VOTD 1/3/24

 Joe Delia: Ms. 45 OST (Death Waltz Recording Co.)

I think I purchased this mail order from Death Waltz

It's pretty amazing that small, independent film productions often have original soundtracks. I forget where the information came up, probably online article, but Gerard Damiano insisted what was going to put Deep Throat over the top was to budget for original music. I would speculate in the case of that movie, it didn't make much of a difference. For all its significance, I've never watched Deep Throat but have listened to the music, which is pretty dreadful. I wouldn't say the same about The Devil in Miss Jones, though. And consider the hyper-cheap productions of Herschel Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman; Blood Feast has a weirdly compelling score performed with whatever instruments and skills the director and producer had at hand. Russ Meyer always insisted on original scores for his films. 

Here's this soundtrack by Joe Delia. I know nothing about him. It's for a gritty NYC 70s production by director Abel Ferrara. I have yet to see the film. It's ostensibly an "exploitation" feature the way that his earlier The Driller Killer was, though Ferrara's films in general are about desperate people in the jungle that is New York City. Manhattan is a much different place now than when this was made. 

The instrumentation is keyboards (dominating the first side of the LP) with saxophones, electric bass, and drums. As with listening to most film soundtracks as an independent statement, I find that sometimes cues are cut short just when they're good, or run longer than interest holds. But that's part of what interests me when I put one of these on: how does the music hold up apart from the film?

It's not bad. The mood is more somber in the first half, but picks up later when the saxophones and rhythm section are used more. The credits are incomplete; Max Kaplan is credited with tenor saxophone, but there's some baritone in there too. There's an odd a cappella vocal piece that ends side one of the album (overdubbed?). No vocals are credited. 

I won't rave about the work, nor will I put it down. It's good, worthy of a listen. I just think that even such a work exists is wonderful. 

PS: when we were coming out of the strict COVID lockdown and things were starting to reopen, one of the first places to start up (with serious social distancing policies) was the Tull Theater in Sewickley, PA (now the Lindsey). Early on they showed a recent Abel Ferrara documentary, The Projectionist. It concerns an immigrant who wound up running several cinemas in the 70s and 80s, including several straight and gay XXX theaters. The subject didn't seem to draw a distinction between those and mainstream films, he just loved showing films. Anyway, the point of this is, something I had been waiting for years to happen, happened: my wife and I were the only two people in attendance. I made the comment online that maybe the solution to social distancing in theaters is to screen movies that only three people want to attend.