Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I consider myself one of the luckiest people ever to live because of a multitude of seemingly simple things that we take for granted, one of which is the ability to carry every song I’ve ever liked in my pocket wherever I go. And I really do mean every song - I’ve wracked my brain for a few years now and I’m fairly certain I’ve purchased every song I think is worth a damn. So this past weekend when I was compensated for some after-hours computer work with a generous iTunes gift certificate, I was grateful and a little perplexed at the same time. I certainly consider an iTunes gift certificate a fine reward, but I had no idea on what it would be spent.

Once I’ve collected (or I think I’ve collected) all the songs I want, what’s left? I don’t have a video-enabled iPod, and besides, none of the shows currently sold or the small screen interest me. I’ve tried some audio books but I find it difficult to listen to them the same way I do music because they require my focus, and music from my iPod is usually background noise interspersed with focused listening. That kind of listening method doesn’t work for audio books, so they weren’t a great option. I chose to use at least part of the gift certificate for something new and unknown music, as a sort of experiment.

Buying new, unfamiliar music is not a big deal for most people, and it wasn’t nearly the subject of as much angst as the preceding sentences may have made it seem. Since someone was nice enough to give me the gift certificate, I want to make sure I don’t waste it. Pissing away even 99 cents on a single song that I don’t like just seems like a dumb thing to do.

A big chunk of my music collection is movie soundtracks. That’s my primary exposure to music because I mostly listen to talk radio and, for whatever reason, I don’t seem to like whatever is it most everyone else is listening to. So my choice to spend part of my gift certificate on yet another movie soundtrack isn’t surprising or all that experimental or daring, except for the fact that it’s a movie I haven’t seen yet, and one who’s content bothers me just a bit: “The Producers”. I haven’t seen the modern incarnation of this movie yet because it hasn’t been released (I also haven’t seen the stage version.), but I have seen the original. Judging from what I’ve read and the soundtrack itself, the core of the story is the same but it has been embellished and rounded out. (Whatever that means. That’s quite a statement from someone who hasn’t seen the latest version, but I’m trying to relay an impression, not an analysis.). I really like the the premise of staging a show intended to fail (What could possibly go wrong?) to rip off investors. That’s the kind of story I can get into. The process of financing the show by exchanging sex for investment money with old women is much less appealing to me. Using World War II, and more specifically, Adolph Hitler, as a source of comedy creates some mixed emotions, as I’ll explain in a few paragraphs.

The second track, named “Opening Night,” quickly pulled me in, mostly because I knew what it was leading up to, and I was able to enjoy the build-up to the punch-line. (”We’ve seen shit, but never like this!” That’s a song lyric I don’t hear nearly often enough.) After that, the songs are a bit muddled in my mind. Not that I didn’t enjoy listening, not that it wasn’t entertaining, but there wasn’t anything that jumped out at me where I had to hit the back button and listen again. The music and the voices all sound great to me, but at the same time, there’s nothing whistle-worthy, I suppose you could call it, from the first half of the soundtrack after “Opening Night”.

The character and dilemma of Leo Bloom caught my attention because of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a complete stranger out-and-about on the town, which I’ve been considering writing about to make a wider point, but frankly I refuse to turn this lame-ass blog into a lame-ass psychiatrist’s couch in perpetual print. Suffice it to say that I don’t believe the default mental state for every person is extroverted.

The Producers soundtrack picked back up for me when the enhanced version of “Springtime for Hitler” came on. I have the original recording of “Springtime for Hitler” on my iPod already, and hearing this new extended recording was very amusing. That song, and the “Springtime for Hitler” concept, has always produced some conflicted feelings in me. Although I have an admittedly small pool to sample from, I think I’m one of the minority of people my age who actually comprehends (as much as a person can) the scope and stakes of World War II, and to be reminded of that by a funny song is weird, or maybe unsettling, I can’t put my finger on it. On one hand, the events of WWII seem surrealistic and nightmarish almost 65 years later, and on the other, it’s a damn funny song. I realize the point of the song is to mock the Nazis and not to make light of lives lost defeating them. If you can’t make fun of the 20th century’s most fucking evil bastard, who can you make fun of?

And that was about the end of my interest in the soundtrack. I listened to the remaining tracks and it was pleasant, but again, nothing outstanding to me. I don’t know if I’ll see the movie.

I titled this blog entry “A tale of two soundtracks”, and if you’ve read far enough to make it through the first one, get yourself a cookie. I have another war-related movie and soundtrack I’ve been meaning to write about for some time, and this is my opportunity. As much as I was mildly amused by the mostly indistinct Producers soundtrack, I was absolutely thrilled a couple of months ago when I bought the soundtrack to M*A*S*H.

As much of a big deal as I made of buying The Producers soundtrack sight-unseen in the beginning of this endless article, I purchased M*A*S*H blind as well. I’ve enjoyed the TV series as long as I can remember, so I was reasonably sure I would like the movie soundtrack, and consequently I was comfortable purchasing it. I’m not an anti-war leftist, and I’ll be the first to admit that the series can be sanctimonious and preachy at times, but the quality of the characters and situations, especially in later episodes, outweigh other negatives I perceive in the show. I had always known there was a M*A*S*H movie, but I had never made time to see it, and I’m now genuinely sorry it took so long. (When I spoke of the movie to some acquaintances, they said, “They made M*A*S*H into a movie?” “No, they made it into a TV show.”)

But before I bought the movie, I bought the soundtrack. The soundtrack is the fairly complete plot of the movie exposed by a consistent stream of dialog backed up and highlighted by musical bits and pieces. I’m not a big fan of 50’s music, but I found myself humming along to “Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy”, “My Blue Heaven”, “Chatanooga Choo Cho”, and a few others, all of which are sung in Engrish or what I assume is Japanese, considering the source is Radio Tokyo. The music is fun and energetic, and interspersed with the dry humor from the movie, it’s great listening.

Colonel Blake…

Henry… Charlie here. I have a report here, Henry, from your chief nurse Major O’Houlihan. She makes some accusations I find pretty hard to believe.

Don’t believe ‘em then. Goodbye General.

Inspired by the soundtrack, I had Amazon ship the movie to my home a few days later and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The one character in the movie that really stuck with me was Henry Blake. Col. Blake on the TV series was a kind of stumbling simpleton who didn’t seem to be qualified to find his ass with both hands, much less perform surgery and run a hospital. Col. Blake in the movie, however, is different. Rather than being an incompetent boob, he’s someone who is overcome by inertia. He’s not very concerned about most things and he gives his people a lot of latitude to do a nasty but necessary job for which they didn’t volunteer. What appears to be ineptitude to the casual observer is indifference to the trained eye.

I especially like the interaction between Col. Blake and Radar. The idea of having an assistant that can anticipate your every thought is very appealing to me, and if anyone out there is interested in filling that job, my e-mail link is on the front page of this site.

The actor who plays Col. Blake in the movie is Roger Bowen. After watching his performance in M*A*S*H, I’m interested to know a little more about the guy, but Google turns up precious little about him. And you know how it is in the year two thousand and five - if Google ain’t got it, it ain’t there to be gotten.

When M*A*S*H was made, it was intended to be an anti-war picture. Thirty-five years later, it seems less so, but considering it in the context of the time it was created, it’s not hard to understand how the movie was originally perceived. The other war picture concurrently in production with M*A*S*H was Patton, and Patton and other war movies up to that time were unabashedly patriotic. Converse to other war movies, M*A*S*H had malcontent surgeons, some of whom were racists, living in a filthy camp, committing adultery, staging a farcical suicide, tormenting a disingenuous Christian, and performing some very realistic movie surgery amidst it all. Viewed from behind my glasses in the modern day, M*A*S*H’s depiction of war reveals it for the very unpleasant business it is, and makes me that much more grateful that others are willing to voluntarily do what I am not.

The commentary track with Robert Altman, the director, was disappointing. He seemed to have very little to say about the movie at all, much less anything that was new or interesting, and about half way through he stated he intensely disliked the TV series because it always portrayed the “slant-eyed people” as the bad guys. It was blindingly obvious he had never even seen the series, and at that point his credibility was shot in my mind, and I had no interest in hearing what else he might have to day.

I said something earlier about not turning this blog into therapy. Alert readers will notice that I’ve written about two movies, one from 1968 and the other from 1970, that each, on some level, have to do with rather gruesome realities of war, and their soundtracks. I’m not trying to make any larger point and I have no real explanation why today I chose these two somewhat similar pieces of entertainment to write about in a blog entry that is unusually long for me. Form your own opinion.