A tribute in three movements, by those who still believe in fanfares, steel, and soft synths
I. 🎓 Making the Grade (1984)
“Somewhere between a Top 40 mixtape and the echo of a marching band playing in the gym after midnight…”
This is where the journey begins—not in battle, but in blazers.
Basil didn’t look down on the teen comedy; he dignified it.
He gave prep school pranks a romantic overture.
Synth pads shimmer like saxophones seen through steam,
bass lines strutted with the awkward confidence of a boy
pretending to be a man,
and somewhere, behind it all, was a piano
that knew the joke was on all of us.
This wasn’t just a paycheck.
It was prelude.
II. 🤖 RoboCop (1987)
“A man made into a weapon… but the music remembered his soul.”
Detroit fell, but the drums kept rising.
Brass hit like concrete dropped from a rooftop—
mechanical, martial, undeniable.
But Basil found the tragedy in the tech.
The score wasn't just cyberpunk steel,
it was Greek tragedy in chrome.
Between the explosions: sorrow.
Between the sirens: a theme,
as lonely and noble as a dying man’s memory
of holding his son’s hand.
No composer made machines feel
more human.
III. 🗡️ Conan the Barbarian (1982)
“Before the dialogue, before the swords: there was the drumbeat of destiny.”
There are soundtracks.
And then there are scriptures.
Anvil of Crom isn’t a cue. It’s a summoning.
It’s every gym rat’s battle cry,
every outsider’s power fantasy,
every dreamer’s ride into the sunset.
The wind blows. The gods are silent.
But the horns?
The horns are singing.
Basil turned a barbarian into a myth,
a silent warrior into an opera.
When the orchestra swells, it’s not for a king—
it’s for the orphan who survived.
Because he believed in the story.
And so do we.
Coda:
Basil Poledouris didn’t score movies—he sculpted memory.
He saw past the genre. He found the truth in pulp,
the grandeur in junk,
the poetry in muscle.
And in every underdog, underling, outcast, or warrior,
he whispered,
"You are more than the sum of your parts.
You are the sound of something becoming."
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