Yesterday I posted about how I have gotten into the theme music from spaghetti westerns.
I neglected to mention that some of my favorite Israeli pop music sounds very similar to the spaghetti western music, and wouldn't feel out of place in those films.
A few examples follow:
First,שיירת הרוכבים ("Caravan of Riders"), an oft-covered song by The Duda'im:
The second one is called חמישה פחות אחד (which translates to "Five Less One"). It's by "Benny's Friends," It's in a sense, a toast to a missing friend. I assume it's a friend who died in war. Interestingly, the album with this song also has a cover of "Caravan of Riders"):
Finally, there's Ron Eliran, performing שארם -א -שיח ("Sharm-A-Sheikh" -- it's the name of a town in the Sinai). This was a song dating from the 1967 war, in which Eliran sings about returning to Sharm-A-Sheikh a second time -- he's singing in the first-person plural, as in "We returned to you a second time." The first time, presumably, was during the 1956 war. There is a Youtube video with the original hit version. But since it, like the two above, isn't really a "video" in the full sense, I've decided, for this song, to include a live concert version:
Now, don't any of those three songs sound like they could have been in a spaghetti western?
The Film Forum, an artsy movie house in Greenwich Village, has been having a spaghetti western festival. I spent most of Sunday with my son, watching the "Man With No Name" trilogy. That's after spending Friday with him watching thee other movies -- Hellbenders, Face to Face and Death Rides a Horse. This was kind of a followup to our taking a cinema history course at a local community college. The class, which ended a couple months ago, concentrated on spaghetti westerns.
Through this, I've been getting into the music from Spaghetti Westerns. Of course, there's the classic of the genre, Ennio Morricone's theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Give a listen:
That's a strangely copmpelling melody that combines latin elements with Duane Eddy-style twangy guitar. And the harmonica. But it's instrumental, which for me is a strike against it. In a sense it's more mood music than song. But interestingly it does build on the theme music from its predecessors, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
In terms of real songs, I was drawn to the theme from Django, a film starring Franco Nero. The professor showed us a scene from that movie, which was enough for me to seek it out on YouTube. Really good movie. But my point in mentioning it here is that I love the theme song. Listen here:
In the theatre, between films, they were playing a ctachy song that I didn't recognize. I did, however, make a point of remembering the line, "There's just kind of man that you can trust. That's a dead man. Or a Gringo like me." When I got home I was able (with the help of the intertubes) identify it as a song from Gunfight at Red Sands:
