New Line Cinema, 1996
The soundtrack for this movie has never been released.
This is a list of music cues.
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* Sung with Valerie Carter

Polygram (534655), March 1997
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THE HILLS ARE ALIVE AND SO AM I

I’m dictating this so it may not be any good. The last Journal From Europe is justly famous for it’s wit and insight. No, actually it isn’t. I’m beginning to forget things.

We played Vienna two nights ago in the Opera House.  It went well particularly considering it was the first show.  It’s the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth so it felt right for me to be there.  It seemed that I should commemorate the birth of my late colleague by actually playing in the town that treated him so badly.  They treated me better than they treated Mozart, Mahler, Berg or Schoenberg. (Cathy can’t do the umlaut.  She also can’t do a kip or a front walkover which I can do and will do in Montreaux. I’m 52 years old but still as spry and flexible as I was when I was a boy.  Look out ladies!  And gentlemen too!)  They’re doing a Mozart opera called Albertina, which he must have written when he was 3½ .  I’ve never heard of it.  I think they should make sure that it’s not actually by Elton John.  But seriously, they really should check it out.

I did a new song in Vienna called “Losing You”.  I think they liked it.  I’m not sure about the form of it yet.  Also, here’s another great thing I did. (Note by Cathy:  I can’t take much more of this.  He pretends to be so modest but he thinks he’s so great.) Since it was the Vienna Jazz Festival, and what I do is pretty far from jazz, (NbC: I’ll say.  The place was sold out and the people who were there to hear some good jazz are still there waiting.)  I played another new song, one which isn’t finished, so I had to kind of improvise like they do when playing jazz.  It was kind of shitty but they took it well much as they did when Hitler marched into the city in 1937.  They may not have liked it but they showed great enthusiasm.  The song is going to be good though.  It’s called “A Few Words In Defense Of My Country”.  I’ll try and get it together so I can play it in Europe where we need defending.

I have a show tonight with Dr. John at The Tower of London.  I hope it goes okay and they release me when I’m done.

Bye for now.  Look for my World Cup Special tomorrow.  Send five Euros to the Newman Foundation in Tulsa, OK and find out who’s going to win the Cup.

Love to all the Little Criminals.

Randy

7 July 2006

LA DOLCE VITA

We are in Rimini in northern Italy. We have a day off tomorrow due to too few Slovenians being interested enough to pay a week’s salary to see me perform for seventy-five minutes. My feelings aren’t hurt.

Personally, I’m unaffected by this Balkan dis. But, I must admit that I am embarrassed for my country. When I played Slovenia last time we stopped to look at the site of an old concentration camp near the Austrian border. I let it go. But this pisses me off. We (I use the plural not in the Imperial sense but to include Cathy who is an important part of the Newman team – without her the whole delicate mechanism we work so hard to perfect would collapse, and be as “dust in the wind”) are playing Verucchio on Monday. The people of the region are reacting to the news of my show in much the same way that the Slovenes did, but I’m going to Verucchio and I’ll play whether they like it or not. I have feelings too.

We played Montreux on the night of the World Cup Final. I don’t know how many people were out there but they seemed to like the show. I saw the end of the match. When Italy won everyone in the town went crazy until four in the morning. There was just a big fireworks display out of the window of the hotel. The weirder the road gets the better it is at this point in my life.

I played at a castle in Udine. Udine is northeast of Trieste.  And is still in Italy. Trieste has been in so many different countries it reminds me of Herbie Hancock with whom I shared the stage at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. I saw Susan, Suzanne and Jeroen backstage after the show. I love seeing them. The show was sold out I think and went very well. I always try my hardest in Holland. Rotterdam sure has a big port. It ought to be a hotel in Las Vegas.

I was just in Las Vegas for the first time in many years (NbC – apparently he doesn’t count that show at the House of Blues) there was a charity auction up at Pixar for a showing of “Cars” and I bid for, and won, a trip to Las Vegas and tickets to see O and Ka, Cirque du Soleil shows. My brother is retiring from Medicine. I thought this would be a nice gift for his wife and him. I mention all this because I very badly want to say something about O and Ka. I said many of the things I want to say under my breath and finally quite loudly at the shows themselves. But I find that I am not yet ready to put my thoughts into writing. I will say this: I can play several pieces from the show using only my nose and my buttocks. Sometimes I put on tights, put out some dry ice and just run around as if I were mad! My brother is the best Newman we’ve had so far. It was great to see him and as you may have noticed, I’m a better person because of it.

A word about the title of this entry, there are a lot of things in this town named after Fellini. I think he was born here maybe. Anyone who knows, send your answer to the Newman Foundation in Tulsa, OK along with five Euros.

Grazie.

Randy and Cathy

16 July 2006

GLOBAL WARMING

We’re in Nice on a day off. Ahead are two more shows, one in Stuttgart and one in Lörrach. My fellow geography bores will be interested to learn that Lörrach is just barely in Germany. It’s right on the Swiss border so I expect it to be strict but the hotel service should be good. The Swiss and the Germans have very different sense of humor. They both like ice shows however.

I may make some jokes about the Austrians. Speaking of Austria, one of my sons had a girlfriend whose stepfather is a Hapsburg – the heir to the throne in fact. The Newman family has never flown so high. Alas, the relationship is over and I have no hope of becoming a Von or Zu. (NbC – like the Von Trapp family) Cathy never gets too far away from The Sound of Music except in dealing with Gary Norris.

The show in Verruchio was in a small cemetery next to a castle. The audience was very kind and I had fun up there. We ate in a restaurant in a building from the 13th century. It looked pretty good. Apparently, they didn’t know they were in the Dark Ages. I know some Italian. I kept making sporadic attempts to communicate in the language. I would say, for instance, “io sono paura”, which means, “I am afraid”. I know I was saying it right. They would repeat it back to me exactly as I said it. This constantly recurring phenomenon made me paura. Neil Young can play to 80,000 people in Rome or Milan. I don’t think I can yet.

I played the Blue Note Jazz Festival in Ghent. I actually played some jazz by the way when I made a mistake in the instrumental break in “Simon Smith”. There was a lot of stuff going on in the street all the time. The town was having a street festival too. I was taking a walk the day after my show and I saw a guy scraping my picture off a pole. I said, “Hey you son of a bitch, what do you think you’re doing? The show may be over, but I think the people here in Belgium would still like to have my picture on their pole.” He just kept scraping and I walked away. If I’d had a weapon, like he did, I would have defended my honor even though I have a bad wrist and a torn left bicep.

The show in Ghent was in a tent

The rain that fell was Heaven sent

It was so hot I quite forgot to bring an extra shirt

Were’t not for Cathy who knows at what cost

All sense of decorum would’ve been lost

For I would have had to go on without a shirt

Which would’ve weakened the impact of some of the love songs.

Ghent, Newcastle and Lucerne were all sold out (NbC – He’s lying. Newcastle was almost sold out.) Here and there I’ve been doing this new song which I haven’t finished, “A Few Words In Defense Of My Country” or….”On behalf Of My Country”. See? It’s not finished. I probably shouldn’t be playing it. I’ve never played anything that wasn’t done before. It gets some big laughs but it’s not right yet. Lucerne is a beautiful town with a lake and a river in it. I’d like to live on a river someday. I lived by a creek once. It flooded and tore out our garage and almost got the whole house. The weather is changing. I think the earth is going to get hotter in the years to come. It’s hot in Europe and it’s hot at home. (Something is happening and you don’t know what it is…do you Mr. Jones? Or as I heard Bob do it the last time I saw him play, “xhdisodlnmufklhjduvkgjhdhekgsjcpojkdheydjkkfkgirifkhrhwgdyejeskufhg, Jones.” That’s the seventy-five dollar version.)

The audiences in Switzerland and Italy applaud when I play the intro to Dixie Flyer. It must have been used in a feminine hygiene commercial or something. I sure as hell didn’t sell any records in Italy. By the way, I finally found an audience, two of them actually, who like “Red Bandana”. (NbC – Sad to say, he’s wrong. He keeps playing it, I’ve told him not to. I don’t have the heart to tell him that only one person likes the song, the man in the mirror.)

Gateshead is across the River Tyne from Newcastle. Newcastle is Alan Price’s hometown and he wrote about it a lot. I owe him a great deal. He recorded some of my first songs and did them very well. He had a hit with “Simon Smith”. The first of three hits I’ve had. Anyway, he’s a great guy and it was good to see where he came from. I met someone who went to school with him. I’ve become a regular Chatty Cathy, haven’t I? I just go maundering on and on. (NbC – on and on and on and on and on…just like the song) I know that these entries would be more interesting if I talked more about the shows but I have more important things to tell you. For instance, this morning here in Nice I sent out some laundry and some dry cleaning. I have some concern for some of my show costumes. Sometimes they come back deep fried, like a chicken fried steak. Once, in Israel, which is very unlike Switzerland in the dry cleaning department, they over cooked six white shirts which were irretrievably damaged. That’s why I find it so difficult to know who to root for in this war they’re having. I’m not anti-Zionist but poor dry cleaning is often a symptom of a deeper malaise. To me it shows lack of national character. All the fire power in the world doesn’t make up for one burned up shirt. I’m pissed off. I saw Hazel, Alyce, Alistair and many other LCs including, Martin Figura who gave me a book of his poetry. I’ve read some of the poems and liked them very much. He’s talented. Someone we know may be using some of Martin’s ideas in another medium. As always, and as I always say, and I always mean, I love seeing the Little Criminals after a show. At all these European shows there are autograph collectors who stand outside for sound check and before the show and sometimes at the hotel. I don’t even know if they know who I am. At Gateshead, I signed autographs going in to the show, when I came out this little guy came up to me. Cathy said, “You already signed for him.” He said, “No! I wasn’t here before.” He was irate. Anyway, Cathy and I got in the car and went to the hotel that was about ¼ mile away. The guy beat the car there. I told him (he was Irish) that he’d just broken the Irish 200 meter record. I signed and invited him up to the room to spend the night. I love great athletes.

Last night we played the Nice Jazz Festival. I went on one stage at the same time Kanye West was on another. I like his stuff. It’s young and alive, just like me. It was also kind of annoying but the show went fine. In some ways, I think it was the best show I’ve done because it was late and I couldn’t quite figure out the crowd but I think they ended up liking the show and for the most part I made the right choices about what to play for them. Ballads were tough sometimes. Jesus walked right through a couple.

Let’s have a little fun before we go. Of these two artists which is your favorite: Kanye West, Joe Jackson or Randy Newman? Send your answers to The Newman Foundation in Tulsa, OK along with 5 Euros. Look for results here!

Love

Randy

24 July 2006