Ep. 37 – Metallica’s St. Anger, Aubrey Plaza in Emily The Criminal, John Carpenter’s Escape From LA, Creepy Ann Arbor Book Stores, and Evil Dead Suite

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In this episode, Carl King examines Metallica’s St. Anger, Aubrey Plaza in Emily The Criminal, John Carpenter’s Escape From LA, Creepy Ann Arbor Book Stores, and Evil Dead Suite by Roque Banos. 

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Episode 37

OPENING CREDITS

I’m Carl King, and this is The Carl King Podcast, where we learn about music, filmmaking, and the other creative arts. To support this podcast, head over to Patreon.com/carlking, and join for just $1 or $5 per month. Or send a tip through PayPal or Venmo to username CarlKingdom. Special thank you to my Illusionist $51 level patrons, both Hank Howard III and Chewbode. 

Quick shout-out to my music endorsements: Vienna Symphonic Library, Fractal Audio, Ernie Ball Strings, Toontrack, and Millennia Media.

Now let’s get this episode Beginned! 

CARL KING THE HUMAN UPDATE

Very Good Friends of Carl King — we have a lot of WIND happening here outside Plosive Central. So you get the added sound effect of creepy howling this week. 

In between the creepy howling, we have TWO FILMMAKING LESSONS, and ONE SONG REVIEW. Then, a brief CARL KING VISITS segment, and we wrap it up with a MUSICAL COMPOSITION OF THE WEEK.

Some quick Carl King updates before we get beginned:

1. This weekend, Steve Vai had a major AUCTION of his personal and professional possessions. That’s known as P and P.P. Well, I couldn’t stop myself, and I make so much money from this podcast… so I bid on and won SIX unique Steve Vai items. If all goes according to plan, I intend to make a video mini-documentary about them. So be on the lookout for that. In the coming weeks. 

2. Second, a listener named Spodevids alerted me to the existence of a professor named Robert Sapolsky. His middle name is Morris, and he is currently a professor of Neurobiology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford. Now here’s the point of this: he gave a lecture series at Stanford that’s probably THIRTY HOURS long in total. I’m assuming it’s the entire contents of his course on Human Behavioral Biology. And folks. Fooolks. It is HIGHLY, REALLY, VERY Entertaining. I was immediately hooked and am ready to join his cult. He also wrote a book called Behave, which I immediately purchased and am now reading. I will put links to those two items in the show notes. So please go and investigate. 

Book: Behave
https://geni.us/8AgZ

YouTube Stanford Lecture Series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

3. And third: at the end of this month, Mike Stone and I are planning to film a new collection of DRUMMING PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS to promote his drumming skills through the medium of videos. You might remember a mini-documentary I shot years ago called Mike Stone Records Drums For Reinier Loopik. Pretty impressive stuff. Or you might remember Mike Stone’s appearances, along with his parrot named Charlie in my Morgan Agren Documentary. And as far as Mike Stone’s drumming for me: he appears on possibly my favorite track from my Grand Architects of the Universe album. The track is called The Twenty-Faced Cosmic Mystery of the Cosmos. I suspect it’s overlooked, but dang, did he do a good job. I’ll put links to ALL of those Mike Stone items in the show notes. 

Mike Stone Records Drums For Reinier Loopik

Mike Stone Drums On Carl King’s Grand Architects of the Universe
https://carlking.bandcamp.com/track/the-twenty-faced-cosmic-mystery-of-the-cosmos

Mike Stone in Morgan Agren Movie
https://www.morganagrenmovie.com

OK, now let’s get beginned with some Film Reviews / Film Lessons. 

FILM REVIEW #1 – EMILY THE CRIMINAL

First up, we have Emily The Criminal. Screenwritted by and Directored by John Patton Ford.

Starring Aubrey Plaza, an actress from Delaware.

Also notable casting choice was Gina Gershon as an evil boss lady. I confirmed that she has 155 credits on IMDB. But I was first made aware of her due to her performance in a film called Palmetto. That’s from 1998, and it was filmed right down the street from where I lived in Florida. Which kind of blew my mind at the time. I don’t remember anything about the movie aside from her being in it, and everyone was SWEATING. 

Now back to Emily The Criminal. 

That first scene was a strong choice. Now when I say Strong Choice, that’s a term I heard my improv comedy actor friend Will Maier say probably 20 years ago. I don’t know what HE meant by it, but I have used the term ever since. 

In this example, I think the opening scene WAS a strong choice. Because it is mostly one continuous shot of a job interview. But it shows ONLY one side of the conversation: Aubrey Plaza. Normally, a conversational shot might have 3-4 different angles. Two singles with over the shoulders, a double, and maybe a wide double for coverage. I am making all of those terms up on the spot, by the way. 

My point is, it takes a while for the filmmaker to finally reveal who Aubrey Plaza is talking to. I’m going to estimate it was probably a whole minute before that shot cuts away to reveal the other person. And that is what I call a Strong Choice. It’s taking a chance. It’s intentional, and it creates an effect of TENSION. 

There’s also an establishing shot of downtown LA. Well. This film sure knows how to push my PTSD buttons. It hit me right in the center of my Amygdala, because THERE IT IS. The EXACT, hellish Wilshire Blvd. bridge I used to walk over several times a day, at my soul-sucking corporate job. You can even see part of the building I worked in. It was probably the unhappiest time of my life. When I worked down there I wore uncomfortable shoes and was terrified of my boss. I looked out my office window and fantasized about a nuclear bomb going off. I would have a perfect view of the end of the world. 

My point is, at that moment, I knew how Emily The Criminal felt. All I needed was to see that bridge. 

Wow. Back to the film. I was sucked into it. But it’s inevitable that any movie will have an Implausible moment or two. Here’s one of them: 

When Aubrey Plaza gets in the sports car and there are sound effects of extreme revving of the engine — you can see outside the window she’s not going fast at all. Well, that kind of took me out of it. All of that vroom vroom and tires screeching but not actually going anywhere. Then again, that’s what Los Angeles is all about. 

But look, this wasn’t an expensive film. And getting Aubrey Plaza to speed around in a sports car was probably not going to happen. 

Aside from that, my disbelief was suspended. So much that I rarely stopped to take notes. 

This film made me think about how I’ve always been averse to doing illegal stuff. I’ve never wanted to be a criminal. Ever since I was a kid, I was a goody goody. In fact, the only crime I can remember committing, and even getting caught, was shoplifting a picture of Steve Vai out of a magazine in Albertsons. I tore the page out, stuck it in my shirt, and tried to walk out. AND I was abruptly nabbed by a security guard. My friend who was with me started raising hell with the guy, and took all the heat off me. HE ended up getting in trouble. His mom came to get us, was forced to PAY for the magazine, and she hung the photo on her fridge to punish me. I felt like a bad person and never stole anything again. 

So I often wonder, why would anyone choose a life of crime? It’s such a bad idea on the surface. Why would you EVER do those things?

But this film helps to explain how someone in the lower class can get sucked into it. Hey, no big deal, just commit this very small crime, shoplift from Best Buy just once. But then, a few days later, you’re committing grand theft auto. 

Another little observation: I liked how the film’s title paid off in the scene where she meets her boyfriend’s mom for the first time. It was  highly, really, very well-done. 

Criminal stuff aside, I identified with the situation of living in Los Angeles and trying to get a good job, but always being pushed down, treated as scum. This film captures that distant, F U energy that everyone seems to have in the big city. It’s like, the more anonymous you can be, the worse you can treat others. It reminded me of the desperation I felt, as I tried to find a place to belong. And to be treated as a person.

I gave this film 5 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd. 

Get Emily The Criminal on BluRay
https://geni.us/A6Bj

FILM REVIEW #2 – ESCAPE FROM LA

Up next we have Escape From LA, from 1996. 

This movie was directed by John Carpenter, a USC dropout. 

And this film’s script was so complex it required THREE people to work as a team. So it was screenwrited by John Carpenter, Debra Hill, AND KURT RUSSELL. He was 45 years old at the time, and I believe he added only a single, forgettable line: “Call me Snake.” 

And that confused me, because Kurt Russell actually plays the character named BOB. And by the way, he happens to be the same actor from Escape From New York, and they even look similar. But I’m not sure if this one is OFFICIALLY a sequel, or a reboot. Because it’s quite similar, even recycling some of the same dialogue. 

Regardless, we do know that Escape From L.A. was in development for 10 YEARS, because John Carpenter and his team wanted to get every little detail exactly perfect, especially the computer graphics for the underwater scene. And Carpenter claimed it was exactly 10x better than the previous movie. So I’d say that makes it a success. 

I did notice that for this film they used the same musical theme from Escape From New York, which was a big time saver. And it’s always a good thing to cut down on costs. John Carpenter probably had to pay less money to the composer. This is an old trick borrowed the director of the classic TV show Knight Rider. He would often recycle the same intro music from episode to episode, in order to avoid paying his composer for brand new music every single week. 

Speaking of costs, the budget of Escape from LA was $50M and the box office was $25M. Once again, the John Carpenter Law. Which states: John Carpenter movies can only make 50% of their budget back.

I was shocked to discover this film was made in 1996. The same year as Mars Attacks, Independence Day, and Bio-Dome. 

Now, regarding some of the other actors: I was as shocked as the rest of you: Michelle Forbes is in this film! That’s right, Admiral Helena Cain from Battlestar Galactica. What a character!

There’s also Valeria Golino, from Four Rooms. Although that was my least favorite of the four rooms. 

And it turns out the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills was… Bruce Campbell! I had no clue. 

There’s also A.J. Langer: that’s Claire Danes’s wild best friend from My So Called Life – Rayanne Graff. 

But who cares who was in it? Let’s talk about the film itself. 

We get a heavy, computer graphics exposition opening. Very much in the same style as Escape From New York. Some say the usage of CGI in this film was out of control, and some say it was just what it needed. 

In one of the early scenes, an actor named Commander Malloy spritzes his cactuses with a water spray bottle. And in filmmaking terminology, that’s called a SETUP that will be later paid off in the final minutes of the story. Also called a Chekov’s Cactus. I’ll get back to that later, as it’s relevant to this filmmaking lesson. 

Because I want to take a quick turn here. How many of you listeners have heard of an artist called RetroGimmick? He hand-creates one-of-a-kind, bizarre action figures from movies. And they look like the authentic Star Wars blister packs with the logos, etc. But it’s either background characters you’d never expect, or unusual twists on them. For instance, I bought a Luke’s Power Converters from Star Wars, which was entirely empty. Because, you know, Luke never got those Power Converters. Scrolling through the RetroGimmick Etsy store, he’s got “A Dude Wearing Cargo Shorts”, “Alex Jones’s Gay Frogs” and “Darth Beiger” which is simply a Darth Vader, but more Beige. I’l put a link to his Etsy shop in the bio. 

Anyway, I think RetroGimmick should make one of Commander Malloy Spritzing his Cactuses. And that’s not a euphemism, sir. 

At some point, they capture the main adventure hero, Bob, and HANDCUFF him to a walking treadmill. So he has to exercise for no reason. Maybe this is a joke about how everyone in LA exercises non stop. But in the movie, they never give a reason for it. 

According to my inside connections in the industry, the people who screenwrited Escape From LA literally got in a room together and said: “What if we had this. What if we had that.” And so, we ended up with a scene in which the protagonists HANG-GLIDE from Hollywood to Disneyland. That’s approximately 30 miles away. Hey. Sounds totally plausible to me. But I looked it up, and it seems like the world record for hang-gliding might actually be over 200 miles. Okay than. I will let everyone know. 

It all becomes a series of silly “fun and games” scenes like a Harry Potter movie. So because people feel nostalgic for this John Carpenter movie, whether it is any good or not, I gave it 5 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd. 

Get Escape from LA on BluRay
https://geni.us/j2gG

And now, lets move on to this week’s Song Review. 

SONG – METALLICA / ST. ANGER

Only one song review this week, and it is: St. Anger by Metallica. Submitted by listener tmc3 In Florida. 

First, I’ll talk about the things we can objectively measure about St. Anger. 

This song was played by a DAW at 93 bpm. And that’s according to my Metronome. Now: I did some additional research on the internet, and some people claim 93 bpm is the same as 92 bpm, Or 95 bpm. Or even 91 bpm. But I assure you, those bpms are not the same bpms. It’s why there are different numbers shown before the bpm part. This might be a sort of flat earth situation, but we’ll have to explore that with a REAL expert on Tempos, in a future episode. 

I’ve determined that this song is mostly in C minor, which is a GOOD choice of key! There IS a part that you could call an intro or interlude riff that has some chromatic notes around C. That’s C, C#, D, and Bb. 

But the majority of the song, what might be called the Verses and Choruses use a descending sequence of 4 notes: C, Bb, Ab, and G. Which are totally diatonic to C minor. 

But the composition itself is far less interesting than both the history and the production. Those being the CONTEXT for the musical notes. So let’s examine THAT.  

Back in 2001 or so, Metallica set out to record a new album. But James Hetfield was struggling with an addiction to alcohol. And that’s a big deal. As a person who grew up in a family of alcoholics, and now has a thing called PTSD from it, I know how much that will disrupt ANYONE’S creative process. And multiply that with how much pressure was put on him, from the band, the record label, the fans. 

So anything critical I say here, I say with my own understanding of that. Because this album was James Hetfield, the primary songwriter of the band, trying to relearn how to be creative. While reprogramming his brain in the absence of a powerful substance. In the moment, in front of the whole world. Imagine the fear you would feel, in that position. 

So, back to the story. After taking a year off for James to recover, and with the help of a career coach, Metallica decided to reinvent themselves. Try something new. Why not? It had been 6 years, so let’s see what comes out. 

Well, the result was an unexpected combination of things. Loosely-tuned minor pentatonic nu-metal guitars, unrelated song parts glued together with ProTools, with group-written freeform poetry lyrics. 

To my ear, it SOUNDS like they were listening to music on the radio at that time and trying to do their own version of that. And there are specific nu-metal ISMS that creeped into Metallica’s music. One of those is the rhythm guitar style.  

Now. I’ve worked with a LOT of guitarists. I don’t know why this is, but there is a thing that happens. If you hand any guitarist a guitar tuned to Drop D, they will immediately play low bluesy flat 5s and flat 3s and bending a lot. Thrash chugging on the low E will entirely vanish from their vocabulary — and all riffs will sound like grunge-y nu-metal. Like Stone Temple Pilots Dead & Bloated. 

I believe this is exactly what happened to James Hetfield. There must have been someone that handed him a down-tuned guitar — sometime after 1991, and that person is to blame for Load, Reload, and St. Anger. And yes, I know he detuned on Sad But True, but that still wasn’t bluesy. 

Low tuning and bluesy bending didn’t go away, mostly, until Death Magnetic in 2008. Perhaps Rick Rubin told him to knock it off with the blues rock? 

Now regarding the production of St. Anger, there are a lot of technical problems. And you can only call them problems subjectively, within the context of what you expect a Metallica production to be. Because if it were intentional, and part of a style, it wouldn’t be so much of a “problem.” 

Those problems are, most notably, HARD DIGITAL CUTS between sections of the songs. And by that, I mean instruments will suddenly become much louder or softer, or cut out entirely, seemingly by accident. This is something that in engineering world would be considered an error or MISTAKE.

Those hard cuts cause abrupt changes in timbre, especially in the drums. For instance, during the double bass section at 44 seconds, the snare drum drops in level, where before it was extremely prominent. It disrupts the feeling of it being a “band jamming in a garage” to quote producer Bob Rock. 

The whole song sounds patched together, and that’s because it was. From watching Some Kind of Monster, the songs on this record weren’t written as “songs.” The metaphor of Frankenstein is actually a GOOD ONE to describe their creative process on a micro level. 

As you can see in the documentary, they went into the live room, came up with a riff, then stapled it together in ProTools, listened to it a few times, then went in to come up with another riff and attached it to the other one, without much consideration of how well it fit. They might come back a few days or weeks later and glue something else in. 

This causes basic songwriting problems, as well. When the “verse” of St. Anger comes in, it’s got some pitchy singing and a syncopated drum beat that confuses whatever momentum they had built up in the previous minute. 

At 1:48 they launch into another double-bass segment, in which a kick drum sample was inserted OVER the other kick drum pattern, for VERY LOUD accents that make no sense in reality. From a drummer’s point of view, it sounds synthetic and confusing because no one on earth could play double-bass with 16th notes very quietly and accent single notes like that. And that’s another artifact of working in ProTools in such a cut and paste manner. You start cheating and doing things that you couldn’t otherwise pull off. The more you do that, the further you get away from a natural GLUE holding the performance together. 

When the song returns back into the ringing snare drum section at 2:37, it’s another abrupt jump and the snare changes tones. Ten seconds later, there’s a harsh edit where the cymbals abruptly cut off and the drum tone changes again. The problem is, it doesn’t sound intentional. It sounds like someone moved the mics and didn’t put them back in the same spot. There’s not even a crossfade — the cymbals just chop off. 

By the way, that whole St. Anger Snare Tone thing. A guy named Matt Smith recorded a parody of the St. Anger snare sound by banging a pen on a metal office chair. There used to be a picture of it out there, but I can’t find it now. But the recording will be in the show notes. 

Matt Smith St. Anger Snare / Office Chair

Anyway, at 3:00 they return to the verse again, with the floppy drumbeat. 

The main problem, I think, is that this stop and start songwriting / recording workflow screwed up the energy and FLOW of the music. They would have been better off workshopping the songs from a macro level, and I mean working on the song as a whole… rather than writing the songs part by part, stream of consciousness, day by day. 

What they ended up with, with all that cutting and pasting, is drums or vocals or guitars that aren’t interacting with or matching the appropriate energy of the musical part. The drums will maybe have the totally wrong feel against the vocals that are happening, and vice versa. Like they were recorded without hearing each other. 

It happens ALL OVER the album. 

Regarding the lyrics, St. Anger DOES make an insightful observation about Anger: “It’s hard to see clear. Is it me or is it fear?” It took me a long time to learn that anger is actually fear wearing a disguise. So thumbs up to whoever wrote that line. 

All songwriting aside: Metallica were BRAVE to make St. Anger. I give them major respect for it. Because think about it… how many bands in their position, with that massive of an audience… and status… and cash cow, would throw away their entire, previous creative process? 

Most would just keep making the same album forever and ever. So congratulations to Metallica for taking that creative chance. 

And thank you to TMC3 In Florida for submitting this song for examination. 

Get Metallica / St. Anger
https://geni.us/NqvSNZ

So let’s move on to a new edition of Carl King Visits!

CARL KING VISITS ANN ARBOR MICHIGAN BOOK STORES

This past weekend I got in the mood to read a good book. So I flew out to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to shop at their world famous book stores. But wouldn’t you know it? I got there just in time on a Sunday evening JUST when they were all closing. Some people have said, Carl, you need to plan better. But you know, big time L.A. celebrities like me are impulsive. We just decide to go and do something… and we expect the rest of the world to give us what we want. 

The temperature in Ann Arbor was below freezing, and the sun was already setting, but I made my best effort to walk quickly, and visit the following SIX book stores:

Dawn Treader
Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library Book Shop
Literati
Third Mind Books
Vault of Midnight
And West Side Bookshop. 

I was only able to get inside THREE of them, and I will tell you about them now. I’m also posting a PHOTO GALLERY of what I was able to capture in the few minutes I had. 

BOOK STORE #1: Dawn Treader

Opened in 1976, this store seems to be named after a CS Lewis Book. Over Seventy Thousand used and rare books. I don’t know if they do this year round, or if it’s their normal aesthetic, but there were cobwebs on everything. It like one of those ancient, chaotic, creepy book stores from a movie. Old books stacked haphazardly. Old as heck wooden shelves. I spotted a first edition of Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. I also bought a bumper sticker for $1 cash. As a souvenir for Mark Borchardt. 

https://shop.dawntreaderbooks.com

BOOK STORE #2: Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library Book Shop

This “book store” is inside the public library. And as much as I love a library, I was anxious to hit some of the other spooky book shops down the street. 

https://www.faadl.org

BOOK STORE #3: Literati

Open entering, I was told “We’re closed.” But I did snap a few pictures from the doorway. Literati was a nice looking shop. Clean, brightly lit. Like one of those book stores in an airport. It didn’t have the same spooky vibe as Dawn Treader. So I wasn’t too disappointed to keep moving down the street. 

https://www.literatibookstore.com/store-info

BOOK STORE #4: Third Mind Books

Cool name for a book store, but also closed. Their slogan is “Beat & Beyond.” Their specialty is works by and about members of the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. Well, now it makes sense that they had a Captain Beefheart original concert poster for sale in the window for $125. And I think it’s GREAT that book stores can have a strict specialty like that. It gives me hope that someday I can have a book store entirely about Steve Vai and dogs. 

https://www.thirdmindbooks.com/about.php

BOOK STORE #5: Vault of Midnight

Hey, this turned out to be a COMIC BOOK store. And I have to say I was impressed. It was highly, really, very cool. Upstairs it was toys, shirts, collectibles. Downstairs, roleplaying games and LOTS of comics. I picked up a shirt for myself, size M. The store has some strong branding and a fun vibe. Turns out they have THREE locations: Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Detroit. 

https://www.vaultofmidnight.com/locations

BOOK STORE #6: West Side Book Shop

This one was the oldest operating book store on the list, going back an extra year to 1975. It looked just creepy enough for my tastes, but was of course completely closed. It was already getting dark outside, and a man saw me from inside, peeking in the windows. He almost seemed he was going to let me in, but I gave him a friendly wave and kept moving. I didn’t want him to go through the trouble on a freezing Sunday evening.

https://www.westsidebookshopa2.com/about-2

And that was IT for my visit to 6 mostly closed book store in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

And remember, go check out the photos I took. I’ll be posting a gallery on my blog. As well as links to all of these stores, in the show notes. 

And now, let’s move on to the Musical Composition of the Week!

MUSICAL COMPOSITION OF THE WEEK

This week’s musical composition of the week is: 

Evil Dead Suite by Roque Baños. Submitted to me by Kyle Macleod. 

This is music that originally appeared in the 2013 version of the film Evil Dead, directed by Fede Alvarez. 

Here’s something to know: Often, a film composer will write a Suite, from which they pull apart the various musical themes and place them into individual scenes. That way, they have a bunch of ideas approved by the composer in advance. Like, here’s generally what the music is going to sound like. So that sort of Suite… is what you will hear. Here. 

This performance is just short of 12 minutes long. 

And it was difficult to count, because I’m bad at counting… but it seems to be about a 100 piece orchestra, with half of those being choir. 

Even though it is “film music” this will be fairly accessible to rock music type people, because it “rocks.” And I’m referring to that staccato “heavy metal” riff in 5/4. It’s catchy and repeats plenty of times, enough for listeners to engage in some head banging. 

Here are some things I enjoyed:

1 – The choir shouts. When we think of choirs we often think of oohs and aahs, but this piece is ANGRY. 

2 – I love percussion, and this piece has plenty. The siren actually sounds like a person screaming. Of course, we also get the wooden clackity-clacks, not sure what those are called, but they seem to have two piece of wood joined by a hinge, and you SMACK them closed. And my favorite, the bundles of bamboo. At one point the percussionist playing  the HUGE bundles of bamboo quickly reaches over and bangs a metal thing with a hammer.  

3 – Here’s something fun to spot in this video: there’s a violinist dude with white hair and a beard wearing super dark glasses. Kinda like he’s wearing a disguise. I wonder what the story was there? Was it kind of a Dr. Zoltan thing, or maybe he recently had an eyeball procedure? I’ve never seen an orchestra musician with dark sunglasses before, that’s all. 

Now: Something I actually LEARNED from this video: during that 5/4 metal riff. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that string players might bow DUU DUU DU DU when they’re subdividing fast notes into groups of 3. I had assumed it was always entirely DUDU and you’d need to coordinate the bowing direction beginning on either a down or an up depending on how many strokes there would be. In this case there would be ten, meaning the riff would start on an up bow or a down bow and reverse each time it went around. But in this, they’re all bouncing the second and third note of the groups of 3. Which is pretty cool. Maybe I already knew this and just never saw it visually. But I HAVE done that sort of thing when playing rhythm guitar, which is a trick I learned from watching that old Steve Vai Clinic at MI in 1984. It’s a sort of double-stroke with your right hand. I used to practice paradiddles in my strumming. You can hear that double-stroke technique used in the opening guitar part of Answers on Passion and Warfare. I recorded an entire album in high school using that style of strumming, but that’s another story. 

Steve Vai / Answers (1984)

Part of the way through the piece, there’s a funny moment where the audience thinks it’s OVER, and starts to clap. One of the rules in classical music performances is this: you do not clap between movements. Only at the end of an entire piece. 

Well, in response, the orchestra pulls a FAITH NO MORE on Hanging With MTV moment — and blasts a tutti tidal wave of chaotic dissonance back at them. Violins screeching away up and down the fingerboard, the  choir SCREAMING as loud as they can, and it is full-on horror. That goes on for 20 seconds. Then a brief pause, and the piece continues, so quiet you can barely hear them. Surprise, we’re not done yet! 

The composer himself, Roque Banos conducts the performance, and you can see how much fun he’s having making such a racket. These sorts of experience are rare — for a composer to conduct his own music performed by a full orchestra. Especially one that big. So I’m sure he is having the time of his life. 

I recommend checking out Roque Banos’s Evil Dead Suite from 2013, with and without the video. I’ll put a link in the description. 

Roque Banos / Evil Dead Suite (2013)

Listen to the full film score on Spotify:

Get Evil Dead 2013 on BluRay
https://geni.us/nt3lrh

END CREDITS

OK, that’s the end of this Episode of the Carl King Podcast. Remember to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Music, or anywhere else you listen to these dang podcasts. And support the creation of more episodes by joining my Patreon for $1 or $5 a month. That’s Patreon Dot Com Slash Carl King. Or send a tip through PayPal or Venmo to username CarlKingdom.

And as always, special thanks to my $51 a month Patrons, at the special Illusionist level, Chewbode and Hank Howard III. And thank you to ALL of the Very Good Friends of Carl King for listening, and as I always say: Okay Than. I will let everyone know.

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