Danny Elfman - Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)

"Great, now we gotta finish the movie with Danny Elfman..." - Seth Green as Chris Griffin. Yes indeedy, today we're gonna be reviewing an album by a composer. For those of you who haven't heard of Danny Elfman, he was the vocalist/songwriter for Oingo Boingo from 1976 til their breakup in 1995, and he is also a composer. He has worked on many films, including Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mission: Impossible, Men in Black, Good Will Hunting, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man, Red Dragon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Nacho Libre, Wanted, Corpse Bride, Terminator Salvation, The Wolfman, and most recently, Alice in Wonderland. In addition, he has sung as Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, was the voice for Bonejangles in Corpse Bride, and has written the theme songs for Desperate Housewives, Dilbert, and his most famous one, The Simpsons.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure is Danny Elfman's third movie that he has composed. The tracks that he wrote were "Overture/The Big Race", "Breakfast Machine", "Park Ride", "Stolen Bike", "Hitchhike", "Dinosaur Dream", "Simone's Theme", "Clown Dream", "Studio Chase", "The Drive-In", and "Finale". The score mainly draws it's musical themes from the second track "Breakfast Machine" (which you may have heard in Family Guy, or even in Team Fortress 2 as the Heavy character sings it from time to time). You can see "Breakfast Machine" repeated in almost all of the songs, although when it gets to the track "Clown Dream", the album takes on a darker feeling, as if it's sad and depressing. The "Breakfast Machine" theme then finishes the score as it comprimises more than half of the Finale.

Overall, this was a good album, a bit repetitive at times, but still a good album. This is normally where I'd be recommending other bands to listen to if you liked this, but since Danny Elfman is a composer, I'm going to skip that this time. The album was re-released with the Back to School soundtrack as well and can be found on Amazon and itunes.

Overall Rating: 4.2 out of 5

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Danny Elfman's Website