Before I knew what library music was, I used to get awfully confused, you know.
There was the time when I was watching Live & Kicking, and music used in Red Dwarf suddenly appeared. Then there was the time when I was at a show in Cadbury World, and, erm, music used in Red Dwarf suddenly appeared. (If you think I have a limited range of reference now, that’s nothing on me at 17.) More amusingly, there was the time when I was listening to Trent FM, and an advert came on… using the music from Central News East a few years previously. (Was that deliberate, to give the ad some already-bought legitimacy in the minds of the audience? Probably not, but it’s fun to ponder.)
These days, I know exactly what library music is, thank you very much, and the world seems a less puzzling place. And recently, a particularly pleasing strand was joined up in my head, as I was clicking around searching for library tracks used in The Young Ones.
That track was “Drama Heights” by John Scott. I first heard it on Spotify, on a 1976 library album called Drama – Tension, but the entire thing is available on Soundcloud for easy embedding::
And it’s a track virtually anybody of a certain age who lived in the UK will recognise, as the main theme for Trev and Simon’s eternally amusing “World of the Strange” sketches:
So, let’s trace things back a little. Where did “Drama Heights” actually come from originally?
The Soundcloud embed above gives a clue as to at least one use: in the film Mark of the Devil Part II, a 1973 German horror/exploitation film that very few people seem to have anything positive to say about. (“Medieval torture and witch-hunting have never been so boring” seems to be the general gist.) The film is so well-loved by its rights owners that, erm, the whole thing has been uploaded to YouTube, and nobody seems to give a damn.
To be honest, the film is exactly the kind of film I don’t want to watch, so I hope you APPRECIATE the fact that I have gone through it, and found the section which uses the track:
Which means that hilariously, we now have a link between German exploitation flicks, and, erm, Fruitang:
Trevor & Simon entered The World of Strange with Fruitang in 1995 pic.twitter.com/tFT8zkdQTw
— UKADS (@ukads3) July 5, 2020
At 29 seconds into that advert, Trevor Neal is this: funny.
So, was “Drama Heights” written for Mark of the Devil Part II? Certainly, the official soundtrack release seems to indicate that it was, without outright stating it:
“John Scott too contributed some music for the score, Scott who is now a seasoned film music composer respected by many, began his career in film scoring as a composer by writing the music for another horror movie A Study in Terror, which was released during the mid 60s. John also had another career as being the legendary sixties producer who recorded several artists like Tom Jones, The Hollies, The Beatles, etc. John is also known for his saxophone work on films like Goldfinger and several Henry Mancini projects. Mr. Scott won 3 Emmys throughout his career.”
You would be forgiven for thinking that John Scott wrote the track specifically for the film, from that paragraph. But “contributed” isn’t the same as “written”, and I was suspicious.
So, the obvious thing is to turn to Discogs. That turns up one very obvious-looking release – the album called Drama – Tension from Conroy in 1976. This is an album which has escaped out into the digital age – indeed, it’s the album I mention above which is on Spotify, which is where this whole little tale started. So, that’s the answer then, yes? That it actually was written for the film, and then became library music a few years afterwards?
No. We can trace it back further. To 1968, in fact – five years before Mark of the Devil Part II. It’s still a Conroy release, and it doesn’t appear to have a name, just a catalogue number. So hello to BMLP 056:
It’s worth noting that “The best of the backgrounds” isn’t the album title – it’s a slogan which was also used on other releases – so we can save ourselves a rabbit hole of thinking this was some kind of Best Of release. As far as I can tell, this was the very first release of “Drama Heights”. Not 1976, not 1973, but 1968.
And who would have guessed in 1968 that the same piece of music would be used in dodgy horror films featuring gratuitous torture scenes, and a Saturday morning kids TV show?
The joy of where library music ends up never seems to fade.