There's a scene in Cimino's "Heaven's gate", when Christofer Walken tries to impress Isabelle Huppert. He's basically an ignorant gunslinger, living in a wooden hut in a wild neck of the woods, and she's an expensive prostitute who has seen the world. So to show his worldly manners, he finds out that all the rage at the time is to have wallpapers. He brings her to her hut, and the "so... how do you like them" is about all the newspapers that cover every square foot of his walls.
This scene comes back to me every time I listen to any of the orchestrated pieces by Moody blues. I don't really know why, I can only try to explain to myself. It's as if they have heard that orchestral arrangements are all the rage... and they go for the one kind of orchestra they know: the Hollywood disneyfied revial dance orchestra. In some passages on the Question album, and a couple of others of the time, I have a feeling that any moment a glittery staircase will appear when the curtain opens, a dozen dancing girls will dance towards its sides, and Fred Astaire would appear on the top, with cylinder hat, cane and tailed suit.
I know, that was the time when r'n'r was soaking influences from everywhere, and orchestral music was no exception. If it wasn't so, we'd never have ELP playing so many Russian classical pieces, wouldn't have all the sitars, balalaikas, marimbas and tabla drums, reggae would never be accepted etc etc.
But adopting the sworn enemy of the Art Of Rebellion (my favorite definition of rock) as the main influence in the arrangement over several albums, without a single attempt to just steal the weapons from the enemy and beat him with them, somehow doesn't sit well with me. I am getting the impression that they had good ideas, and knew how to make them come real, but they still ended up with their version of wallpaper.
Look up the definition of naive art anywhere. This looks like it.
This scene comes back to me every time I listen to any of the orchestrated pieces by Moody blues. I don't really know why, I can only try to explain to myself. It's as if they have heard that orchestral arrangements are all the rage... and they go for the one kind of orchestra they know: the Hollywood disneyfied revial dance orchestra. In some passages on the Question album, and a couple of others of the time, I have a feeling that any moment a glittery staircase will appear when the curtain opens, a dozen dancing girls will dance towards its sides, and Fred Astaire would appear on the top, with cylinder hat, cane and tailed suit.
I know, that was the time when r'n'r was soaking influences from everywhere, and orchestral music was no exception. If it wasn't so, we'd never have ELP playing so many Russian classical pieces, wouldn't have all the sitars, balalaikas, marimbas and tabla drums, reggae would never be accepted etc etc.
But adopting the sworn enemy of the Art Of Rebellion (my favorite definition of rock) as the main influence in the arrangement over several albums, without a single attempt to just steal the weapons from the enemy and beat him with them, somehow doesn't sit well with me. I am getting the impression that they had good ideas, and knew how to make them come real, but they still ended up with their version of wallpaper.
Look up the definition of naive art anywhere. This looks like it.
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