Genius’d Song: Goodbye Horses
Artist: Q Lazzarus
Album: Married to the Mob
Selection: Magic
Artist: Mick Smiley
Album: Ghostbusters
Genius Results:
Song - Artist
Good Bye Horses - Q Lazzarus
Science Fiction/Double Feature - Richard O'Brien
No Sex For Ben - The Rapture
Ever Fallen in Love - Pete Yorn
A Perfect Lie (Theme Song) (Gabriel & Dresden Remix) - The Engine Room
Because We Can - Fatboy Slim
I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow - Amy Winehouse
You Belong To Me - Bob Dylan
Pop! Goes My Heart - Hugh Grant
Across the Universe - Fiona Apple
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away - Eddie Vedder
You're So True - Joseph Arthur
Magic - Mick Smiley
Mrs. Robinson - Indigo Girls
Waiting For Somebody - Paul Westerberg
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes - Beck
How Soon is Now - Love Spit Love
Who Do You Love Now (Radio Version) - Riva Feat. Dannii Minogue
The Maker Makes - Rufus Wainwright
Loquasto International Film Festival - Mark Mothersbaugh
This Magic Moment - Lou Reed
I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow (Instrumental) - John Hartford
Jumping Jack Flash - The Rolling Stones
Way Back Into Love - Haley Bennett and Hugh Grant
Goodbye Horses"Goodbye Horses" is a song written and performed by William Garvey and sung by Q Lazzarus in 1988. There are 3 versions of the song. They clock in at 3:12, 4:20, and the extended version at 6:27.
In other media
Silence of the Lambs
The song is notably featured in the film The Silence of the Lambs during the scene in which serial killer "Buffalo Bill" applies make-up and dances in front of a video camera with his penis tucked between his legs as to give the appearance of a vagina. Originally in the film, Clarice Starling discussed both sheep and horses during the ranch slaughter ordeal; the script was shortened to only include the lambs, but the song remained. The song is not featured on the Silence of the Lambs soundtrack, although it appears on the soundtrack of the 1988 film Married to the Mob, also directed by Jonathan Demme. In 1991, Q Lazzarus released an extended version of Goodbye Horses to capitalize on the success of Silence of the Lambs (and the lack of the song on the motion picture soundtrack).
Clerks IIDuring Clerks II, the aforementioned Silence of the Lambs scene is parodied by Jay and Silent Bob, when Jay, having bemoaned his boredom while milling around outside the Mooby's restaurant and trying to stay clean of drugs, begins dancing to the song almost exactly as Buffalo Bill did after Silent Bob plays it on their boom box, using chapstick in the same manner as Buffalo Bill's lipstick. Jay quotes Buffalo Bill by saying "Would you fuck me? ... I'd fuck me ... I'd fuck me hard..." When Dante's fiance pulls him out of Mooby's telling him she has a surprise for him, Jay holds his coat (borrowed from Silent Bob) open to reveal himself nude with his penis tucked back in the same manner Buffalo Bill did when he was dancing in front of the video camera. Then Dante says "Is this my surprise?", and his fiance answers no while Jay sings "Goodbye Horses". A deleted scene from Clerks II shows an extended version of the "tuck dance", without Goodbye Horses playing. A mock message is shown before the scene, saying that they could not afford the $18,000 needed to use "Goodbye Horses" in the scene, and that the audience should imagine "Goodbye Horses" being played. After the scene, the messages continue with other mock messages, suggesting that the reason for there being no money to license the song was because Jason Mewes spent all of the licensing budget on transsexual prostitutes.
Fully Flared
A 2007 release of Lakai Limited Footwear's skateboard team, titled Fully Flared features the song during marc johnson's part, an "in the know" homage to Buffalo Bill.
Grand Theft Auto IVThe underground hit can be found on LRR 97.8 Liberty Rock Radio in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.
CoversIn 1996, Psyche's cover version of the Q Lazzarus song "Goodbye Horses" was released as the b-side to their single "You Ran Away". This recording became popular enough that the band decided to make an extended version and include it on their album "Strange Romance" at the end of the same year. Over the last decade the song has been covered by the bands Carrier Flux, Foretaste, Gil Mantera's Party Dream, the Harvey Girls, Human Aftertaste, Ludwyg, and Distortions. However aside from the original, only Psyche's interpretation has maintained its popularity, appearing on two best of compilations "Misguided Angels" (2000) , and "Legacy" (2004), as well as a recent limited Australian Tour CD collection entitled "Club Salvation". When the trailer for Clerks 2 appeared promoting the movie, Psyche entered the Top Ten downloads on iTunes Electronic chart. The song remains a staple in the band's live repertoire to this day.
Garvey's song was also recently covered by The Vera Violets, psychedelic rock band from Florida.
Q LazzarusQ Lazzarus is a female African-American singer, best known as a one hit wonder for the 1988 song "Goodbye Horses", which was featured in Married to the Mob, The Silence of the Lambs, Clerks II, Lakai Footwear's Fully Flared, and Rockstar's videogame Grand Theft Auto IV.
Q Lazzarus is known for having a husky bass voice not unlike Kathleen Turner. Before she was discovered as a singer, she worked as a taxi driver in New York City. The band dissolved at some point before 1996. Apart from Q, Mark Barrett and songwriter William Garvey, nothing is publicly known about the other band members.
Discography
• "Goodbye Horses"/"White Lines" (single)
• Sang Heaven in Philadelphia, another Jonathan Demme movie
• "Goodbye Horses," Married to the Mob, directed by Jonathan Demme
• Contributed music for Twisted, a 1996 film
• "Goodbye Horses" Lakai Footwear's Fully Flared 2007
Ghostbusters
Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Ghostbusters: (Elmer Bernstein) Among the triumphs of director Ivan Reitman is the undeniably funny Ghostbusters, arguably the best that Harold Ramis and SNL alums Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray ever put to screen. From its unforgettable logo to its title song by Ray Parker Jr., Ghostbusters would outrun Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the box office in 1984, reaching earnings of over $200 million after initial studio panic over its bloated $32 million budget. For fans of paranormal comedies, Ghostbusters can't go wrong, with a plotline of 1980's New York serving as a focal point for the return of supernatural demons from another dimension. The city relies on a group of nerdy pseudo-scientists to save them from their chosen destruction at the hands of Zool, Gozer the Gozerian, and, of course, the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (though the suggestion of J. Edgar Hoover as the form of the destructor must have been awfully tempting, too). Everyone wanted a piece of the Ghostbusters pie, and aside from the sequel a few years later (still successful, but not astronomically so), the rights, the logo, and the title song were all embroiled in legal wrangling for a decade after the initial film's release. One aspect of the film that slipped by quietly without much notice was its underscore, and Reitman didn't have to call to a parallel dimension to find a composer. The comedy master of the early 1980's, Elmer Bernstein had already collaborated with Reitman half a dozen times, and he was assigned to Ghostbusters before any of the actors had been signed. Given his effectiveness in similar projects of the era and genre, the choice was never questioned, but as was an emerging case with many films of the 1980's, portions of the score were dumped in favor of pop songs. Ghostbusters went from being a score-only affair in Bernstein's original assignment to a film famous for its chart-topping songs and subsequent song album. With an Academy Award nomination for the title song and gold status for the pop album, Bernstein's score faded away into obscurity.
Typically, such treatment of effective music from a veteran composer is reason for mutiny from film score collectors. But with Ghostbusters, despite the status of Bernstein, a rare situation occurred where the film was, in the end, better served with the songs in various places than it would have been with strictly the score. Bernstein disagreed, of course, conceding only that the title song by Parker was warranted. And indeed, there were a few questionable song usages in the film, especially in the latter half.
The use of Mick Smiley's lethargic "Magic" in the scene during which the ghosts escape the protection grid and fly over New York to Gozer's arrival seems out of place to this day, completely sucking the sequence dry of its power and sense of impending doom. Interestingly, in cues when we hear solid usage of songs, such as "Cleanin' Up the Town" at the outset and "Savin' the Day" during the heroes' triumphs, Bernstein's score called for a rock version of his quirky piano-based title theme. In fact, this disco-rock version was recorded for several scenes, but often became the casualty of song placements in the film. While Bernstein was understandably frustrated with this loss, his disco-inspired music really, in all honesty, wasn't as cool as the songs. The most thankful lifting of his music was during the opening title (after the first nasty little incident in the library), during which a rather tepid, instrumentally sparse performance of Bernstein's title theme was replaced with a preview of Parker's song. In almost every case, his score doesn't succeed when he attempted to play it cool, instead playing best in the film when either extending the comedy through his title theme or providing straight horror crescendos later in the story. The structure of the title theme, though absolutely perfect for the nerdy element of the story, doesn't translate well into large-scale performances. After all was said and done, Bernstein would declare himself done with the comedy genre by the time the sequel was proposed, and opted out of the franchise.
As usual with Bernstein, the primary theme is piano-based, and it relies on the dexterity of its light, bouncing rhythm to set a fluffy mood; the theme is well adapted throughout the score, including the impatient rendition in "Stairwell." Only once does Bernstein start to let the brass section and an electric guitar rip with this theme (in the rejected "We Got One!" cue, the first call to action scene), and seeing that it was rejected early in the process, it's no surprise that Bernstein had little direction in the "coolness" category for Ghostbusters. In the end, his title theme is quite memorable, but in a strictly small-scale fashion of lovability. The same could be said of Bernstein's theme for the Sigourney Weaver character, playing to swaying romance from yesteryear and providing some elegance to separate her even further in character from Bill Murray. Bernstein does let the orchestra rip with his music for Zool and Gozer. The build-up to the coming of the destructor has some outstanding cues, including "The Gatekeeper," in which Bernstein hails the arrival of Gozer with a full blown organ-backed fanfare of religious variety. Despite all these strengths, the aspect of the Ghostbusters that will bring a smile to your face often involves the smaller aspects of the score that twinkle in the background. It's an intelligent work, with Bernstein making use of both the cello and piano to match their roles in the film. Weaver's character is a cellist, so the presentations of her theme in the first half of the film are often announced by a cello performance. Likewise, Murray says, upon investigating Weaver's apartment, that ghosts hate the alternating of adjacent keys on a piano's highest ranges (and "torments" the ghosts by doing it on screen), and Bernstein toys with quick spurts of high piano notes in moments of relative calm or suspense throughout the score thereafter. Also, the ondes martenot, the French keyboard variation of the theremin and very early synthesizer technology, is used in Ghostbusters with great effect. While performed less here than in its more glorious The Black Cauldron by Bernstein at roughly the same time, there's no doubt that the eerie sounds of the ondes martenot are a perfect fit for the light-hearted world of ghosts.
On album, as mentioned before, Bernstein's score has been largely neglected. After stuffing the film with its own artists' songs, Arista released an LP in 1984 that featured nearly all the songs in the film, as well as two Bernstein cues and an instrumental version of the title song. Bernstein had originally recorded four cues specifically for the commercial album, through two of them really didn't have much in common with the score and were appropriately dropped. The remaining two feature performances that don't really capture the spirit of the score either, and it's no wonder these two pieces didn't inspire calls for a score-only release by the public. A CD version of the LP (still 37 minutes in length with 6:30 of score) was released by Arista in 1990. Film score fans, though, wouldn't let this situation hold forever. In 1998, they produced a badly titled bootleg of somewhat inferior sound, including only cues that made it into the film. In 2006, however, both the songs and score would get due treatment. Arista (with Sony) re-released the song album with remastered sound and two additional tracks: one song from the film that was missing from the previous edition and a somewhat gutless remix of the Parker title song. A full score release would highlight Varèse Sarabande's initial 2006 Club CD releases, with an outstanding treatment of all of Bernstein's material for the film, whether it appeared in the movie or not. This Club CD (readily available in a 3,000-copy pressing) tops off Varèse Sarabande's strong offerings of Bernstein music from the era, and includes the cues that were replaced by songs in the film, as well as the two rejected suites of music for the commercial album. The snazzier alternate for "We Got One!" is a fantastic bonus. Even in its best presentation, though, Bernstein fans are well aware that his music from this era is often dull or muffled compared to its contemporaries, and Ghostbusters is rather flat in sound quality even in its best form. Still, the Varèse Sarabande is the best offering of Ghostbusters that we could reasonably expect, completely negating the bootleg. One unfortunate result of the fact that the songs worked so well in the film is a possible desire to have a couple of the songs from the Arista album (including the Parker title, of course) appended to the score. It wasn't feasible for Varèse Sarabande, but that shouldn't stop ultimate fans of the film (or Gozer worshippers) from combining an hour of score with a few of the songs on their own playlists.
‘Goodbye Horses’ from ‘Silence’
‘Goodbye Horses’ from ‘Clerks 2’
‘Magic’ in ‘Ghostbusters’
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