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Tonight: Lady Gaga

July 7, 2014

Mother Monster Lady Gaga takes the stage tonight at First Niagara Center, the latest stop on the megastar’s summer tour, the ARTPOP Ball. As the tour name suggests, the show promises to be more than just a concert. If it’s anything like what we’ve come to expect from Gaga, it will elevate the pop music genre into an artistic, theatrical experience, something no audience member will ever forget. Doors open at 7:30. Tickets start at $37.50 and are available through tickets.com and the First Niagara Center Box Office.

Column 9: The Sandlot Celebrates the Fourth of July

July 2, 2014

Every once in a while, a movie comes around and catches you off guard for its surprisingly spectacular use of music. Does it surprise you that The Sandlot is on that list? The 90s favorite is loved for many things, but I’d surmise that its soundtrack ranks low on that list for most people. It’s not that people don’t think it’s great (the 1960s music definitely sets the stage for a nostalgia explosion), but it’s just overlooked in favor of the movie’s other great elements. This Fourth of July, I urge you to re-watch this classic, especially the scene in which the gang celebrates the holiday in the most American way possible: Playing baseball in a neighborhood lot, wearing jean shorts, scarfing down hot dogs on their way to the game, watching fireworks in awe…all set to perhaps the best rendition of the “America the Beautiful” the world has ever[...]

Column 8: Queen Bee Lana Del Ray Takes on Disney

June 25, 2014

Disney’s Maleficent recently hit theaters, but audiences were prepped months ahead of time thanks to the trailer, which features Lana Del Rey’s take on the traditionally sickly sweet “Once Upon a Dream.” Lana is a bad B, so it’s no surprise that she takes the cheerful longings of a maiden fair and rips them apart into something no less than haunting. Her take is almost trance-like and invokes the effect of a spell Maleficent herself may be capable of casting. The song definitely conveys Maleficent’s terrifyingly cool aura. It definitely ups Maleficent’s cool factor, an added plus for Disney, who now needs to go after children and their hip millennial parents. Check out the original version of “Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty, Del Ray’s version in the Maleficent trailer, and the full-length version below. Sleeping Beauty Maleficent Trailer Full-Length

Column 7: Indie Teen for the Inbetweeners

June 18, 2014

“Soundtrack by Various Artists” is a phrase I’ve always secretly sought out. It’s probably because I’m not naturally gifted in the art of discovering the latest and greatest musicians. The mere thought of making a cohesive, nicely flowing playlist makes me overwhelmed and anxious. “Soundtrack by Various Artists” has taken the guesswork out of sampling music, and I’ve always appreciated it. This kind of soundtrack was helpful when I was in high school, trying pretty hard to make “liking music” a part of my identity. I did like music, but I liked the idea of being known for liking music even more. This didn’t come naturally to me. This was a problem. Enter “Various Artists.” I loved going to the movies, so a soundtrack of this type was great exposure to different bands and sounds. I would see a movie and then look up the soundtrack. Often, a simple read-through[...]

Column 6: Motion Picture Movie Music

June 11, 2014

Depending on the average age of buffaBLOG’s readership, it’s probably safe to say that most of us grew up with a few decades of film history behind us. Within those decades are a handful of movies whose music is just as iconic as the film itself. Take The Godfather trilogy, Chariots of Fire, or Jurassic Park, for example. You can probably think of (or whistle) the beginning notes to each of the above movies’ melodies. A movie’s music usually becomes famous because the movie itself does well. A movie does well for many reasons, but mostly because it resonates with the audience. In these cases, the music enhances this feeling and completes the experience in the viewer’s mind (and maybe sometimes, the soul). When I think about the movies that, in my opinion, have music that takes them to the next level, a common theme seems to arise: they’re all[...]

Column 5: The Best Things in Life Are…Not Bert Cooper’s Goodbye?

May 28, 2014

I tossed around several ideas for this week’s column, and though it felt predictable, I kept circling back to writing about Mad Men. Maybe it was the fact that this Sunday marked the last new episode for A. Whole. Year. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been re-watching the entire series and curating a list of the show’s greatest music moments…for a later post. Yes, later. So if you immediately thought “best of” list when you saw Mad Men in this week’s title, I am sorry to disappoint. But don’t fret. I am writing about Mad Men because when you write a series about the use of music in filmed media and the Mad Men gods include a Bert Cooper song-and-dance number at the end of an episode that airs three days before your next column is due, it only seems right. Note: if you haven’t watched this week’s episode[...]

Column 4: Considering Pete and Pete

May 21, 2014

If you happened to catch last week’s Screened Plays, you’ll know that we discussed the importance of television theme songs and, in particular, how they should be viewed in the context of the audience they reach and the generation in which they existed. Theme songs are great windows to the soul of a television audience, but the thing is that most are pretty limited by their genre. That is to say, most television theme songs say a lot about an audience’s values and tastes, or the subject of the TV show itself… and that’s it. But there are some television show theme songs that transcend their show’s scope and somehow manage to be appropriate for whatever music style is current at the time. Enter: The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Often pointed to as 90s-Nickelodeon gold (and as the reigning 90s-nostalgia magnet), The Adventures of Pete and Pete captured the[...]

Column 3: Theme Songs

May 14, 2014

What do the following phrases have in common? “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a faithful trip…” “Here’s the story, of a lovely lady…” “Whatever happened to predictability, the milk man, the paper boy, evening TV…” Anyone who has ever turned on a television probably identified these as lyrics to extremely recognizable TV show theme songs. But you probably could’ve known the answer without ever having turned on a television—that’s how ingrained into popular culture these theme songs are. Two of the above theme songs are brought to you by the 1960s (Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, respectively), the decade that ushered in the scripted sitcom and singlehandedly built the television industry. American families gave up radios in favor of television, and by the late 1950s, weekly sitcoms were being broadcast into homes all over the country. A family in California watched and[...]

Willie Watson – Folk Singer Vol. 1

May 9, 2014

In the summer of 2012, my family traveled two and a half hours to see a musician named Willie Watson play at an anti-fracking festival in his hometown of Hector, NY. The festival was free, in a grass lot, and Willie was one of maybe eight other musicians on the day’s lineup. An untrained eye may have glanced over the list of performing acts without a second thought, but to anyone slightly familiar with bluegrass or Americana music, the fact that WILLIE WATSON was playing a FREE SHOW just TWO AND A HALF HOURS from Buffalo was jaw-droppingly lucky. So travel we did, to what has gone down in history as one of our favorite musical experiences. Ever. You may recognize Willie Watson as the former co-leader of Old Crow Medicine Show. His high harmonies and skillful guitar playing gave the band the unique country sound that made everyone—including Doc[...]

Column 2: Let’s Talk About TURN

May 7, 2014

AMC has an impressive track record of successful television programming. Its standouts, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, quite often are referred to as the best shows in the history of television. Anyone who’s watched them knows this to be true. But for every Jaguar pitch and jaw-dropping desert shootout, there are a handful of mediocre moments happening on one of AMC’s lesser shows. TURN, AMC’s new colonial spy drama, is just slightly better than mediocre despite an obvious attempt to be great.  TURN’s mediocrity is surprising because it has all the makings of a successful show: a story with a good hook, unknown actors, attractive costuming and set design, purposeful music, and the list goes on. It’s as if the programming team at AMC looked at their successes and from them created a checklist of what every other show must have in order to be good. This line of thinking seems[...]

Column 1: Prologue

April 30, 2014

Sound and motion are inextricably linked. Think about it: every motion has a certain sound associated with it. Everyone knows what clapping hands sound like, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can’t imitate a buzzing bee. Most sounds are universally recognized, and when they are, they become a shared human experience. In fact, sound is so fundamental to our lives that when it defies our expectations, it’s either unsettling, or inspires a frenzied look into why it’s different and what that means for us. This line of thinking is what will guide Screened Plays, buffaBLOG’s investigative coverage of the sounds that shape the kind of motion that’s become an integral part of our lives: motion pictures, and not just of the movie variety. Any moving image with notable sound is fair game, including but not limited to: movies, television, commercials, shorts, cartoons, and maybe (but probably not) your parody[...]