The Good, The Bad and The Ennio Morricone

Beside being a music I consider myself a film buff. More like a Film lover who likes films that are either independent from the mainstream or classics. I also love my foreign films as well. I have to many DVD's to count, but I do have a great collection that would make any good film lover proud. My collection spans from the early years of film to films of the last five years. Every once in a while I will pick a film from present day to buy. Then their are films that are classics. I will pick those up. I don't buy films that are single DVD issues either I wait till they are special editions or two DVD versions.

This is the case of my Western collection. I have mostly classic westerns and of course the comedy western Blazing Saddles. I got turned on to great westerns by my father who always told me that Clint Eastwood invented the genre called Spaghetti Westerns. The reason they called it that is because most of these films were filmed in Italy for it's vast location spots that looked like the old west. They were great because, if you looked at the film it looked nothing like Italy but did have a resemblance of the old west very well, and you could not really tell where in western America it was. Since some of this area was unsettled it did have the look of that. I watched these films all the time when they were on. I really liked the music and the music did very well to fit the mood.



The film that for me fit a great mood was The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. This film was always on and every once in a while would keep my attention very well. I studied it's film making for quite some time. One of my teachers in High School was a fan of this genre as well. He told me that these are the reasons he got into liking film to begin with. This all came to a head when I decided that I wanted hear the music. Back then I did not realize that there was one man responsible for some of this music. That man was named Ennio Morricone. Not only did effect me this way but many others like Mike Patton, John Zorn, and countless others who knew he was the master of his craft.

When I first started listening to Ennio Morricone I had a simple compilation of his work. It was not very well represented of everything, but in a good way it had stuff from each era of his soundtrack output. It was only forty-five minutes long and scratched the surface that it needed and made me go out for more. I was not the only one on this Ennio obsession. I had a friend at the bookstore I go to with the same quest. He heard this John Zorn project called Big Gundown which had some music from the Ennio Morricone catalog. These were interpretations of some Morricone's classic material. It was a bit dated from the early 90's, but it got it's point across that there were other musicians who shared the same love.



Then in 1995 I saw this two CD retrospective of his work. I kept on looking at with awe and was wondering if I should pick it up. My friend did and told me how great it was. I sadly did not pick it up while it was in print. It was at that time a whopping $39.99. Then in fall of 2000 I picked up the John Zorn Re-Issue of The Big Gundown and that got my interest back in getting that two CD retrospective. I saw it on line for over $100.00. I knew that was crazy so what I did is just buy some of Ennio's soundtrack stuff. I picked up a nice single CD for eight dollars, but I was still obsessed with that two CD set. After college I went to a used CD store and picked up one of my favorite re-issues. I picked up The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly soundtrack with a slew of extra tracks. This made my day.

The soundtrack to a classic film is always great and when it's one with extra stuff it's even better. I am very proud to talk about how great the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The soundtrack is wonderful and brings back great memories of a wonderful film. Something with Morricone who has scored over 500 films and television it's an amazing catalog of material to go through. When you listen to this you know that you have an important item in your hand. It's like listening to a Beethoven Symphony or a Miles Davis album. It is great piece of work. Oh yea by the way I did pick up the two CD set that was selling for $100.00. I got for a reasonable $20.00. It was a copy that was in mint condition and even came with the book. Enjoy or Blondie below will shoot you and ask questions later! Classic film, and classic music go hand and hand.