CAVLDRON S1V7NTEEN <> PRIMA VOLTA IN LA CITT DEI MORTI VIVENTI.
[ Now playing in Demon Tribe Hollow... Once Upon A Time In The West (Live At The Arena Di Verona In Verona, Italy On September 28, 2002) by Ennio Morricone from Arena Concerto ]
Man I got annihilated Friday night.
Literally. That's what I drank. Three Belgian 12.5% ales called "Annihilators".
And I got invited by a couple of ladies I met at BLAH to go to a show at Lestat's.
I came back and had one more brew and I was blitzkrieged. Done.
And that one more was an Avery beer called "Mephistopheles".
16.5%. The devil, without a doubt.
My brain was mustard gas. Passed out at 8:30.
Sucked I missed the show, but I suppose that's what I get. I should be grateful nothing else happened. Though I was walking, so no driving, of course. (The only smart choice I made that night.)
Anyway, in the words of Blake from "Glengarry Glen Ross", let's talk about something important.
Do you know the name "Ennio Morricone"? Well, please excuse my brashness when I say you really should. Morricone is the single best film composer of all time, having written for over five hundred pictures, each of them exhibiting some unique quality. Most of them stand out remarkably, and some of them are legendary.
Here's the Maestro receiving his honorary Academy Award with his friend, Clint Eastwood, offering translational assistance.
EM spent a lot of his earlier years working a great deal with the equally legendary Sergio Leone, writing the music to accompany the spaghetti western auteur's uniquely bleak and rugged approach to the formative years of the U.S. And my most beloved Morricone song was birthed from this relationship. Featuring a haunting melody that somehow seems to encapsulate how I feel about the world, the title theme from "Once Upon A Time In The West" is, to me, the most beautiful and poignant composition ever intended to marry the moving picture.
And another all-time favorite, "Here's To You", comes at the conclusion of the film adaptation of the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Perhaps this is something I don't need to elucidate, but Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian anarchists living in the U.S.. They were convicted of being instrumental in the murder of two men during a shoe factory robbery in 1920, and both died in the electric chair in 1927.
The overwhelming consensus is now, like it was to a great deal then, that the pair were unjustly tried, that their conviction was the result of their political views, and that their execution was a sacrifice of two innocent lives, prompting a renewed struggle by many for the essential tenets of basic human rights.
Joan Baez, who wrote and sang the lyrics of the song, adapted them in part from the words Vanzetti spoke just before he and his friend were electrocuted to death:
"If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure.
Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident.
Our words, our lives, our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives the lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fishpeddler - all!
That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph."
So, thank you, Ennio, for your sublimely gorgeous and affecting music, and also for bringing to my attention something that I'd likely not have considered before. That, in these two immigrants, nothing short of a global, inextinguishable torch illuminating the fight for the right not to be killed for one's convictions, was lit.
"Here's to you, Nicola and Bart;
Rest forever here in our hearts.
The last and final moment is yours;
That agony is your triumph."
[ Also playing in Demon Tribe Hollow... Here's To You by Ennio Morricone & Joan Baez from "Sacco E Vanzetti" Motion Picture Soundtrack ]
[ Now playing in Demon Tribe Hollow... Once Upon A Time In The West (Live At The Arena Di Verona In Verona, Italy On September 28, 2002) by Ennio Morricone from Arena Concerto ]
Man I got annihilated Friday night.
Literally. That's what I drank. Three Belgian 12.5% ales called "Annihilators".
And I got invited by a couple of ladies I met at BLAH to go to a show at Lestat's.
I came back and had one more brew and I was blitzkrieged. Done.
And that one more was an Avery beer called "Mephistopheles".
16.5%. The devil, without a doubt.
My brain was mustard gas. Passed out at 8:30.
Sucked I missed the show, but I suppose that's what I get. I should be grateful nothing else happened. Though I was walking, so no driving, of course. (The only smart choice I made that night.)
Anyway, in the words of Blake from "Glengarry Glen Ross", let's talk about something important.
Do you know the name "Ennio Morricone"? Well, please excuse my brashness when I say you really should. Morricone is the single best film composer of all time, having written for over five hundred pictures, each of them exhibiting some unique quality. Most of them stand out remarkably, and some of them are legendary.
Here's the Maestro receiving his honorary Academy Award with his friend, Clint Eastwood, offering translational assistance.
EM spent a lot of his earlier years working a great deal with the equally legendary Sergio Leone, writing the music to accompany the spaghetti western auteur's uniquely bleak and rugged approach to the formative years of the U.S. And my most beloved Morricone song was birthed from this relationship. Featuring a haunting melody that somehow seems to encapsulate how I feel about the world, the title theme from "Once Upon A Time In The West" is, to me, the most beautiful and poignant composition ever intended to marry the moving picture.
And another all-time favorite, "Here's To You", comes at the conclusion of the film adaptation of the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Perhaps this is something I don't need to elucidate, but Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian anarchists living in the U.S.. They were convicted of being instrumental in the murder of two men during a shoe factory robbery in 1920, and both died in the electric chair in 1927.
The overwhelming consensus is now, like it was to a great deal then, that the pair were unjustly tried, that their conviction was the result of their political views, and that their execution was a sacrifice of two innocent lives, prompting a renewed struggle by many for the essential tenets of basic human rights.
Joan Baez, who wrote and sang the lyrics of the song, adapted them in part from the words Vanzetti spoke just before he and his friend were electrocuted to death:
"If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure.
Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident.
Our words, our lives, our pains - nothing! The taking of our lives the lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fishpeddler - all!
That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph."
So, thank you, Ennio, for your sublimely gorgeous and affecting music, and also for bringing to my attention something that I'd likely not have considered before. That, in these two immigrants, nothing short of a global, inextinguishable torch illuminating the fight for the right not to be killed for one's convictions, was lit.
"Here's to you, Nicola and Bart;
Rest forever here in our hearts.
The last and final moment is yours;
That agony is your triumph."
[ Also playing in Demon Tribe Hollow... Here's To You by Ennio Morricone & Joan Baez from "Sacco E Vanzetti" Motion Picture Soundtrack ]