What comes to mind when you think of the Sizzler? The “all you can eat” salad bar, right? Whether at the Sizzler or elsewhere, what once started out as a healthy alternative or addition to your meal became a gluttonous stuff-your-face replacement for quality food. That’s how I feel about the schedule of film music releases these days. I call this all-you-can-eat predicament “The Sizzler Effect.“
We’re five weeks into the new year and I already feel bloated and stuffed. I still have 13 review copies waiting to be reviewed. I’ve only listened to one of the six scores I’ve purchased so far, and I’m waiting on six more to arrive in the mail. And this doesn’t even take into account the numerous scores I’ve simply passed on and will probably never hear.
There aren’t enough hours in the day to listen to all the film music I need to for this blog, much less the new and old titles I’d like to listen to simply for pleasure. I think this “Sizzler effect” is causing obesity among us film score fans.
Even when we’re weighted down by excessive amounts of music, we feverishly buy, buy, buy the new releases, preferably within minutes of the announcement. We pile our plates high with as much music as we can and then shovel it in hurriedly to make room for a second, third, and fourth helping. As long as they keep replenishing the stock, we keep going back for more.
As the hands grab for one title after another, the scores bleed into one another. Like crutons that have been dropped in the dressing, the music quickly becomes saturated before we’ve even had time to experience the original flavor. Our need for fresh music is so great that there’s always a new tray of tasteless, nutrition-less iceberg lettuce ready to replace the picked over tray so that the buffet always appears “fresh.”
But what constitutes fresh?
The sneeze guard doesn’t protect us from the leeches who troll online ready to spread their germs all over the “bounty” below. These are the ones who ruin our enjoyment of the meal before we’ve even had a chance to experience it. Who are never satisfied with or appreciative of what’s put before them and want continuous changes to their meal.
Have we entered an age where we take our film music for granted? Are we reaching a point where so many hands have picked at the food that there’s nothing left but the tattered remnants of a meal that was inhaled and not enjoyed? Our musical meal is meant to be savored and relished, otherwise it’s just empty calories. And a helluva lot of calories at that.
Perhaps it’s not a problem at all since so many releases seem to be selling. But at what price? At what point do our musical arteries harden and cut off the musical life breath that us film score fans thrive on?
Or is it just me?
