Music Suitable For The Launch Of A Personal Quest
Orchestrating Life, One Dubbed Tune At A Time1
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.2
Henry David Thoreau
You gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind music
Even if nobody else sings along
Written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
Performed (most famously) by Mama Cass Elliot3
A Soundtrack of Ones Own
While the notion of a specific musical piece bearing special significance for a given individual probably dates back to the origins of music itself, 
it was most famously articulated and popularized in its contemporary format as a personal theme song by an Ally McBeal episode in which her therapist4 recommended she choose a favorite tune5 to sustain her in times of trouble and to put a bounce in her step when she crosses the street.
Since that time, selecting a personal theme song has been a regular feature in blogs, a subject of quizzes, and the topic of many an idle conversation, whether held in person or on an internet forum.
This concept has been more recently been rejuvenated and annoyingly extended by the ascendancy of the custom ringtone to the status of obligatory accoutrement to the already ubiquitous mobile phone, thus inflicting those personalized tunes on everyone in the vicinity.6
The official Heck Of A Guy Blog position is that the personal theme song concept is not so much faulty as inadequate.7 One theme song can hardly fit all occasions.
Ones innermost metaphysical core may resonate precisely with Walking On Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves but that selection still isn’t going to work at mom’s funeral. And the guy whose inner DJ is playing Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man as his theme is likely to suffer cognitive dissonance whiplash if that is his background music for breaking up with his girl friend of eight years.
And who buys a 40 Gig iPod to load it with only one song?
Were even the most monotonous and routine life made into a movie (and DrHGuy believes he may have seen that flick), it would require a repertoire of event-specific songs to construct a suitable soundtrack.
Compiling and Cataloging An Inventory of Music For Your Soundtrack
A movie soundtrack offers many advantages over a TV theme song as a model for the music of ones life, but it does require extra effort as well. While few will opt to replace the rec room with a state of the art dubbing studio, such as the one pictured in the graphic atop this post, accumulating a database of music in anticipation of future needs is a manageable and rewarding task.
Preparing music for predictable situations is hardly a novel idea. DrHGuy has been informed, for example, that some individuals who enter the wild and wacky world of adult dating find it useful to prepare a Mix CD of romantic, seductive music - just in case.
And, DrHGuy is not the sort of guy to present readers with an ambiguously defined idea such as compiling and cataloging an inventory of music for your soundtrack without also providing an example - the pleas and begging notwithstanding.
The composition proffered as a starter for your collection comes from
The Best Movie Soundtrack You’ve (Probably) Can’t Identify
In an earlier post, The Stunt Man: The Best Movie You’ve Not Seen Enough Times, I found few opportunities to temper my accolades about one of my favorite movies. One such instance was my evaluation that the documentary, The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man, was perhaps, for some, a bit over the top: “… I must advise the first time viewer to defer The Sinister Saga … . Until one is possessed of a full-fledged conviction that The Stunt Man is a great movie, The Sinister Saga is more likely to overload than enlighten.”
That modest caveat, however, was less an admission of imperfection than a set-up for my enthusiastic praise of the soundtrack:
The Music, the Movie, and Your Hit Parade
The score of The Stunt Man consists of several songs with similar musical elements. Of the ten tracks9 at least seven are easily identified as musically related. The Heck Of A Guy recommendation for your consideration is a heroic piece with the somewhat uninspiring title, Film Caravan.
Film Caravan: Musical Features
Film Caravan is an exuberant, sly, grandly joyous instrumental with an ominous, almost menacing introduction and a simple fade-out ending.
Film Caravan: Categories Of Use
I. Primary Uses
Film Caravan is well-suited for
- Launching of quests
- Beginning journeys
- Initiating projects
- Refocusing on goal(s)
II. Secondary Uses
Film Caravan may also be useful, in selected situations, for
- Nonspecific encouraging and energizing
Special Characteristics and Considerations
- While Film Caravan can certainly be used in solitary by an individual, it can be especially effective for groups working together on a given task. It does work best when the assemblage consists of folks who can function as a unit while maintaining their personal identity rather than performing in lockstep. For the latter situation, one might consider the Colonel Bogey March, a Gregorian Chant, or any of the traditional cadences that include “Sound off, one, two” and various misogynistic phrases.
- The impact of Film Caravan reaches its epitome when used at the beginning of the final chapter of a saga, the final push to victory. In The Stunt Man, the titular film caravan is the transport of the actors, support staff, film machinery, and props to shoot the final, climatic scene of the movie-within-a-movie and The Stunt Man itself. When played at the initiation of a prolonged trudge, its inspirational force dissipates.
- Film Caravan is jocular, risible, mordant, and witty. Funereal events, such as - well, funerals, are rarely a good fit with Film Caravan.10 Film Caravan is not in the spirit of grim enterprises such as laying off employees to save a company from bankruptcy, the start of a D-Day sort of military expedition, and efforts to rescue workers in a mine collapse. A good rule of thumb is that Film Caravan is for grins, not for grim.
- Film Caravan wears well and, with good judgment, can be repeatedly played for the same audience.
Film Caravan: Real Life Example of Proper Usage
Film Caravan has become part of DrHGuy’s family vacation tradition. The final leg of the annual journey, the one hour trip, via rental car, from the Savannah airport to the beach house on Hilton Head begins with sliding that year’s Hilton Headed mix CD into the player and turning the volume up for the invariable first track, Film Caravan. It is, in a word, awesome.
Listen To Film Caravan
[Click to hear Film Caravan from The Stunt Man Soundtrack
Original Context Of Film Caravan
While it’s not necessary to have seen The Stunt Man to appreciate the music of Film Caravan,11 it may be helpful to place the music in its original context. These screenshots from the movie depict some of the scenes that take place during this song.
Screenshots From The Stunt Man
The opening bars ominously portend - a parade of children on bikes. It’s one of many musical jokes in the movie. The can in the lower right quadrant is a recurrent motif extending from the first frames of the movie. In this scene, the earliest indication of the oncoming caravan is the trembling of the can, much like the glass of water shaking with the approach of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.
The children are followed by a disparate caravan of cars, trucks, an RV, a crane, and, of course, a huge truck carrying a Dusenberg built in the 1920s.
As noted, this is happy music, and these are happy people.
Note the subtle phallic symbolism.
The Stunt Man is a happily heterogeneous, joyfully jumbled occasion - and this is its parade. The modern, overwhelmingly massive truck carting the old Dusenberg guarded by World War I German soldiers is just another float.
From the impressive and incongruent truck loaded with an automobile and individuals from another era, the movie returns to the modern hodge-podge necessary for movie making.
And back to a guy riding a phallus. (Note the fellow reclining on the crane in the lower left quadrant.)
With everything in place for the final scene, the music fades out.
Footnotes
- Thanks to the Mesomorph and his prom companion for serving as models in the graphic below. The background scene is a path through the woods behind Heck of a House ~back~
- One suspects Thoreau might have chosen a different metaphor had he endured the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida ~back~
- Cass’s version first appeared on her 1969 album Bubblegum, Lemonade and Something for Mama. Bobby Sherman and Paul Westerberg had versions on CD. Wikipedia Article ~back~
- Played by Tracy Ullman ~back~
- Ally chose “Tell Him” by the Exciters ~back~
- While most folks seem to have only one ringtone for all occasions, many phones allow the owners to associate specific ringtones with a specific caller or category of callers. Callers with push ringers (AKA reverse ring tones) can even coerce the phone being called to play the caller’s preferred ringtone, making it possible all manner of hilarity. Enthusiastic Duke fans, such as The Princess of Peds and the Duke of Derm, for example, could call Tar Heels rooters with the message, “Go to Hell, Carolina, Go to Hell,” which would be tres amusing, no? ~back~
- The official Heck Of A Guy Blog position is that customized ringtones, like those tattoos with Chinese characters (that invariably mean something on the lines of “I wish to make it clear to anyone who reads Chines that I am, indeed, an idiot”), invite ridicule and ever, ever enhance the standing of the owner - and that includes yours. Lady Lawanda’s preference is a strategically placed customized vibration mode which makes her look forward to each and every call. ~back~
- Dominic Frontiere: accomplished accordionist, great composer of movie Scores, failed criminal.
Dominic Frontiere was a first known as a jazz accordionist, soloing at Carnegie Hall at age twelve and then playing with a number of big bands. In the mid-1950s, he came to Las Angeles, working his way into the musical directorship of 20th Century Fox. He produced scores for several movies there while also recording jazz. He may be best known for creating the part-music, part-sound effects theme to the Outer Limits. He composed music for numerous television shows, including the Rat Patrol, Branded, and The FBI,
Frontiere became head of Paramount’s music department in the early 1970’s, where he again worked on a combination of television and film score, while concurrently orchestrating popular music albums for, among others, Chicago. He won a Golden Globe for the score to the 1980 film The Stunt Man. He then embarked on a series of movie soundtracks, beginning with Hang ‘Em High and including On Any Sunday, Brannigan, and Chisum, which led to his work on The Stunt Man, for which he won a Golden Globe. He has since composed the music for many other TV and movie presentations.
He also spent nine months in a federal prison in 1986 for scalping 16,000 1980 Super Bowl tickets he obtained through the owner of the Las Angeles Rams, who happened to also be his ex-wife, Georgia Frontiere. He was convicted of failing to report his $500,000 profit to the IRS, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, three years probation, and a $15,000 fine. ~back~
- The songs from the Stunt Man Soundtrack follow:
1. Film Caravan
2. The Chase
3. Bits & Pieces
4. Southern Belle
5. The Stunt Man-End Title
6. Bedroom Horns
7. Training
8. The Stunt Man-Main Theme
9. Crane
10. The Stunt Man-Main Title ~back~ - It is true, however, that DrHGuy would stipulate the use of Film Caravan for the procession bearing his casket to the cemetery were he to be buried in a graveyard ~back~
- It is, on the other hand, necessary to have seen The Stunt Man to have experienced the zenith of cinematic art; see The Stunt Man: The Best Movie You’ve Not Seen Enough TimesClick on graphics to view larger images] ~back~
A Coupla things:
1. I am ashamed to admit that I DO look for the meaning of life in the words of popular songs. I DID experience an epiphany while watching that particular Ally McBeal episode. I realized that “Love Grows” (where my Rosemary goes) by Edison Lighthouse should be my personal theme song. ~~ You need an entire soundtrack? ~~ Ok, “Love Grows”, “Love Gun” by Rick James and The Chet Atkins instrumental version of “Rocky Top” for funerals. Have you ever been to a funeral that couldn’t have been improved by at least one zippy song?
2. Please tell me that you photo-shopped the Messomorph and his Prom Date onto the screen in someone else’s editing studio.
Comment by Mary — May 22, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
Mary -
1. Finding meaning in pop music is hardly shameful; ringtones on the other hand, …
2. I admire your Love Grows/Love Gun/Rocky Top mix
3. Julie’s memorial service had a PowerPoint presentation (it was originally her birthday present) da boyz and I put together that ended with Shania Twain’s “You’re Still The One” - it was a high point
4. The Mesomorph & the Prom Princess have never been together on the path in the woods behind our home (well, at least not in their fancy dancing duds) or in a dubbing studio - except in the magical world of Photoshop.
Comment by DrHGuy — May 22, 2007 @ 6:27 pm