RIP James Horner.

Composer of the music to the film Titanic and many other films, James Horner, died in a plane crash last week. He was 61.

I was a big-time fan of James Cameron's movies in my teen days, and I was more than aware that Horner's scores added emotional impact. So much so, in fact, that I went out and bought The Aliens soundtrack (at a whopping £13.99, which is horrific when you're 16 and you're not working, and it's 1998).

I was on an intermediate level Media course at the time, and we were working on a radio project that was to be transmitted live to the college canteen. I wrote and produced a show about James Cameron, Director of Titanic and Aliens. I thought it was fascinating material, but it bored the shit out of my coursemates. My voice was a little dull too, and the presentation skills I developed later in life weren't showing at all.

Along with the docu on Cameron's movies and directorial style, I threw in some music to break it up: this track, Ripley's Rescue.

I introduced it by explaining that the the track was named so as it's from a scene in which heroine Ripley rescues the marines from the aliens. I couldn't see from the canteen store room that we were using as a makeshift studio, but apparently it bored the students so much it cleared out the seating area.

Technically, my show wasn't too bad and I got a decent grade for it if I remember rightly. But it was admittedly nerdy and dull, banging on about Cameron's “directorial style” and some blue light that I'd read he used a lot in his films (can't say I've noticed it to this day though).

For a further 2 and a half years, my coursemates would rip me for playing Ripley's Rescue, banging on about how I'd apparently said it was named so “because Ripley gets rescued”.

Sigh. I still stand by it being a BADASS track though. The whole album is incredibly freaky to listen to and will make you jump if you're just playing the CD. It goes from silent to shrieking, high-pitch string chords in a flash.

Horner has an impressive filmography on IMDb, including a much broader range of films and shows than I'd realised. 

RIP.