OK, I was a sucker for the name; but as soon as I heard there was a “People’s Liberation Big Band” in Kansas City, I had to hear them! Better yet, they performed most regularly within walking distance of my house, at the recordBar. Barring a cross-scheduled, one-time event, I haven’t missed them since.
So there was no doubt that I would catch their unusual appearance in Paul Mesner’s Puppet Studio on Linwood Boulevard on International Worker’s Day (more blandly known here as May Day). The evening’s enterprise was the screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s classic 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin accompanied by original, locally-composed music.
Before going, I struggled to remember something about this film, studied in college many years ago. I knew it was important, but beyond the textbook rationales, why? I remembered only as few images: a baby carriage running loose down a staircase, indicating order overwhelmed. Yadda-yadda-yadda. Did I really want to go?
Still, it was People’s Liberation Big Band, and I knew Brad Cox had a hand in composing the music. So I went.
Turns out Brad was one of several PLBB musicians who composed parts of the score, much of which was improvised. So there, below the screen, sat many of the musicians I see each month at recordBar. What were we in for?
The ensuing experience was a revelation. The perfection of the musical accompaniment pointed out the difficulty of appreciating Eisenstein’s master work without it. In People’s Liberation’s music came the expression of the soul of this film masterpiece: this should become the definitive soundtrack for this work. It should never be seem or screened again without it.
The correlation of image to sound was not always direct. The most literally explosive sequence in the film was paradoxically accompanied by silence among the musicians, yielding to the power of the screen. But at most other points, the music brought to life the emotional content of a cinematic experience that would otherwise have been primarily cerebral and imaginary.
What a brilliant project! What a remarkable accomplishment! Kansas City is lucky to have musicians of this calibre living among us. Integrating this soundtrack into the film would bring it to life for audiences for decades to come: who will call the distributor?
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Kansas City Performs! 