Welcome, everyone, back to my blog. Let's start with the two announcements. First, my blog posts will no longer be every Sunday. They will instead be any day of the week, whenever something makes a post necessary. Second, do not expect any new music for a few weeks, as band camp starts tomorrow and will be taking up a majority of my time.
As we all know, July 4th was a few days ago, and in the patriotic spirit, attached is a link to one of John Philip Sousa's best and most under-appreciated marches (certainly one of his most vigorous): "The Gallant Seventh". Less known is the fact that 20 years ago today, the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was released in theaters. Two days ago, I had the pleasure of watching that movie in theaters, as Disney is coincidentally rereleasing many of their biggest hits as a celebration of their 100th anniversary.
The cultural impact of this movie cannot be overstated; it catapulted Johnny Depp to stardom, and did the same for Orlando Bloom (alongside his role in the Lord of the Rings films). It almost singlehandedly made the concept of a pirate movie "cool" again after 1995's notorious flop Cutthroat Island made them a dangerous gamble for film studios. And third, Hans Zimmer and his team set the precedent that bass-heavy, aggressively masculine music could fit in a type of film that was previously dominated by the agile bravado of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's classical style scores for 1940s pirate movies starring Errol Flynn. That the music of POTC was so successful is a miracle, considering the two week period in which it was hastily hodgepodged together by dozens of composers, orchestrators and arrangers. In honor of this cornerstone work, attached is a link to the digital demo suite Zimmer cobbled together overnight that would eventually become the legendary main theme for the franchise, cheekily titled "Pirates Day One (4:56 AM)." Enjoy this piece of film music history.
That's all for today. Stay tuned for the next blog post, coming soon!
