Beef Jerky Time: 11/1/06

I just finished the new 2nd volume of Simon Callow's life of Orson Welles (subtitled Hello Americans). Orson Welles is such a fascinating and screwed-up-sounding person. I tried reading the first volume once, but it was Larger Than Life and I was physically unable to keep holding it up to finish it.... This second volume just covers about 7 years of Orson Welles' life. It's not your typical Hollywood Life, such as the recent Ava Gardner bio that was CHOCK full of scandal and delicious chatty catty quotes and details. Callow's is a very workmanlike book, full of production notes and studio memos and transcribed telegram text. Hardly juicy stuff, but that's OK really. It's interesting to have the dry, rich, odd version of Welles--sans juice. Anyway, the book influenced my show this week, inspiring a short set of film music from 1936-2002. (In the list below, see between * and **.)

• Cagney & Lacey Theme
  
• Drug Test: Yo La Tengo
  
• Like a Stranger: Psychedelic Furs
  
• Make Believe Mambo: David Byrne
  
• I See the Light: Olu Dara
  
• All These Things That I've Done: The Killers
  
• Beaux Dimanches: Amadou & Mariam
  *
  
• Titina: from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, tribute version by Stanley Black
  
• Prelude: from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, composed by Bernard Herrmann
  
• Escape! No Escape!: from Terry Gilliam's Brazil, composed by Michael Kamen
  
• Madame de Tourvel: from Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons, composed by George Fenton
  
• The Hardest Geometry Problem in the World: from Wes Anderson's Rushmore, composed by Mark Mothersbaugh
  
• The Riders of Rohan: from Peter Jackson's The Two Towers, composed by Howard Shore
  **
  
• A Minor Incident: Badly Drawn Boy (on a CD of 18 songs selected from Nick Hornby's book 31 Songs)
  
• Back on Me: Urge Overkill
  
• Favour: The Wake