From: Fred Camper (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2006 - 06:37:06 PST
Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
>>
> I think all of us who know Fred Camper in person, not just on
> Frameworks, had an epiphany when imagining teen Fred wearing an
> Hawaiian shirt, and groovin' to "Be True To Your School"....Fun, Fun,
> Fun.
Sorry to disappoint, but no Hawaiian shirt, ever, and "Be True To Your
School" is one of the worst of their early songs. Now "Farmer's
Daughter," that's something else...And I was listening to much more Bach
than Brian back then too.
The two Richard Lester Beatles films are another matter from their
music. I'm not a big fan but they did have a certain something.
The reassign I brought this up at all is that I have long thought that
Western classical music, the kind of intense moment-to-moment attention
"it requires, and its layered complexity, is much better "training: for
viewing and understanding the best film art than most rock. "Scorpio
Rising" has a great sound track, and I like a lot of it as music, and
there is certainly a parallel between the "vivacity" (a word Anger
likes) of that kind of music and the intense colors of his imagery, but
in the end I think Phil Spector style layering of sound (which I also
like a lot -- so you can imagine me bicycling through Boston singing "Da
Doo Ron Ron," I suppose) is less complex and less deeply rewarding than
what Anger does with color, composition, and editing.
And doesn't have to be "Western classical music"; some jazz, and the
classical traditions of China and Japan and India, are surely as complex.
It's just that I don't think most of the most popular rock songs are
such a good parallel. I prefer Harry Smith's "Early Abstractions"
silent, which is how I first saw it at a public screening, not with that
whole Beatles side.
Fred Camper
Chicago
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.