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Meghan Beas

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Aug 5, 2024, 2:04:28 AM8/5/24

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Sincethe very toddler years, it was something I always consider a familiar tune, but I couldn't remember where exactly did I heard before. Even as I got older I couldn't remember exactly where did I first heard it from. Eventually I got reminded it's actually from the soviet's classic Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson serial, made in 1980. Appears it have almost exact same tune, even using the same stringed bow instruments instruments. This tune appears in two OST, and they sound exactly like the main tune of Into Sandy's City. Now experience the comparison:

It might not sound exactly the same, neither have the same atmosphere between each other, but the tune's notes seem to be almost identical. There is also an popular remix of this tune made somewhere in what I believe was very early 90's. This one have the up tone beat and increased dynamic close to the one in Doom II:

Fun fact: there is a .midi version of this song was added to iddqd.wad which is a DM mod, this mod still appears among the iddqd community servers. At first I thought it was just a Into Sandy's City remix, appears I was wrong.

Considering that I much doubt Bobby Prince was watching Russian versions of Sherlock Holmes stories, especially since that generation grew up with the USSR being the big boogeyman, and that Prince himself was a 1LT in Vietnam in 1969-1970, I'm pretty sure this is a coincidence.

Just because he was true american patriot that doesn't mean he'd be allergic to everything else that comes from another countries, especially a culture that is close to of his ancestors (for example, hamburger is a original national german food, for this reason it's called hamburger as it came from Hamburg); neither does that mean that all of USSR movies had it's ideological subliminal messages hidden in our movies. In case of Russian Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson series, they tried to be as close as it's only possible to the original roman, which is set in aristocratic England times; and even though they couldn't get access to film it independently in England, they were looking for places around USSR which would give a good immersion and feel of ol' good bourgeoisie aristocracy of Great Britain, so the filming areas took places in cities like St.Peterburg and many other small cities in Latvia and Estonia.

What I've heard, some of the work were actually been translated and broadcasted for the USA audience even in big cinema, especially our best works like Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973) which been approved by many all around the world and even get some nominations. A lot of Russian novels, even soviet novels like The Twelve Chairs were filmed by american Mel Brooks BEFORE the USSR did film these, and these films were popular among Americans. Just like Russians did enjoy A Fistful of Dollars\Per qualche dollaro in pi\Good, Bad, and the Ugly in the soviet time, even though it had american actors with westernized "life style". I see no practical or rational reason as to why Robert Prince would neglect watching any of these movies just because it's either filmed in USSR or the original author was from USSR\Russian Empire.

Essentially, I'm not saying that it's impossible for something like that to have made it here, or for Bobby Prince to have seen it. But consider the circumstances: Bobby Prince didn't begin making music in games until the early 90s. He'd have to have seen that somewhere in the very conservative American South (this was the full-on Bible Belt televangelist era) somehow in some sort of art house in the decade beforehand (meaning at the very least he'd have had to retain those bars in his head for years), when it would've been much easier to just import a British production that came along just a few years later, and so on.

In other words, for your claim to be true: Someone would've had to show it, Prince would've had to see it, and he would've had to retain a small segment of its soundtrack in his head for literally about a decade, if not more.

Oh, as an aside: The hamburger has a much more complicated history. There's actually a village not far from where I am that's also called Hamburg, and it itself is one of many claimants as to the inventors of the hamburger, and possibly its namesake as opposed to Hamburg, Germany. Regardless of its history, the hamburger as you or I would identify it is very definitely a symbol of America, but the available evidence hints that the likelihood it was also invented here is quite high.

Yeah, the source of this track is the Stone Temple Pilots song linked above, confirmed explicitly from metadata comments found in MIDI files released by John Romero. So to answer the original question: no, Russian adaptations of Sherlock Holmes were not involved.

I know it's based on Sex Type Thing, but it sounds almost nothing like it to my ears. I'm not disputing it or anything, but it's just weird because there's even an unused midi that does sound like Sex Type Thing. Listening to them side by side, the key, structure and instrument selection are pretty different, at least as far as my ears are concerned.

I remember reading that Into Sandy's City originally had a piano rather than a harpsichord which would be even less similar! I guess it must have gone through several revisions and ended up quite different from where it started. It's funny that the music from a Russian version of Sherlock Holmes sounds more alike by complete coincidence.

I jest. I didn't realise there was a Soviet version of Sherlock Holmes. I can see the character appealing to the Soviet mindset - he was rational, the villains tended to be landowners, Moriarty is an arch-capitalist, Watson represents the proletariat etc. I wonder if the music is based on an earlier piece, that in turn is based on a basic rhythmic idea that goes back centuries? The basic rhythm always reminded me of Gary Numan@'s "I Die You Die":

Here in the UK we had an extremely limited if not non-existent exposure to Soviet-era media, but then again there was a huge language barrier and we didn't have any exposure to television from e.g. India or China or the Philippines or Indonesia or Canada or Brazil either.

I have vague childhood memories of a sitcom called Comrade Dad, which starred George Cole in an alternative Britain that had become a Soviet client state. It was broadcast (once) in 1986 and off the top of my head was a bizarre mixture of alternative world and kitchen sink comedy, with jokes about potato rationing etc:

There's a lot of accidental similarities in music out there. Does not always mean there is a connection. Metal owes a lot to classical and rock. Rock owes a lot to the blues. There is a vague resemblance to the way the song builds but in my opinion the melody sounds quite different as does the chord structure. Into Sandy's City hangs on chords a lot particularly in the verses whereas in this piece the changes are reasonably frequent. I am not an expert when it comes to picking things up by ear though, I usually have to sit down with my guitar and try to play along, so another musician may correct me on this one. A funny coincidence, nothing more.