Of Balham and Bollocks

Oh, the frustration of trying to listen to a TV documentary loaded up with distracting plink-plonk noises! Just a few days ago, I was channel-surfing with my better half, and we started to watch a documentary. The narrator had a compelling voice. But that wasn't good enough. There had to be fucking plink-plonk noises! There were pictures of Greek statues and he was offering interesting facts...but I couldn't make out half of them. The plink-plonk noises were as loud as his voice. Whoever mixed the sound was SO proud of that fucking background music.

No surprise to find another blogger enraged by this. Coincidentally, yet another blogger posted a few weeks back about the plague started by that miserable soundtrack to "American Beauty." That seemed to be the beginning of this new cliche in background music: synthesized plonks. It HAS to be annoying and cheap mimicry of xylophones?? It has to nudge along with the speaker, like a wet-nosed dog? It won't go away.

This had me recalling the "good old days" when, as silly as "illustrative" background music was, at least it was music. A wonderful parody of this was supplied by the late George Martin, and the even later Peter Sellers.

"Balham" was a wonderful send-up of over-produced background music, where everything from bustling crowds and heavy traffic to slinky-walking females seemed to require musical illustration.

Much of that shit was supplied by music libraries, and indeed the titles were keyed to the usage: "Crowd scene" and "Fight" and "evening seduction." But experts like Henry Mancini were able to turn this stuff into art. So were "serious" composers, most especially Prokofiev, who created "Peter and the Wolf" to show how music could illustrate both action and emotion, and even impersonate characters.

I used to buy soundtrack albums having not seen the films, knowing the stuff would be interesting. It was kind of odd when, years later, I'd see the movie and recognize all the music. Yet, it wasn't DISTRACTING. Not like today's cheesy garbage.

Producers have no faith that a narrator is compelling enough, and the words good enough, to reach the listener WITHOUT the over-use of BACKGROUND MUSIC. Only at this point, it's FOREGROUND MUSIC. And all you can do is TURN THE WHOLE FUCKING THING OFF.