kontextmaschine:

Danny Elfman is light side Billy Joel

As in, they’re both Boomer composers, born only 4 years apart who’re known for making borderline-rock and pre-rock music (ballads for Joel, symphonies for Elfman) during the hegemony of rock, influenced by it.

But Elfman was forward-leaning, at least trying to make the next thing for Generation X to pick up and carry, while Joel was backward-looking, wallowing in nostalgia, a vehicle for Boomers to congratulate themselves on their wisdom for growing n years older in the last n years

So KUSC is in its pledge drive which means when they’re doing music channel surfers will recognize. They just did “The Mission”, which you know as the NBC Nightly News theme.

You don’t often hear it at full length but when you do it’s John Williams scoring a pretty great self-own: the only good bit is the short, memorable stinger (which is great) but when you listen to the meat and connective tissue of it without some director’s “epic, sense-of-wonder” visual work propping it up (live or as nostalgia) you realize he just sounds like Danny Elfman’s uptight dad

(i.e. when one theme’s reached exhaustion he’s like “uh… how about a whimsical flight of fancy, then a return to the original theme? But not too whimsical.”)