Marc Shaiman - CITY SLICKERS II: THE LEGEND OF CURLYS GOLD (1994) - Soundtrack Suite

This is one of my very first score suites from way back in 2009. So please excuse the "transitions". ;-)

When the first City Slickers film stormed into theatres in 1991, it unexpectedly earned massive returns for Columbia. And when Jack Palance infamously followed his Oscar win for his role in the film with some manly one-armed pushups and alluded to his knowledge of the ladies while on stage, the studio was inevitably headed towards sequel territory. With mostly the same cast, City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold throws Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Palance back in the saddle and this time on a quest for hidden gold. Like the first film, the sequel has its more serious moments of bonding and identity crisis, and in the somewhat mishandled balance between these moments and the action scenes, most of the humor was missed by critics and audiences. The screenplay for City Slickers II is far more cliched than that of the first film, and it's no surprise therefore that Marc Shaiman tips his hat some famous Western film music in his sequel score. When he scored City Slickers in 1991, he was fresh on the scene, with only a feature project or two under his belt. His Western parody score pushed all the right buttons, however, and showed his talents for writing in several genres of music that were humorously incorporated throughout the film (and most of which previewed in the rowdy title sequence). The problems that the original City Slickers score suffered from were related partly to the erratic style shifts, but mostly to a sparse recording quality. Those problems are nearly solved in City Slickers II, with the inclusion of non-Western stylized music held to only two cues of note and the recording quality improved to the top limits of the era. Also working in Shaiman's favor with City Slickers II is a more diverse performing group and an obvious increase in the confidence with which he handles them. When you compare the two scores back to back, you can literally hear the composer transcend from being a newbie to an accomplished artist in the field, and it is with great enthusiasm that Shaiman revises his sound from City Slickers for a far superior, rousing sequel run.
Every once in a while, you get a sense as a listener that a composer thinks about a score for a good film and wonders for a few years how it could have been done better. Even in the case of unique projects like City Slickers or The Mask of Zorro (among others), where the sequels are far worse in cinematic quality, you end up hearing revised scores that do everything that you wished the original had done. This is exactly the case with City Slickers II, for which Shaiman returns to all of the thematic ideas from the first film and expands upon them with brilliant results.
As a listening experience, City Slickers II is leagues ahead of its predecessor because it maintains the same humor while boasting a muscular orchestral and choral presence. The superb quality of the recording by Shawn Murphy cannot be emphasized enough; the vibrance of the soundscape is crucial to the personality of this score.
(http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/city_slickers2.html)

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Tags:

• Marc Shaiman
• City Slickers II
• City Slickers 2
• The Legend of Curlys Gold
• Billy Crystal
• Jack Palance
• Western
• Comedy
• 1994
• Movie
• Film
• Music
• Score

[TiqueO6]

When I saw this on it's release at the Grandlake Theater in Oakland, where Dolby labs used to screentest their gear or so I heard, I was so blown away by the imaging and vibrance of the recording that I noted Shawn's name and since then have had a 98% success rate in identifying his work by ear.

One of his 'tricks' he shared was a love of ribbon mics and a specially tailored mid mic with a more omni response in the lows...you can hear that!

Also he prefers to bypass the board!

[starfighter673]

awesome