Mark Mothersbaugh, Composer: an Appreciation Written by Daniel Goldmark
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Mark Mothersbaugh, Composer: An Appreciation Written by Daniel Goldmark One of Mark Mothersbaugh’s earliest bits of work in commercial music was for an actual commercial. Dating from the mid-1980s, this spot for Hawaiian Punch brings together several themes already swirling around Motherbaugh’s work with DEVO: a singular view of the benefits and drawbacks of technology, combined with a happy knack for concise and catchy tunes. The commercial’s premise is as oddball as one would expect: an industrial assembly floor of robots becomes energized by Hawaiian Punch, and they pass on the hip moves and cool beats to a room full of stylish kids. Mark Mothersbaugh With the drumbeat first rising from the factory itself, the music amplifies the sounds of industry, reminiscent of Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse and other music inspired by anxieties of technology run amok in the 30s and 40s. This combination of mass production, pop awareness (the beats are VERY au currant for the 80s), and technology presages perfectly where Mothersbaugh’s career as a composer for all types of media would go: cinema, television, commercials, video games, ringtones, and so on. Still shot of the 1987 Hawaiian Punch television commercial scored by Mothersbaugh. Then there’s his first large-scale musical universe: the ever- excited, always-full-of-wonder land (barely) contained in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Like the perpetually eight-year-old Pee-Wee Herman himself, each episode of the show bounced around from idea to idea, a modern-day vaudeville show for audiences with 90-second attention spans. Mothersbaugh’s short, synthesizer-driven musical fragments (or “cues”) perfectly fit the frenzied energy and playful outlook of Pee- Wee’s universe. Between co-writing the show’s theme song— Comedian Paul Rueben as Pee-Wee Herman on the popular 1980s children’s itself a masterpiece of playful freneticism, especially with the program, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. lyrics sung by Cyndi Lauper (billed as “Ellen Shaw”)—and scoring a third of all the show’s episodes over five years, including the first and last of the series, this show marks the first of many media soundscapes Mothersbaugh created, along with those forRugrats , The Regular Show, and dozens of others. 1 Mothersbaugh’s longtime collaboration with Wes Anderson gives us another perspective to consider. Anderson’s films are famously—even notoriously—nostalgic, in some ways old-fashioned in their collective universes. The stories all seem to take place in the past, whether or not a time has been specified. How, then, does a composer known for electronically-driven music, fit? Mothersbaugh has commented, “… we don’t use one track of synth, we don’t even use samples, it’s all real instruments, he’s Robert Musgrave, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson in Wes Anderson’s first adamant about that.”[1] As with so much of his other work, feature-length film, Bottle Rocket (1996). Mothersbaugh’s music for Anderson emphasizes rhythms, repetitive and disarmingly simple (sounding) rhythms. Having worked with the director since his first feature, Bottle Rocket (1996), Mothersbaugh’s influence can be seen in all of Anderson’s subsequent films, even those he has not scored, perhaps the truest testament to his influence and ability to create a sonic signature (or earworm). Thirty or so years after the Hawaiian Punch-drunk robots, Mothersbaugh scored the hit feature The Lego Movie (2014). Once again, a story propelled by mass production becomes the driving force for Mothersbaugh’s creativity; not only are the characters in the film all made of the same eponymous building blocks, but the idea that they are all Legos and yet each can all be unique individuals is the film’s central theme. Mothersbaugh stated, “When I saw early tests of ‘Lego’ with all these millions of blocks making ocean waves and explosions, it made me want to do a hybrid, electronic orchestral score. So, I spent some time experimenting with old and new electronic instruments.”[2] He revels Golden Globe Best Animated Feature film, The Lego Movie (2014). in technology as a maestro creating sounds, not just featuring the next hip thing. Why else would he buy Raymond Scott’s 60s-era spontaneous composing machine, the “Electronium,” other than to allow for the unique sounds of different eras to live on rather than have them consigned to soundbin of history? Mark Mothersbaugh’s ever-expanding sonic palette keeps his scores, and his listeners, perpetually moving forward. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DANIEL GOLDMARK Daniel Goldmark works on American popular music, film and cartoon music, and the history of the music industry. He received his B.A. in music from the University of California, Riverside. Goldmark received both a M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a dissertation titled Happy Harmonies: Music and the Hollywood Animated Cartoon. Goldmark co-edited, The Cartoon Music Book (A Cappella, 2001), Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema (California, 2007), Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood (California, 2011), and Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries (California, 2012). His monograph, Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon, was published in 2005. His current research is on music publishing, Tin Pan Alley in the early 1900s, and music publishing in Cleveland, including the music of Cleveland-born composer J.S. Zamecnik. These topics come together in Goldmark’s latest edition, a collection of piano music for film to be published by Dover, titledSounds for the Silents: Photoplay 2 Music from the Days of Early Cinema. He is the series editor of the Oxford Music/Media Series from Oxford University Press, and from 2010 to 2013 he was review editor for the Journal of the American Musicological Society. In 2015, Goldmark received a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Goldmark also spent several years working in the animation and music industries. He was an archivist at Spümcø Animation in Hollywood, where he also worked as the music coordinator on the short cartoons Boo-Boo Runs Wild and A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith. For five years Goldmark was research editor at Rhino Entertainment in Los Angeles, where he also produced or co-produced several collections and anthologies, including a two-CD set of the music of Tom & Jerry composer Scott Bradley, and a two-disc anthology entitled Courage: The Complete Atlantic Recordings of Rufus Harley, featuring the world’s most famous jazz bagpiper. This paper is made possible, in part, by the Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. ________________________________________ [1]Daniel Goldmark, “An Interview with Mark Mothersbaugh,” The Cartoon Music Book, edited by Daniel Goldmark and Yuval Taylor (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2002), 216. [2]Nicki Gostin, ‘Devo lead singer dishes on creating catchy ‘Lego’ song,” FoxNews.com; http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/18/devo-lead-singer- dishes-on-creating-catchy-lego-song.html 3.