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John Carpenter Setlist
Tour Dates
11/12/17 - Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
11/13/17 - Montreal, QC @ Metropolis 11/15/17 - Boston, MA @ Royale 11/16/17 - New York, NY @ Terminal 5 11/18/17 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Trocadero 11/19/17 - Syracuse, NY @ The Palace Theatre Read More Read More
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Legendary horror film director, John Carpenter just brought his John Carpenter Live tour to the Myth in Maplewood, Minnesota, last Tuesday, November 7th.
DJing music videos as doors opened was Transmission’s DJ Jake Rudh. He started off with some spooky, dark music videos from Siouxsie and the Banshee, Gary Numan, David Bowie (of course), before transitioning to his normal playlist during a frozen video for Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ (the video image still showed Trent Reznor as the music of Kavinsky’s ‘Nightcall’ - featuring the great Lovefoxxx played).
John Carpenter and his full backing band, featuring Daniel Davies (son of Kinks’ Dave Davies) on lead guitar, Scott Seiver on drums, John Konesky on rhythm guitar, John Spiker on bass, and Cody Carpenter (John’s son) on synth, took the stage exactly on time at 8:30pm.
Fans of the director was out in force, showing up early and standing in line in the freezing cold to be the first ones in to get a good spot for the composer. It wasn’t really just in appreciation of his music, but for many of his great films.
Although Carpenter is known for horror films, such as the classic original Halloween, the 1982 The Thing (loosely based on 1951’s The Thing from Another World), and the highly underrated Prince of Darkness & In the Mouth of Madness, he’s actually dipped in other genres like the love story/Sci-Fi film, Starman, and a fantasy/comedy (and cult classic), Big Trouble in Little China.
I listened to his audio commentaries, and one of the main reasons why he decided to write and score his own soundtrack was for budgetary reasons. A lot of his films didn’t get a big budget, so they had to save where they can (the most famous budget decision for the Halloween mask was actually a painted white William Shatner mask they found at a Halloween store). Like the Shatner mask, some of his music theme songs have also became iconic… at least for the Snake Plissken theme (Escape from New York) and the main Halloween theme.
Part of this rare tour is to promote John Carpenter’s Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 ( Sacred Bones Records). The record was done in collaboration with Carpenter's son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies, to coincide with the recent remix of Halloween by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Although backed with a great band, you can tell that Carpenter wasn’t exactly used to playing live. His movements was robotic and always looking like he’s keeping time with his music sheets and keyboard. Sure, sometime he would point to an audience member, or announced the upcoming song… but it looked and sounded very rehearsed.
For those popular and cult-like movie themes, a video clip of those movies was shown on the background as the band play its theme (or selection from the soundtrack). All of these songs were written by Carpenter, with the exception of the Jack Nitzsche’s soundtrack for Starman and the amazing Italian composer Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Thing (he’s known for scoring over 70 films, including all of Sergio Leone films).
My favorite part of the show was for They Live, a film about a space invasion starring wrestler Roddy “Rowdy” Piper, which John Carpenter, and the entire band, put on sun glasses as they play ‘Coming to L.A.’ In the film, Piper, as John Nada, could see aliens with these special sunglasses.
Rounding out the rest of John Carpenter’s live show were some original instrumentals, most of these were collected his first two albums Lost Themes and Lost Themes II (both available on Sacred Bones Records). While these songs, such as ‘Vortex’, were standalone original songs, you can see how someone could use the dynamic song in a future film.
If you love 70s/80s horror films, do yourself a favor and see John Carpenter on this tour. Like I said, this is a rare opportunity to see the director… and for many fans, it’s worth paying a little extra to get autographs and your pictures taken with Carpenter.
DJing music videos as doors opened was Transmission’s DJ Jake Rudh. He started off with some spooky, dark music videos from Siouxsie and the Banshee, Gary Numan, David Bowie (of course), before transitioning to his normal playlist during a frozen video for Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ (the video image still showed Trent Reznor as the music of Kavinsky’s ‘Nightcall’ - featuring the great Lovefoxxx played).
John Carpenter and his full backing band, featuring Daniel Davies (son of Kinks’ Dave Davies) on lead guitar, Scott Seiver on drums, John Konesky on rhythm guitar, John Spiker on bass, and Cody Carpenter (John’s son) on synth, took the stage exactly on time at 8:30pm.
Fans of the director was out in force, showing up early and standing in line in the freezing cold to be the first ones in to get a good spot for the composer. It wasn’t really just in appreciation of his music, but for many of his great films.
Although Carpenter is known for horror films, such as the classic original Halloween, the 1982 The Thing (loosely based on 1951’s The Thing from Another World), and the highly underrated Prince of Darkness & In the Mouth of Madness, he’s actually dipped in other genres like the love story/Sci-Fi film, Starman, and a fantasy/comedy (and cult classic), Big Trouble in Little China.
I listened to his audio commentaries, and one of the main reasons why he decided to write and score his own soundtrack was for budgetary reasons. A lot of his films didn’t get a big budget, so they had to save where they can (the most famous budget decision for the Halloween mask was actually a painted white William Shatner mask they found at a Halloween store). Like the Shatner mask, some of his music theme songs have also became iconic… at least for the Snake Plissken theme (Escape from New York) and the main Halloween theme.
Part of this rare tour is to promote John Carpenter’s Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998 ( Sacred Bones Records). The record was done in collaboration with Carpenter's son Cody Carpenter and his godson Daniel Davies, to coincide with the recent remix of Halloween by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Although backed with a great band, you can tell that Carpenter wasn’t exactly used to playing live. His movements was robotic and always looking like he’s keeping time with his music sheets and keyboard. Sure, sometime he would point to an audience member, or announced the upcoming song… but it looked and sounded very rehearsed.
For those popular and cult-like movie themes, a video clip of those movies was shown on the background as the band play its theme (or selection from the soundtrack). All of these songs were written by Carpenter, with the exception of the Jack Nitzsche’s soundtrack for Starman and the amazing Italian composer Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Thing (he’s known for scoring over 70 films, including all of Sergio Leone films).
My favorite part of the show was for They Live, a film about a space invasion starring wrestler Roddy “Rowdy” Piper, which John Carpenter, and the entire band, put on sun glasses as they play ‘Coming to L.A.’ In the film, Piper, as John Nada, could see aliens with these special sunglasses.
Rounding out the rest of John Carpenter’s live show were some original instrumentals, most of these were collected his first two albums Lost Themes and Lost Themes II (both available on Sacred Bones Records). While these songs, such as ‘Vortex’, were standalone original songs, you can see how someone could use the dynamic song in a future film.
If you love 70s/80s horror films, do yourself a favor and see John Carpenter on this tour. Like I said, this is a rare opportunity to see the director… and for many fans, it’s worth paying a little extra to get autographs and your pictures taken with Carpenter.
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