Bear McCreary’s haunting themes spike Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica like gin in tonic. McCreary creates a musical flavor so perfectly paired with the taste of each scene that it’s impossible to pinpoint if it’s the sight of Tigh’s single mournful eye, or the sound of a solemn violin wail, that kicks you in the teeth during humanity’s epic exodus from New Caprica. It’s all one drink. It’s strong stuff, too, like rare bottles of ambrosia in the rag-tag fleet.
You know McCreary must be equally intense. I didn’t get just how passionate McCreary is, though, until I saw him conducting an orchestral rock band at Hollywood’s Roxy Theatre. His long black hair whipping around black eyes, McCreary at once urged on the band and traded glances across the stage with Battlestar Galactica’s voice of human and Cylon angst, Raya Yarborough. Yarborough, summoning her trademark earthy, unearthly, exotic cry — Sanskrit, perhaps, or some other ancient, knowing language — was bejeweled like a belly dancer. But a nun’s habit couldn’t have dampened the primal smolder that sparked between her and McCreary.
It’s hard to say whether it was McCreary’s familiar music, made iconic by the bold move to “Cylonify” Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” or the promise of rakish star James Callis, that sold out Sunday’s concert and sent Tuesday night’s line stretching down Sunset Boulevard. Battlestar Galactica fans simply could’ve turned out for the chance to mingle in a setting that screamed, “I’m not a geek for watching the best show on television!” As Hollywood frak-meets-chic party organizer Desiree Washington noted: “Not a single pocket protector.”
James Callis, the chameleonic face of Gaius Baltar and who rocked Sunday’s sold-out concert, was unable to appear for Tuesday’s show. But his wicked sense of humor crackled from the screen in McCreary’s mockumentary that aired during intermissions. An accomplished musician, Callis put on the persona of a music-illiterate diva and briefly stole the limelight by composing his own profanity-laced, choke-on-your-drink-hilarious, Baltar theme song. His comic genius knows no end, though I’m relieved his hair has found its end with this season’s hair cut.
In the most brilliant moment in McCreary’s mockumentary, I was reminded of Baltar’s presidential bad hair days when the composer spoofs the season two finale with a dramatic camera push-in on his own long, dark Bohemian locks, and then a “One Season Later” pan-out, revealing that McCreary’s not cool enough to score an invitation to the Battlestar Galactica wrap party.
Still, it was hard to beat deadpan roasts from nearly everyone on the show, including Edward James Olmos, who made fun of Bear’s name with grunts and roars, and Jane Espenson, co-executive producer and writer, who remarked that the primal drum sequences put everyone so in touch with their caveman side that the writers’ room was reduced to a Neolithic littering of chicken bones. Katee Sackhoff pretended she didn’t know who McCreary was and figured the drums were just Olmos banging on the set.
When Battlestar Galactica supporting actress Kandyse McClure stepped up to emcee Tuesday’s show, I half-forgot about Callis, and not just because she was a cutie patootie in a blinding silver lamé confection. Even though Callis couldn’t make it, “I’m wearing a really short dress,” she comforted Baltar cultists. From the appreciative roar, I’d say the male-dominated crowd was duly comforted.
McClure’s compelling onscreen. But seriously, the CIC does Dualla no justice. Not that the dreary gray lighting does favors for any of the downtrodden, genocide-ridden, fight-‘em-till-we-can’t cast. Every single Battlestar Galactica star looks ten times more beautiful in real life. McClure, for one, is perky, charming and elegant. Plus she has really great hair. Short and bouncy, just like the actress. She should do TRESemmé ads.
As eye-catching as the celebrity angle was, a handful of musical numbers upstaged even McClure’s three-and-a-half-inch strappy sandals and Callis’s onscreen antics. McCreary’s brother, Brendan “Bt4” McCreary, opened with some catchy tunes, including a sultry Maroon 5-ish song he intro’d with the claim, “It’s sexy in space!”
Once McCreary came onstage, the crowd slid into full fan vibe and rocked along with the smokin’ hot guitars, electric string quartet, taiko drums and bagpipe, to familiar Battlestar Galactica musical themes — including one that had been heard for the first time during the previous Friday’s episode, “Six of One.” You’re the man, Bear; way to make the fans feel like their online Ticketmaster printout was worth its weight in gold.
There were a few moments that night when the power of the music was met, not with toe-tapping, but with absolute stillness. Integral to those moments was violinist Paul Cartwright, transcending his instrument in electric voicings of heartbreaking sorrow, yearning, pain and rage, to embody the human experience. The war experience. The Galactica experience. Or, as McClure jokingly pointed out, the experience of seeing someone do things to a fiddle that are illegal in some states.
Bear McCreary is the real deal. His music transcended its venue, lifting one from the Sunset Strip, out of Battlestar Galactica, and to — well, nowhere. Everywhere. Where only music can take you.
by Kate Miller