Re: [JohnEntwistle] Digest Number 118

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

>Luongo adds an interesting depth to it--I hadn't thought about JAE
> >being such a pragmatist.  Anybody else have commnets?
>
>Yes - what do you mean by your penultimate sentence? ;)

This soundtrack has fantasy elements.  That's no surprise, as the show  
offered some opportunities.  I'm a little vague on details now, but I think 
it went this way:  Powerful creatures who resemble automobiles land on the 
earth and need fossil fuels to eat.  The earth is in danger of being sucked 
dry of these and needs to be defended by a group of teens who have 
accidently gained super powers.  There's an environmental subtext, but not 
much more in the way of depth.  However, the soundtrack casts the whole 
thing in terms of good and evil--gas guzzling space monsters - bad, 
defending superkids - good (we assume, anyhow).

So I got to thinking about the way John writes, and generally his lyrics are 
either quirky or else fairly straight-forward and strongly based on events 
and/or concrete symbols.  For VANPIRES he uses a teddy bear, a monster 
that's really a peacock, eating your greens, shifting into high gear on the 
road and so on.  "Heaven and Hell" is a song where you'd expect he would 
talk about good and evil, but really he doesn't.  You just get the usual 
angel wings and pitchforks--cute in such a ferocious song, but still very 
flat images.  My conclusion is, this soundtrack isn't something that John 
would normally write by himself.  He's too based in reality.

So that leaves everybody else who might have contributed.  I'm sure they all 
did, but there is a pure example of Luongo's writing in the song, "When You 
See the Light," and I notice he's into visual images that have psychic 
resonance.  For that reason, I'm attributing most of the the depth in the 
concept to him.

The first song with actual lyrics is "Darker Side of Night" which I had 
picked up as excellent even from watching the show.  John's written that one 
by himself, and it suggests the theme.  The wonderful centerpiece of the 
whole thing is the song "Good and Evil," a conversation between the forces 
of darkness and light.  It sounds like John doing his Boris voice on the 
darkness part, and real children's voices on the light.  Whooo.  Besides 
these things, John gives some idea about what it's like to be middle-aged 
and unemployed, and the conclusion to the whole thing is that you should 
"sieze the day, sieze the night, face the fear."

Besides the clear message, the music is excellent, bass heavy, dark, and 
very suitable to the theme.


keets
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