Blogs Don't Hit Back

Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra: Big Boss Main Theme
from The Big Boss / Fist of Fury (Soundtracks from the Motion Pictures) (Bungalow Records 2005)

Lalo Schifrin: Sampans
from: Enter The Dragon OST (Warner Bros. 1973)

John Barry: Main Title/Set Fight With Chuck Norris
from: Game Of Death OST (Victor Music 1979)

John Barry: Will This Be The Song I'll Be Singing Tomorrow
from: Game Of Death OST (Victor Music 1979)


If I look back on my childhood, several memories stand out: Transformers, breaking (I used to rock a fresh maroon/dark blue TI jacket with matching pants), drive in theaters showing Godzilla movies, Robotech and of course Bruce Lee. Of them all, Bruce is probably the most memorable. I used to have a shit load of Bruce Lee posters, the canon of 5 movies all recorded on two video cassettes in SLP mode, cotton sole china flats, nunchucks made of Archie comics rolled up tight and bound together with shoelace, I had practically all of the lines from his movies memorized and would act them out with my brother and friends, I had all the fake Bruce Lee actors names memorized, and I even sported a tight ass rice bowl haircut (although that was less of an emulation and more about the limits of my dads skill as a tonsorial artist. Shit if you were to take a picture of me every year from the time I sported the rice bowl to now, you would see an encyclopedia of bad hair styles, from the mullet on down to the high top fade, and I'm sure if my hair were kinky I would probably have rocked a jheri curl).

A Bruce Lee movie had everything that a snot nosed 10 year old punk could want, the rise and fall arc of the kung fu hero, hot females jocking the hero (Nora Miao and Maria Yi will be burned in my memory forever), clear cut lines of good and evil, a mix of martial artists from all fields duking it out, really dark villians and of course Bruce holding back and then finally unleashing some ungodly ass whooping. One aspect of a Bruce Lee flick that was an indelible and integral part of the excitement of the film was the music. The soundtracks always matched up well with the action on the screen and whether it was Joseph Koo's Morricone-esque sounds, or Lalo Shchifrin's funkdafied, wawa guitar laden tracks, his films were blessed with great composers. And I felt that the music of his films deserved their own blog post.

The first track is from his film The Big Boss, known in the U.S. as Fist of Fury. An interesting aside, the original U.S. title was supposed to be Chinese Connection (because of the drug theme and the popularity of the movie The French Connection), but was instead titled Fist Of Fury. So when his second movie came out and was titled internationally as Fist Of Fury, the U.S. title was changed to Chinese Connection, or at least that's what the internet says. When this film was originally released, Wang Fu-ling composed the soundtrack but for the English dub, electro-lounge wizard Peter Thomas scored several pieces including the one that stands out most in my mind, Big Boss Main Theme. With the hard drums and ear stabbing horns in the opening section, the song screams out ass kicking, and then when it switches themes and tempo to the single growling horn the song is in high gear. The piece jumps around once more but the familiar horn break always reappears in the nick of time to drive it home. A more subdued version of this track was sampled by Dilated Peoples for their track Work The Angles.

The Enter The Dragon soundtrack by famed film composer Lalo Schifrin is a beautiful mix of jazz, funk, pentatonic scales and chinese music. At first I was going to include the main theme but I decided instead on the more laid back track Sampans, with it's deep bassline and cool keyboards. Towards the end of the song it picks up a little flair as the wawa guitars kick in but it still keeps the same austere melody that drives it. My favorite use of this as a song sample is probably the Diamond D remix of Let It Out by the Alkaholics.

The one "Bruce Lee" film that makes my skin bristle because of it's obvious exploitation, but that I still include in the canon of 5 is Game Of Death. Using really bad effects of splicing in footage from old movies together with new footage of a Bruce Lee imitator, the movie was hard to watch as a kid because I craved for the genuine article (and I hated to see fellow Pinoy Danny Inosanto getting his ass kicked, even if it was by Bruce). Nowadays I can laugh at the films bad cuts, bad acting and the scene where a cardboard cutout substitutes for Bruce's head, while the body is real! Less offensive is John Barry's soundtrack. While not spectacular by any stretch of the imagination, the track Main Title/Set Fight With Chuck Norris is still very much listenable. It's disco synths and horns actually make this piece just as enjoyable as a stand alone track as it is a part of the soundtrack, with it's big saving grace being the Set Fight coda . The Coleen Camp sung Will This Be The Song I'll Be Singing Tomorrow is sung just as flat as when she reads her lines (she plays the lead actress in the film) but the piece is most memorable as the song that ends the film while a montage of footage from Bruce's prior four films are played.

I originally intended to include music from the movie Chinese Connection because it has an awesome Joseph Koo soundtrack and an awesomely bad sung version of the Main Theme by Mike Remedios in the same vein as Andy Williams' rendering of The Godfather and Love Story Main Themes, but because I'm too lazy to hook up my turntables to my computer right now you'll have to settle for these tracks. Someday I'll post up some Chinese Connection tracks.