The Dark Tower Musical Inspiration

photo credit: HERE

What do you do when your band has written "every possible break-up song there can be"?  Rachel Hirsh, the vocalist/keyboardist for a band called "I Was Totally Destroying It" said that was her problem.  She'd written it all!  So, wanting to move on to new territory, she stepped into the world of the Dark Tower.

According to al.Com, the bands August release album “Vexations" is a loose concept album inspired by the “The Dark Tower.”

Hirsh says,
"I’ve always been a HUGE Stephen King fan, even getting in trouble in middle school for reading his books during class. In the Dark Tower series there are a lot of human themes such as obsession and addiction, which I can relate to. We pulled from some of the more universal subject matter in the series, and simultaneously drew inspiration from our own experiences.
The full article is HERE.

5 comments:

  1. I kinda dig the song, and the LV is hot. I might have to check this album out.

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  2. Okay.

    Your Fantasy Dark Tower Movie soundtrack.

    Since the books help in this regard:

    The Beatles:
    Hey Jude
    She loves you
    Instant Karma (John Lennon)

    ZZ Top: Velcro Fly

    My personal picks:
    Blue Oyster Cult: Don't fear the reaper
    King Crimson: In the court of the Crimson King
    Creedence Clearwater Revival: Green River
    All along the Watchtower (Hendrix version)

    Bob Seger: Turn the Page (this in particular strikes me as appropriate with it's epic chords and melody, not to mention the opening and closing sax solo sound just right as a theme song almost).

    ChrisC

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  3. Mine would include "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" by Moby, which would play over the last few minutes of the movie (presuming it mirrored the end of the final book).

    The sense of building repetition there is highly appropriate.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tI1pu5rfZw

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  4. Incidentally, though off topic, I heard Pixar mentioned in connection as a suggestion in any and all possible DT movie adaptations, similar to films like Polar Express or Christmas Carol.

    The suggestion came from Hans Lilja I think on his Lilja and Lou podcast.

    One final instrumental that I thought would be good for the Tower itself is an opening part of a film soundtrack for a film called Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky, one of those late 70s, early 80s slow moving art house Sci Fi flicks.

    Curiously, when I thought about it, Stalker has a thematic connection to DT. It's about this guy in Russia looking for this mythical room in the middle of this blasted out zone similar to Chernobyl. Maybe it was an early try by another artist at the same idea that later became DT?

    ChrisC

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, baby! Another Tarkovsky fan in the house! I love his stuff, although it's been a solid decade since I watched my way through it. Great stuff, but decidedly not for everyone.

      As for the Pixar/Dark Tower suggestion ... yeah, I heard that podcast, too. And that suggestion -- which I think (THINK) was made by Lou, not Hans -- made me roll my eyes, because it shows a fundamental lack of understanding as to what Pixar does. There is about as much chance of Pixar EVER making a movie even vaguely similar to "The Dark Tower" as there is a chance that I will wake up tomorrow morning and discover that I have been turned into Jon Hamm. Not gonna happen.

      I've heard people mention the possibility of the series being animated, and there's some merit to it. But animation isn't really significantly cheaper than live action is (especially good animation), and it doesn't seem likely to me that any studio would want to take a chance on a massive animated project like that. Don't believe me? Stop for a moment and make a list of all the big hits that are adult animation.

      This sucker is live-action or nothing. Probably nothing, at least for now.

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