Classical, Popular, and Movie Music Ruined by Other Associations

Cafe Society
1

Whenever she hears Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie my wife inevitably thinks of Emer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!”
(Although a big Bgs Bunny fan, I think of Apocalypse Now. Or the DR. Manhattan in Vietnam scene in Watchmen, which ripped it off from AN)

When she hears Strauss’ The Blue Danube she thinks of the segment with the cartoon swans in Bob Clampett’s A Corny Concerto (which also had Bugs, although in a another segment (Me, science fiction fan that I am, invariably think of 2001: A Space Odyssey)

Music has a powerful link to memory, and a lot of us no longer think in terms of the original music, but have these other pop-cultural images associated with them, often by dint of repetition. The standard for this used to be associating Rissini’s William Tell Overture with The Lone Ranger, but I suspect that modern kids no longer suffer from that affliction – who the hell watches those old Lone Ranger shows anymore?

Some others:

Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from the Rodeo Suite – “Beef – It’s what’s for Dinner”

Elmer Bernstein’s theme for The Magnificent Seven – Marlborough cigarettes. (This one marks me as Old. I love the music, but I saw the commercials umpteen times before I saw the movie

Max Steiner’s theme for Gone with the Wind – The opening of WWOR
's (Secaucus NJ) “Million Dollar Movie”. I saw a gazillion movies on Million Dollar Movie – mostly low-budget monster films ad King Kong – before I ever saw Gone with the Wind.

Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette – "Alfred Hitchcock Presents – I didn’t even know this music existed before Alfred Hitchcock until I read about it in one of Tom Weller’s books

Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours” from La Gioconda – Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp”) I heard this LONG before I heard the opera. In fact, if Allan Sherman hadn’t ruined it for me, Disney’s Fantasia would have.

I feel fortunate that my mother used to love playing the overture to Bizet’s Carmen while doing housework. I heard it many times over, and never saw The Bad News Bears, so I never made that association with it.

2

The 20th Century Fox Fanfare is indelibly linked in my mind to Star Wars. Every other use of it is terrible.

3

In my mind, “Stuck in the Middle with You” will always, indelibly, be the music of a sadistic psycho guy cutting off another guy’s ear (Reservoir Dogs).

4

Whenever I hear Don’t Fear the Reaper I automatically think of “Needs more cowbell!”. It has ruined a damn good song for me and millions of others.

5

Whenever I hear Wagner, I think of the Nazis.

6

of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games,” better known as the “Let’s Go Outback Tonight” song (spoilered in case you want to play the song without foreknowledge). I know money is necessary in today’s society, but…

7

Monty Python killed off any non-comedic uses of Sousa’s “Liberty Bell” march.

I can never hear the “Habanera” without thinking of “He wants his shirt!” from The Cocoanuts.

8

I think that for almost everyone today, Entrance of the Gladiators brings up associations with circuses and clowns, and its original serious tone is completely lost.

9

What’s even more hilarious is that the 20th Century Fox theme even appeared on various Star Wars soundtracks of the John Williams scores over the years. I can’t think of another soundtrack that did that.

10

Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” is forever O’Hare Airport United Terminal Theme Song in my brain.

While I personally don’t hate the Eagles, hearing them will invariably call to mind the Big Lebowski line “I’ve had a rough night and I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!”

11

Bob Seger’s Like a Rock will forever be an ad for Chevy trucks.

12

I associate that song with the beginning of the 1994 miniseries The Stand.

13

The soundtrack for Bohemian Rhapsody has the 20th Century Fox fanfare as the first track, performed by Brian May.

14

Ha, same! I was once watching a show where they played that music and I said “Oh, that’s the United Airlines theme!” to the confusion of others with me. I hadn’t realized at the time it was actually a very famous piece of music…

15

“Old Time Rock n Roll” will always be associated with Tom Cruise dancing around in his underwear.

16

The last third of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” arguably the greatest horse music ever written, turned up in A Clockwork Orange, though no horses were involved in the scene in question. An earlier section of it is familiar from many cartoons in which it was used as a pastoral theme. ACO also used a number of riffs from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, indelibly linked to certain sequences, to say nothing of “Singin’ in the Rain.”

“Flight of the Bumblebee” by Rimsky-Korsakov was better known as the theme music for the Green Hornet radio show. Rearranged, it was also used for the TV show.

Crossroads (1986) – (from IMDB) “Eugene’s Trick Bag”, the updated classical piece at the film’s climax, is largely based on Niccolò Paganini’s “Caprice #5.” I doubt most viewers were aware of that.

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Classics Explained on YouTube touches on this issue as well as others. Stravinsky hated the Rites of Spring becoming “Dinosaur Music” (as well as getting $0.0 because the Bolshevik revolution somehow voided all Russian copyrights). Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights gets used for every “portentous” history documentary.

18

Yep, I hear the fanfare, and expect the first notes of the Star Wars opening song to follow. It always sounds wrong when that doesn’t happen.

Also, those Modelo Especial commercials have ruined the Ennio Morricone song “Ecstasy of Gold” from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” for me now. When I hear it, I think of those stupid commercials.

19

I used to as well. :face_exhaling:

20

I had the TV on in the background during Obama’s second inauguration, when the Marine Corps Band played the “Liberty Bell” march during the ceremony. And my first thought was “Why are they playing the Monty Python Theme?” It took me a second to remember that the song was originally meant to be a patriotic march.