Dick’s Picks: Fresh from immersing himself in some fine French Poetry Anthologies (see last week) our resident vinyl guru ‘Mr A’ is now chillaxing the old grey matter and settling down with the OST to legendary cinematic turkey (or should that be duck?) Howard the Duck…….
Some background, Howard the Duck first appeared in a Marvel Comic in 1973, this duck stranded on a ‘human dominated earth’, was essentially a satire which parodied comic book fiction, on a deeper level writer Steve Gerber stated aim for Howard was to highlight that, “life’s most serious moments and most incredibly dumb moments are often distinguishable only by a momentary point of view”, like deeep maaan…
Made into a film in 1986 the combined might of George Lucas, Lucasfilm and Universal studios spent a whopping $38 million USD on bringing Howard to the big screen, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a combination of the decision to shoot the film as live action, rather than animation, combined with some truly atrocious writing led many to call it “one of the worst films ever made”, needless to say it has a cult following.
So….what about the OST? That too is of an equally curveball nature, you may think mmm George Lucas most definitely a string heavy John Williams soundtrack yes? Errr…No…How about one side devoted to a set of newly recorded material by early ’80s synth boffin Thomas Dolby (credited to Dolby’s Cube) with guest appearances from Joe Walsh, Stevie Wonder and George Clinton with the other side given over to a suite of John Barry’s music from the film…but of course!
The OST is a real curio, and fans of Thomas Dolby regard his material to be some of the best he’s ever recorded, not so with the John Barry side, it was even rumoured that some of his contributions were replaced by the work of the relatively obscure Sylvester Levay
Here’s a short clip of the closing song from the film…
Find out more at eil.com
Be the first to comment