Daniel Martin Moore at Soft City Lights…

Just a quick post for you readers. Daniel Martin Moore is a semi-local artist. I say semi only because although it would be easy to claim him as our own, he seems pretty devoted to Kentucky. I would just feel guilty trying to take that away from him. These videos were edited by Kevin Bayer for his Soft City Lights website and shot by Kevin, Kendall Bruns and myself. Holding the camera is easy but making quiet music interesting is a sisyphean task. So kudos to Kevin. While Kevin isn’t doing Soft City Lights he plays in You, You’re Awesome, The Damn Thing, and lends his DJ and video talents to Dance_MF. Also, look for a music video for a certain local band in the near future. I’ll say this much, the filming of it made the ceiling of my garage collapse. Unexpectedly raucous! 

The video for “Smile” after the jump.

Whatever Happened To The Theme Song?

This is a topic that keeps popping up in my conversations as of late. In recent film and television productions there is a great lack of great theme songs. For most of film and TV history a great theme song was crucial to a successful project. The trend of licensing songs has killed this. Instead of composing a great theme for a character or for the opening of a movie we are left with films that attempt to cram as many “cool” songs into their runtime as they possibly can. Of course John Williams is the probably the most successful at this. His scores are inseparable from the films they back. But would “Robocop” really be itself without this:

I honestly can’t think of Robocop without thinking of that piece of music. That’s the power of a great theme. That’s why we ALL know the Star Wars music. Sure, LOST’s anti-theme is great and works for the show, but not EVERYBODY has to do it. Wouldn’t all cop related projects if they had cool theme songs? I think so:

Last Thursday’s Streetcar Debate

One of the first major streetcar debates was held last Thursday on UC’s campus. I, unfortunately, was not able to attend due to the fact that Thursdays are one of my only days off to get errands taken care of. Thankfully a UC based radio show recorded the whole thing and put it up online for you to listen to in the comfort of your own home. It can be found here or on iTunes by searching for “Explore Cincinnati.” I’m not going to put too much of my own spin on this because it is very clear that the Jason Haap and his rag, The Cincinnati Beacon, are very sensitive to “bias,” also known in this case as “another opinion.” There is one point I would like concerning this debate, though. If Jason would like to continue to participate in debates like this and be taken seriously, he needs to work on his rhetoric. While I support the streetcar wholeheartedly, Haap does make a few decent points but they were lost in the muddle of his manically indignant delivery. The setting up and knocking down of arguments by sarcastically exclaiming things along the lines of “Wooow!” or “I don’t know what you guys think, but…” really harm a speakers point.