THREE O'CLOCK HIGH
Rating: 
Original Review: Call me old fashioned, but I don't like synthesised scores. I don't mind synths and electronics when they are incorporated into a regular orchestra, like the choir in Titanic, for example. But when scores are completely synthesised, with no acoustic instruments whatsoever, they completely alienate me. Like the score for Three O'Clock High, written by German supergroup Tangerine Dream with support from Hungarian composer Sylvester Levay.
Tangerine Dream, who seem to have had more members during their time than Fleetwood Mac, have written some half decent scores between them, like Legend and Risky Business. Unfortunately Three O'Clock High, a teen comedy movie about a high school journalist, is half an hour of pure nothingness. To put it bluntly, it sucks. To begin with, most the cues are so short (some as short as 25 seconds) they never get the opportunity to develop into any kind of melody anyway, other than a recurring four-note motif, noticeable mainly because it seems to have been lifted lock, stock and barrel from Gerard McMann's The Lost Boys number Cry Little Sister (Thou Shalt Not Kill).
And then there's the fact that the music is just so bland and uninteresting. Most of the cues sound like the intros to pop songs or are simply repeated rhythms. The Sylvester Levay-composed cue 'The Fight is On' is probably the best cue on the album, as it's one of the longer ones, and it picks up a decent head of steam with an incessant drum machine beat and a lively guitar melody. The two tracks at the end: 'Something to Remember Me By', by Jim Walker, and 'The Arrival' by Rick Moratta and David Tickle are much more developed than the and slightly make up for the mind-numbing thumping that immediately preceded it. My advice would be to give it a miss.
Track Listing:
- It's Jerry's Day Today (0:35)
- 46-32-15 (0:47)
- No Detention (0:55)
- Any School Bully Will Do (0:25)
- Go to the Head of the Class (3:03)
- Sit (0:50)
- The Fight (2:40)
- Jerry's Decisions (3:25)
- The Fight is On (3:35)
- Paper (1:18)
- Big, Bright Brass Knuckles (1:50)
- Buying Paper Like it's Going Out of Style (1:30)
- Dangerous Trend (0:53)
- Who's Chasing Who? (0:55)
- Bonding by Candlelight (1:30)
- You'll Never Believe It (2:10)
- Starting the Day Off Right (1:05)
- Weak at the Knees (1:55)
- Kill Him (The Football Dummy) (1:00)
- Not So Quiet in the Library/Get Lost in a Crowd (0:40)
- Something To Remember Me By (written and performed by Jim Walker) (6:00)
- Arrival (written and performed by Rick Moratta and David Tickle) (2:00)
Running Time: 42 minutes 11 seconds
Varèse Sarabande VCD-47307 (1987)
Music composed, arranged, engineered, performed and produced by Tangerine Dream. Additional music composed and produced by Sylvester Levay. Album produced by Tom Null and Richard Kraft.
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