OST - 3rd Part

Apologies in advance for the delay in posting the third and final part of my little survey of the soundtracks for most of Ringo's filmography.

So, last stop was Son of Dracula (and remember you can download it for free on that Harry Nilsson blog I mentioned below) and I guess that next I'll be talking about one of the most troubled title of all of Ringo's filmography: Lisztomania, that crazy whirlwind of a motion picture that continues to be absent on the DVD market as of now. Come on, Warner Brothers - move those behinds, ok?! But first things first. Its soundtrack was composed by Yes frontman, Rick Wakeman, of prog-rock fame. He went ahead and adapted some of Franz Liszt's original compositions in a style all his own. You can imagine the results, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, yes. They're over the top, alright. But strangely and imaginatively effective. But as we will see, we have now two different soundtracks for that particular movie: you can find the original one here and a recently (as of 2003) released and revised version is also out on CD. Get it here. Here's what the Amazon product description says about it:

This is an extremely rare find as the master tapes were long since considered destroyed, back in 1975 Rick was asked to oversee & write a lot of the music for the film 'Lizstomania' which was directed by Ken Russell. Rick was also given a part in the film & played the god Thor. A soundtrack album was produced by Rick which was subsequently turned down by A&M records. A&M then produced a soundtrack of their own which had very little of Rick on it & yet they thoughtfully put his name on the front cover. Rick was furious to say the least & hated the soundtrack album & told the press accordingly. It sold accordingly as well! The film became one of the cult films of all time & to find this original soundtrack is quite unbelievable as there was only one master ever produced & somehow it has survived more than 25 years in a box amongst some old football shorts!

I wonder whose shorts they were from! Anyway, both editions are out and for completists only, get them just to get a clearer picture of how things turn out.

Next on the list is the Mae West vehicle, Sextette. I cannot seem to find evidence that a LP was ever issued back in the day and since the movie was such a bomb at the box-office, I reckon nothing ever came out. However, the ever trustworthy Imdb has a soundtrack listing here that is of some help.

Finally, we have that glorious pre-historic comedy, Caveman, one of the most treasured among Ringo's movies and a landmark in itself on his private life (curious to know how, ain't ya? Well, you just have to wait until I post about it, ok?). Famous composer Lalo Schifrin wrote the score and sure enough, it's out on CD. Get it here.

Well, that completes my little survey and I hope I've been of some help. Do you feel yourself getting more and more into the Ringomania vibe? If you do, watch this space for even more and more of his erratic film career and my crazy ramblings. However, I could not leave you without posting what I just found: a picture of two of my favorite people, Ringo and Ms. Shelley Duvall. Together!

OST - 2nd Part

Glad you could make it because you're just in time for the second part of my attempt at tracking down the soundtrack recordings to most of Ringo's filmography. And we enter the 70's.

The Point! is a very peculiar animation long-feature (the first to be made for TV) and it was born entirely out of Harry Nilsson's head (Nilsson is a name that pops up frequently when talking about Ringo's life and career as you will see, because the two of them were close friends and collaborated quite often during the 70's decade). He came up with the idea for it ("I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to points. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it." - Harry Nilsson)and even wrote and composed the entire soundtrack. On For the Love of Harry, a wonderful blog about Harry Nilsson, you can find and download the entire soundtrack in this link here. Am I or am I not your best friend right now? Of course I'm not. But I will be. Just bear with me some more paragraphs.

Moving on, we find Frank Zappa's first movie effort, 200 Motels. This particular title has the distinction of being the first feature film to be entirely shot on video and then transfered to 35 mm. And it's still not out on DVD. Vent away your frustrations, all you Ringo and Zappa fans because as things are right now, you will not see this one through legit ways in a long, long time. In other words, get it through the grey market. Anyway, the soundtrack is out on CD (a double-disc, no less) and I actually have it and can recommend it very highly (it even comes with a small poster inside and all). Get it here.

The Spaghetti Western Blindman (which is out on DVD and is one of the movies that I will be talking very soon about) score was written by Stelvio Cipriani and while not particularly memorable, it has its moments and if you like the genre, give it a try. Who knows, you might even like it. Check out more info at that amazing reference site I mentioned to you about on the just below post, Soundtrack Collector.

Next stop is the glam wet dream of Born to Boogie, a part movie/part documentary/part concert film about Marc Bolan and his T. Rex band, directed and produced by Ringo himself. It's a wonderful time capsule of a movie and it's thankfully out on DVD in a fantastically produced 2xDVD edition with all the bells and whistles. And yes, you can get it also on CD here. For fans or initiated, this stuff is glorious. Highly recommended, of course. And from Glam to Rock and Roll as we move into one of Ringo's best movies (no, seriously), That'll Be The Day, the David Essex vehicle. No CD soundtrack appears to be available at the moment, which is a shame considering the amount of old Rock 'n' Roll gems it contains. IMDB lists some of them. Definitely one to get your fingers on, both movie and music.

We've now reached roughly half-way through the 70's and I'll leave the other half to the next time but before I go, I'm going to provide a link for a free download of the complete soundtrack to Son of Dracula (that peculiar movie I talked about earlier on this blog), from that wonderful Harry Nilsson blog I mentioned above. It's currently Out of Print on CD, so grab it now! See, I told you I was going to become your best friend.

OST - Part One

Hello there! Missed me? Of course you all did! Want to know more about Ringo? Guessed you would! So here goes nothing.

Today, I'm going to sort of provide enough info and links to the soundtracks of most of Ringo's filmography. Am I up for the task? Well, that's what we are going to find out very, very soon.

Starting with The Beatles output, you can easily find them on any Amazon shop. Here are the links for Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and Let It Be. Worth noting that these last two albums have alternate versions: here is the link for the former and the one for the latter.

As for Candy, as far as I know, there hasn't been any re-release on CD, although there definitely was one on LP format. Here is the link to a wonderful site I'll be linking more on this and other future posts that proves just that. Check out the cover artwork for the various LP releases too. Soundtrack Collector is a wonderful reference site for anyone even vaguely interested in Music written for the Cinema. Moving on, we have a tricky one. The Magic Christian did have a LP soundtrack release but sadly, there's been no sign of it on CD until now. Here's the link that proves it. However, if you want to listen to some of the songs written for it, you can find them at the Badfinger album, Magic Christian Music. Apparently, Paul McCartney was involved in it too, so I guess this is Beatles' completist heaven for some. Not for me, though.

Anyway, now that we've covered the 60's period and given you enough to google by, I promise to write about the 70's soundtracks tomorrow but before I leave, here's some more Ringo for thought (yup, I'll be talking about the movie this picture was taken from in the future as well, don't you worry):

Son of Dracula

Well, as promised here I am to tell you a little bit about the movie from which the poster I posted (a little aliteration never hurt anybody) down below comes from.

As you can easily tell, it's called Son of Dracula and reputedly, it's one of the worst movies ever made (which instantly makes it a "must see" in my book), having only played for a week in Atlanta in 1974, the year of its release (and my birth year, coincidently). It was directed by none other than Freddie Francis, cinematographer extraordinaire and the man behind the visuals of such great masterpieces such as The Innocents and The Elephant Man, just to name a couple of movies he was behind the camera.

Anyway, feeling a little bit lazy here so I'll just quote a small synopsis from Wikipedia:

Son of Dracula is a musical comedy film released in 1974 by Apple Films, starring Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr. It is also the title of a Harry Nilsson album released in conjunction with the film. It includes Nilsson songs that were showcased in the film as well as portions of dialogue, used as bridging sequences. All song tracks with the exception of "Daybreak" are from Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) and Son of Schmilsson (1972), albums previously released.

Ringo Starr appears as Merlin the Magician, who follows the birth and rise of young Count Downe, played by Harry Nilsson. Starr and Nilsson were longtime friends, and Starr had played drums on Son of Schmilsson, which had spoofed horror movie motifs. A year or so later, Starr decided to make a rock and roll Dracula movie, and invited Nilsson to come on board. Nilsson thought at first the whole idea came from his recent album; as it turned out, Starr hadn't followed its release, and until then-wife Maureen brought him a copy, he didn't even know Nilsson had already used a similar theme.

Intrigued? So am I. Want to watch it? So would I. But sadly there's never been any release of Son of Dracula on any home video format. Over at YouTube land, there used to be a way to watch it in its entirety but that option is now no longer available (I guess it must have been pulled down due to rights issues). The only way out is to find a decent bootleg DVD and buy it. Not that I'm endorsing bootlegging or anything like that but in extreme cases like these anything goes, me guesses.

One last thing: notice the similarity between the cover artwork for Harry Nilsson's The Son of Schmilsson and the soundtrack for Son of Dracula -