behind him.
None of it made sense atall the first time I saw it.
What are they going todo with any of this shit?
And now it just feelslike a room of delights.
so I would encourage everybody togo like, check out some, some amount
of new Blue Sun content because it'svery much in the spirit of this thing.
It's also, well, we'retalking about instruments.
It's also worth mentioning guitar, right?

(01:30:45):
Like strictly on the guitartip surf rock for sure.
You're Dick Dales, you're DwayneEddie's your ventures, your shadows,
but also we've talked, we've namechecked yawning man a number of times.
Gary Arce definitely inspiredhugely by spaghetti Westerns.
And I think has alwaysbeen clear about that.
But also Dylan Carlson and earthspecifically the like mid aughts earth.

(01:31:11):
the bees made honey in the lionskull, that's an incredible
spaghetti western type record.
And then Dylan Carlson's solo recordconquistador extremely in this vein.
Um, so definite likesurf rock guitar stuff.
And then American primitive, if you'reinto the flamingo, like flamingo and

(01:31:32):
Latino, like forms of acoustic guitarplaying are their own tradition with.
Tons of great players throughoutliterally hundreds of years of history.
And I'm, I wish I were more of a studentof it, but American primitive, evokes
the Southwest for me in a lot of ways,your John Fahey's your bill or cuts
your Marissa Anderson's, or a recordthat you're going to see on a lot

(01:31:55):
of best of 2024 year end list Haydenpedigo's live from Amarillo, Texas.
You'll get some of that same.
Acoustic and pseudoelectric flavor, with that.
So new blue sun and Hayden Pettigo, somereal 2024 moments to connect to 1966.

Cliff (01:32:14):
Also, all signs point inward to new blue sun.
I think it's probably worth justsaying directly and then you can
certainly add flavor to this.
So I.
I don't mind this, but I teedyou up for, I like soundtracks.
What should I listen to earlier?
And you said, here are thedirectors you should watch.

(01:32:35):
That was a better answer, but nowI will re ask a similar question.
And just sort of like mention acouple that come to mind for me, but.
I may not spin a soundtrack as a genre.
Uh, I don't know to go to it a ton, butthere have been several moments in my

(01:32:56):
life where I've encountered a soundtrackthat blew me away and became, you know,
a standalone enjoyable piece of music.
So I think there's niches to uncover.
There's also just like theobvious, okay, John Williams
knows how to write a soundtrack.
I literally went to Red Rocks last year,the year before, just to listen to an

(01:33:18):
orchestra perform John Williams music.
And it was, it had nobusiness being that good.
And it was great.
There's a whole bunch of peoplejust sitting there listening to
it because it's so memorable.
And John Williams certainly went furtherin the direction of less weird and
silence induced atmosphere and more likeI'm going to take this main theme and

(01:33:41):
you're going to remember it for sure.
Whether it's Star Wars or theOlympics or something in your brain
is going to go da da da da aboutsomething for a very long time.
And it'll be right from John Williamsand it'll be helpful for you and
it'll Introduce really specificparts of movies and all that.
And so I think there's a sortof like intentionality there.
But you know, John Williams,Hans Zimmer and I think you've

(01:34:05):
mentioned a few other folks.
You've even mentioned,I think, Danny Elfman.
So that's, the person who'sworked with like Sam Raimi.
And Tim Burton, I think.

Kyle (01:34:15):
I primarily think of Tim Burton, but he has done a lot.
He was also, I could betotally making this up, but I
think he was in Oingo Boingo.
Yeah.

Cliff (01:34:25):
Yeah.
Um, so yeah, what, what furthershould I chase there, uh, as a
bonehead who would like to learn more?

Kyle (01:34:33):
holy trinity of getting into scores.
You definitely touched on isMorricone, John Williams, Hans Zimmer.
Hans Zimmer has a great op ed thathe wrote about how Morricone is
his hero and biggest inspiration.
So direct through line there.
and you know, God Zimmer, Zimmer andChris Nolan is another like, Leoni,

(01:34:56):
Morikone, Match Made in Heaven,

Cliff (01:34:58):
Oh, yeah, that's great.
Yeah.

Kyle (01:35:00):
Bigness is what they do better than anything that I've ever seen, you
know, Inception, Interstellar, the lasttwo of the Dark Knight trilogy movies,
especially, my favorite in this world,um, like I actually got into scores
kind of as a Kind of the backdoor waybecause rockers started getting into it.

(01:35:21):
Like you can say what you will aboutlike mastodon doing the Jonah Hex,
Josh Brolin, Jonah Hex movie score.
And that was a thing that happened.
And you're just like, all right.
but it seems like, uh, an artist of anyserious import is maybe going to try some
degree of soundtracking or scoring oraccompanying visuals out at some point.

(01:35:44):
So for my money, the gold standardof the 21st century of this is
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
all the Fincher stuff that he's done.
The social network score is incredible.
The girl with the dragontattoo is incredible.
they've done a ton of stuff sincethen, but those were the two that
really made me like sit up in mychair and start taking it seriously.

Cliff (01:36:02):
did Challengers.
They came out this year too.

Kyle (01:36:04):
there you go.
There you go.
I think one of them has done somethingeven more recently than that.
Maybe the challengers was a big one.
But then there's like Queen doing theFlash Gordon soundtrack, which then
got me into, there's this UK group,Teeth of the Sea that did, that covered
the love theme from Flash Gordon onthis short little EP called that is

(01:36:29):
like one of my favorite things ever.
Like, if my records were goingup in a fire, I'd probably get
my Spodeodydopalicious singleand my Hypnoticon EP, 12 Inch.
Queen, uh, you have Nick Cave,The Assassination of Jesse
James, score is incredible andalso westerny and different.

(01:36:50):
Um, they also did that guy Pierce film,The Proposition, it's probably their,
their best Loved one, I would say, butthey've done a bunch of other stuff too.
Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo hasdone a bunch of stuff, like all
the way down to the Rugrats film.
Um, so he's got his own flavorthat he brings to stuff.
Certainly the soul guys Isaac Hayesand Marvin Gaye, like so, Shaft,

(01:37:12):
Blexploitation, Marvin Gaye didTroubleman, and that's a, fuck, that's an
incredible just Marvin Gaye record, butit's also got great instrumental stuff.
Jimmy Page did two of the Bronson DeathWish films, uh, Mark Knopfler from Dire
Straits did some stuff, Johnny Greenwood,who has cited his Morricone influence,
they have talked about, Tom York andJohnny Greenwood have talked about how

(01:37:35):
influential Good, Bad, and Ugly was onOK Computer, so that's a rabbit hole
that's there if you want it, uh, DaftPunk and Tron Legacy, and then, I'd
totally forgotten this, but Toto did it.
the original dune
in the 80s or, or some part of it.
So that's there if you want it, butI, I think for people who are like

(01:37:57):
music fans, but they are like me.
And for a long time, didn't think theworld of music scores was for them.
Then people who have made, rock metal,whatever that you have liked could be
an end road to getting into this world.
If the John Williams andHans Zimmer's of the world.
Aren't your flavor.

Cliff (01:38:16):
I loved 100 percent of that, but you admittedly floored me unexpectedly
with Toto having Composed most of thesoundtrack to the original Dune which also
then had tracks, a track contributed byBrian Eno, Roger Eno, and Daniel Nguyen,
who is another incredible musician that weonly have mentioned maybe once or twice.

Kyle (01:38:39):
Yeah, Yeah, Daniel Lanwa and I always associate Daniel, even though I
don't know that they're connected in anyway with Chuck Johnson, because they both
both made pedal steely records in the mid.
2010s.
Daniel Lanois is the U2production guy originally, right?
That was kind of his like first

Cliff (01:39:00):
He worked with Brian Eno to do some of those.
Yeah.

Kyle (01:39:02):
Made a record in 2016 I want to say called Goodbye to
Language that was like one of myfavorite records of the decade.
And I associate it With ChuckJohnson because he made a record
called balsam, I think that sameyear and they were like, they were
sort of a long repeat all for me.
Those two together.

Cliff (01:39:22):
In something that feels like a relevant connection point, Daniel Lemois
provided vocal tracks for Red DeadRedemption 2, which just feels like a
a hat on a hat of a hat of ahat about good and bad and ugly.

Kyle (01:39:40):
I mean, video game music is a whole other thing that you could do.
Like you start with a biggie liketangerine dream doing GTA five.
That's a whole, whole other thing.
And I know that's one that I don'tappreciate enough, but I, I at least
know that like, I'm glad that companieslike Rockstar invested big money in
atmospheric music and world buildingwithout question had roots in this film.

(01:40:07):
And some of the things that Morricone did.
one other rabbit hole I would, I wouldpoint out as the visual album phenomenon.
It's like where, you know, where's thelink or like, where's the line where you
delineate between an album with musicvideos or the Michael Jackson thriller.
Things got a short film or whatever.
but thinking strictly about albums wherelike they essentially made a movie to go

(01:40:30):
with it or every song has visuals for it.
Some recent examples, likethe Biggie is lemonade,
obviously surfboard.
Prince was an early adopter ofwhatever this line is purple rain
being the seminal example, butalso graffiti prison, cherry moon.
Our, beloved hometown hero,Janelle Monáe with dirty computer.

(01:40:53):
But then also I love the soundand fury example from Sturgill.
Who's had a great year.
He made a weird record and thenhe did like an anime with it.
And I think it's still on Netflix.
So that's worth checking out.
And then Queens with like clockworkdid visuals with bone face for every
song I think off of that album.

(01:41:14):
So that's like, all of that is sort ofa phenomenon thinking about that quote
that you shared from Sergio Leone'sbiographer, like we're watching the first
rock video being made somewhere alongthat continuum of like visuals and sounds
belong together, but it's an emphasison the music instead of dialogue and
linearity exists, the visual album thing.

Cliff (01:41:37):
Hard to overstate the implications of this singular fucking piece of music.
I find myself at my own crossroads becauseI think I want to talk about this for
like two more hours and that will becomeunbearable and lack the, character.
Yeah,

Kyle (01:41:54):
He, Past not terribly long ago.
He's only been gone a couple of years.
He had 91 good densely packed yearsSo why don't we give somebody else
the last word who had some thingsto say about him when he died?
How do you feel about that?

Cliff (01:42:07):
Depends on who it is, but I trust you.
Yeah,

Kyle (01:42:09):
John Zorn?
Is John

Cliff (01:42:10):
alright, we're good to

Kyle (01:42:11):
bar?

Cliff (01:42:12):
yeah.

Kyle (01:42:13):
some highlights in the Uh, and the reflection.
John Zorn wrote this thing andthe New York Times published it.
I really love that.
One two punch of it beingcredibly Google able.
A few of the things that he saidabout him, he called him an innovator.
He said he overcame each new challengewith a fresh approach, retaining a
curiosity and childlike sense of wonder.

(01:42:34):
He was always open to trying new sounds,new instruments, new combinations,
rarely drawing from the same well twice.
So, curiosity and childlikesense of wonder, rarely drew
from the same well twice.
He's a man of tunic spirit becausehe was also a man of integrity
who did not suffer fools gladly.

Cliff (01:42:50):
Heh heh heh heh.

Kyle (01:42:51):
He lived a relatively simple life in a beautiful apartment in
Rome, waking up as early as 4.
30 in the morning, taking walks andcomposing at his desk for hours on end.
He traveled little, sohe's a man with deep roots.
This is what I really love.
What needs to be understood is thatMorricone was a magician of sound.
He had an uncanny ability to combineinstruments in original ways.
Anything was welcome ifit had dramatic effect.

(01:43:15):
His mastery of a wide range of genres andinstruments made him a musician his time.
This kind of openness remainsthe way of the future.
What he accomplished in thechallenging and restrictive world of
film is nothing short of miraculous.
There, his immense imagination,sharp ear for drama, Profound
lyricism, puckish sense of humor,and huge heart find voice through a

(01:43:38):
magnificent and masterly musicianship.
Artistic freedom was his credo, and hisimpeccable taste and innate sense of
energy, space, and time was palpable.
His work, therefore, elevatedevery film he scored.
May we all be as free as Ennio Morricone.