2 Friends Music Credits
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Madrigal Group from Kambala Church of England Girl's School (sic) "Gone with the Wind" theme courtesy of Warner Bros. Inc. Piano Dennis Hennig Student Pianist Maki Toda French Horn Susan Clarke Music Director Martin Armiger Music in the film: Music features in a variety of ways in the film. The piano becomes the symbolic resting place for Kelly's letter, and Louise is tortured reading the letter with the piano prominent in the background. Louise practices on the piano a number of times, but also practices the French horn (credits as above). The madrigal group from Kambala Church of England Girl's School also turns up, and the cleaner (Mario Monti?) delivers an operatic air while mopping the floor: The credits don't provide any details regarding the music heard in the film. Music director Martin Armiger: Armiger also worked with Jane Campion on her feature film Sweetie. Composer Martin Armiger had done one short forty minute film, Drac, in 1972, before doing Pure Shit in 1975. His next notable composition for the screen was the score for the 20 by half hour ABC TV series, Sweet and Sour, in 1984, and thereafter he composed music for TV miniseries (Cyclone Tracy, 1986, Come in Spinner 1990), documentaries (Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, 1988) and feature films (Young Einstein, 1988). The prolific Armiger has many other scores to his credit, as well as an extensive career in pop music as a record producer and also as a performer, most notably in the band The Sports. He has also composed for the stage, and in 1998 won the AFI Award for Best Music for a feature film for Thank God He Met Lizzie. He became the head of Screen Music at the AFTRS, which at one time carried his staff details (link no longer working) and which provided this short career summary: Award winning film composer Martin Armiger has been writing for the screen for more than thirty years. Early works still attracting interest include Bert Delings notorious 1975 feature about heroin users, (Pure Shit, re-released in 2009 by Beyond Films,) and Jan Chapman's series about rock musicians (Sweet and Sour, ABC 1984) which will have its soundtrack re-released this year. Other projects include Clubland, Thank God He Met Lizzie, Young Einstein, Sweetie, The Secret Life of Us, Marking Time, Come In Spinner and Police Rescue. His last film was Mark Lewis' 3D documentary feature Cane Toads: The Conquest, (to be released in 2010) and he composed the current on air music for ABC TV News. He is Head of Screen Music at AFTRS. Armiger had his own website, no longer active as of May 2016, but still on the Wayback Machine here, and a detailed wiki here. Armiger died in 2019 in France at the age of 70. This resulted in a flurry of obituaries. Jen Jewel Brown, a Melbourne writer and friend, wrote one published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 22nd November 2019 under the header Screen composer with a platinum touch (here): Prodigious screen composer and producer Martin Armiger, of Melbourne band Sports, has died in France at the age of seventy. His platinum touch with scores was a catalyst for the coming of age of small screen drama in Australia in the 1980s. High-rating series that the tousle-headed maestro set to music included Sweet and Sour, Police Rescue and The Secret Life of Us. In the wildly successful documentary Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1987), Armiger’s amusing score perfectly matched writer-director Mark Lewis’ offbeat paean. Jane Campion’s feature debut Sweetie (1989) charms, while Young Einstein, released in 1988, set new records as the biggest- selling Australian soundtrack. Armiger also composed the current ABC TV News theme, adopted in 2005. Songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, singer, arranger, producer, teacher, instigator and mentor, he was still composing right up till his death from a long-standing genetic lung condition. “Martin’s death took me by surprise, as he had a good record of defying tricky health situations,” said Sports band mate Stephen Cummings. “It was a pleasure for me working and being friends with him. He would buy stylish suits with abandon, running up bills. The shops would show lists of who owed them money in their front windows in those days. Martin was often featured. He was also the first breakfaster”—breakfast announcer—“on 3RRR, when he made it in,” Cummings noted. The eldest of the seven children of John and Joyce (née Willies) Armiger, John “Martin” Armiger was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK. Next came Loyola, Kathleen, Keith, Andrew (now deceased), Michael and Christopher (also deceased). Michael would end up playing bass in Paul Kelly and The Dots, The Johnnys and the Go-Betweens. Joyce, now 92, was a piano teacher, while her bookkeeper husband was a fine piano and double bass player. By 1965 Armiger was the keen 16-year-old guitarist in an up-and-coming Mod band. But the firm employing his father closed, so the family migrated to Elizabeth, South Australia. Armiger was not impressed but, always pragmatic, he made the best of it. He befriended Lynda Achren who would later play in all-women band Flying Tackle. “When we first met we were just £10 pom kids hanging out in the suburbs of Adelaide,” said Achren. Marrying young, they studied drama and politics at Flinders University. Armiger edited the student paper Empire Times and was president of the film society. In 1969 they had a daughter, Kelly. Armiger created music for the playThe Living Newspaper, starring Tim Robertson, who also fronted Adelaide art rock band Toads Nitely with him. He also scored his first film, the short Drac. Graduating with honours, he relocated from Adelaide to Melbourne. There he teamed up with future Skyhooks guitarist Red Symons and the larrikin Australian Performing Group (APG) at Carlton’s Pram Factory. Through December 1972 their musical A Night in Rio and Other Bummers created a stir. Armiger and Symons collaborated again on the soundtrack for Bert Deling’s R-rated hard drugs flick Pure Shit (1975). A new Toads line-up came together but didn’t last long. In 1976 Armiger co-founded the short-lived art rock band Bleeding Hearts. Powerful talents collided with great chemistry as he joined forces with electric violinist-singer-songwriter Eric Gradman. Bassist Rick Grossman cut his teeth there, before joining Divinyls and Hoodoo Gurus. Paul Kelly moved to Melbourne in 1977. “By great good fortune, my first band there, The High Rise Bombers, included Martin,” he said. “That band of multiple songwriters was a school for me. I was just starting out writing songs and had to learn quickly and in public. Martin was a good teacher without trying to be. His musicality, smarts, edge and sense of theatre were all good lessons. He could even write horn lines, an esoteric skill that seemed way beyond my ken! I soaked up as much as I could, tried on some of his clothes, but there was only ever one Martin.” When head-hunted by Sports singer Stephen Cummings in 1978, Armiger took the Melbourne rockabilly band to new heights. Through three successful albums Don’t Throw Stones (’79),Suddenly (’80) and Sondra (’81) there were big tours, chart hits including Armiger’s song Strangers On A Train, and plenty of overseas action. Armiger was able to buy a house in Brunswick and prop open the door with an ARIA award. The gilt patina of band life had worn off but he was happy to dedicate himself to screen music. A key relationship with cornerstone ABC drama producer Jan Chapman was soon struck up. “Martin was responsible for producing the music for the fictional band The Takeaways in our 1984 series Sweet and Sour,” Chapman recalled. “This began a very fruitful, inventive period for Armiger as musical director and composer for television drama at the ABC in the ’80s and ’90s and then elsewhere. The accompanying albums for Sweet and Sour, Dancing Daze and Come in Spinner, with Grace Knight and Vince Jones, were all high performers on the ARIA charts and some went platinum,” she said. Stringer (’88) led to the soundtrack album You’ve Always Got the Blues, recorded in 48 hours with Kate Ceberano and Wendy Matthews. A top 10 hit, it also sold platinum. “Martin was passionate and rigorous, kind and generous, curious and very funny,” said Chapman. “He was the perfect collaborator because he loved story telling.” Armiger had a second marriage, to Alexandra Morphett, in the mid-80s. A strong professional relationship developed with producer John Edwards around this time too, over 10 projects. His funky, sassy music for Police Rescue helped propel it through five seasons. He also loved working with John Butler on the soundtrack for the 2003 miniseries Marking Time. “Martin was such a perfectionist, he’d often spend his own fees on getting the best players,” Edwards said. “He’d take on the wild notions of others and realise them with such grace.” Producing “Dumb Things” from a demo by Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls for Young Einstein in 1988, Armiger created an absolutely classic single that reached 16 on the US Billboard alternative rock chart. “In the ’80s,” Kelly reflected, “over-finicky engineers were often obsessed with order and clean separation of instruments, overdubbing ... This approach would often suck the life out of a track. Martin’s great contribution was in encouraging the wildness in our playing—the frenetic drums, the harp by Chris Wilson, the saxophone, my howls—and then pulling that chaos into a coherent pop song full of drama.” Armiger is the winner of at least nine major musical awards from the Australian Performing Right Association (APRA), Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA), Australian Guild of Screen Writers (AGSW), ABC Countdown, RoadRunner Magazine and the Australian Film Institute (AFI).