M Squad: Right up our (dark) alley

Aside from jazz-oriented film and television soundtracks, I’m also constantly on the prowl for previously undiscovered compilation albums that focus on this vibrant genre. A recent visit to Bandcamp uncovered two releases by a Southern California combo appropriately dubbed M Squad, fronted by veteran guitarist/composer “Burnin’ Mike Vernon.”

He’s my kind of guy.

 

“As a kid,” Vernon recalled, in the December 2025 issue of Vintage Guitar magazine, “I couldn’t wait to hear the ‘Perry Mason’ theme or ‘The Fugitive.’ It was magical. I started collecting that stuff a long time ago, just for fun.”

 

Originally based in Texas, Vernon spent the 1970s performing in various jazz, blues, rock and western bands while studying Spanish guitar at the University of Texas-El Paso. In 1979, he founded the instrumental group Perry Mason & the Defendants, which performed throughout north Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma during the early 1980s. In 1987, after returning to Austin, he founded the surf rock group 3 Balls of Fire, a popular combo still going strong. 

 

Apparently not kept busy enough, and more recently dividing his time between Austin and Los Angeles, Vernon founded M Squad as a means of sharing his ongoing devotion to crime and spy jazz. This Southern California-based combo’s first album, Live on the Sunset Strip, was released in August 2020. Vernon plays electric guitar, electric sitar and baritone guitar; he’s supported by Ted Hamer (piano, organ, celeste and vibes), Doug Snyder (double bass), Chris Roberts (drums) and Nelson Bragg (bongos and percussion). Drummer/percussionist John Palmer guests on a single track.

 

Most of the 22 tracks have a funky, jazz/surf rock vibe that is a lot of fun. The album kicks off with a driving cover of Earle Hagen’s theme from I Spy, complete with cheeky police siren sound effects and Vernon’s saucy improv bridge, bookended by the arrangement’s brief slides into swing time. Vernon and Bragg’s bongos go to town during an equally propulsive reading of Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme, and the combo’s handling of Count Basie’s M Squad theme swings like crazy.

 

The combo’s suitably moody reading of Mancini’s title theme to Experiment in Terror opens with a melodramatic audio clip from 1947's Big Town After Dark. (Thanks to my buddy Scott, for identifying it!)

 

John Barry’s title theme for Goldfinger is cleverly blended with a nod to that score’s “Dawn Raid on Fort Knox” cue, and a growling arrangement of Barry’s theme for Thunderball is appropriately dramatic. The mood is more playful and larkish in covers of Nelson Riddle’s Route 66, and three Henry Mancini classics: a swaying, bossa-hued Mr. Lucky; an impish, guitar-fueled reading of “The Pink Panther”; and a terrific, percussion and electric keyboard cover of A Shot in the Dark (a marvelous Mancini title theme that never got the attention it deserved).

 

Inventive as Vernon is, the results aren’t always entirely successful. The band’s attempt at Laurie Johnson’s The Avengers fails to catch that theme’s dramatic heft (although the swing bridge is cool); and the roaring brass is deeply missed in Vernon’s handling of Fred Steiner’s Perry Mason theme. 

 

The album concludes with a terrific, percussion-fueled reading of Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme. If that didn’t bring the house down, it should have.

 

The group’s second album, released in July 2025, is much more brooding and atmospheric, as befits its title: To Kill a Dead Man. Vernon’s core quintet is present, with additional support from Gabe Lazar (flute), Jim Bacchi (vibes); Nico Leophonte (drums), Mike Robberson (double bass) and Steve Refling (Hammond organ). This album is dominated by Vernon originals, and at times the overall listening experience feels like the soundtrack to a film that never was made.

The playlist opens with “Danger,” a slow, melancholy cue that suggests film noir title credits. “A Marked Man” is a pensive, late-night, dark alley theme that anticipates bad behavior by somebody. The speculative “Dark Eye” evokes a montage sequence: perhaps a private investigator knocking on doors to check out a lead, with musical pauses for each failure. “Dope Street” is hazy and eerie, with unsettling flute touches: deliberately disorienting, as befits the title. 

 

Familiar covers include a dynamic, finger-snapping handling of Jerry Goldsmith’s title theme to Our Man Flint, powered by a rolling bongo beat; a cool, mid-tempo reading of Pete Rugolo’s title theme to television’s Richard Diamond, highlighted by a lovely piano bridge; a splendid arrangement of John Barry’s title theme to From Russia with Love, blending low guitar notes, sparkling piano and sleek walking bass; and an appropriately angry guitar and piano, as befits Barry’s title theme to the film Beat Girl.

 

The noir atmosphere is established further by two short cues: “Elegy for a Loser,” boasting solo guitar and subway sound effects; and “Blue Interlude,” similarly blending solo guitar with late-night traffic sounds.

Both albums deserve pride of place in any collection of crime/spy jazz.

From the Cutting Room Floor: Matchstick Men

I enjoyed this film. The conclusion packs an unexpected punch, and portions of Han Zimmer’s score certainly qualify as suspenseful jazz ... but those portions are fleeting. When it became necessary to trim my final two manuscripts, both of which had outgrown their word-count limits, the logical (and easiest) deletions involved scores that are only partially jazz ... no matter how entertaining the story. After all, my two volumes focus on action jazz scores, not the films themselves.

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Caper films with truly surprising twists are hard to pull off these days, at a time when pre-publicity hype is laden with spoilers. One wonders if the never-saw-that-one-coming climaxes in The Sting, Sleuth and The Usual Suspects would have remained secrets — and therefore pleased as many viewers — in today’s instant-gratification Internet age. Still, a good plot remains a thing of beauty, and director Ridley Scott obviously saw great potential in Matchstick Men, because his 2003 film adaptation came out only a year after Eric Garcia’s fiendishly clever novel debuted. The story concerns con artists Roy Waller (Nicolas Cage) and Frank Mercer (Sam Rockwell), veterans of telemarketing scams and other small-potatoes grifts, who decide to target a flashy sucker (Bruce McGill) with a more lucrative currency exchange swindle. Things are made more interesting by the fact that Roy is riddled with phobias and obsessive/compulsive tics, and often unable to function in public; to further complicate matters, his sympathetic psychiatrist arranges to introduce Frank to the 14-year-old daughter (Alison Lohman, as Angela) that his long-divorced wife concealed from him.

The story is an intriguing mix of larcenous behavior and wary parent/child dynamics, with Roy’s peculiar behavior often played for nervous laughs. The result isn’t really a drama, nor is it really a comedy: a difficult balancing act reflected in Hans Zimmer’s eccentric score, which shares screen time with well-placed pop tunes by Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, the Tijuana Brass and others. On the larkish end, Zimmer’s music frequently quotes Nina Rota’s main theme from La Dolce Vita, and the tango-esque cues written to accompany Roy’s trembles and convulsions are pure comedy (notable “Weird Is Good” and “Ticks and Twitches,” on the Varèse Sarabande soundtrack album). But then Zimmer switches things up with sassy jazz tracks highlighted by a smokin’ walking bass and plenty of sweet sax work. Roy’s ill-advised decision to share his tradecraft with Angela unfolds against the sort of classic caper cue — titled “Roy’s Rules,” on the soundtrack album — that would have been right at home in many of the 1960s-era, jazz-hued films discussed elsewhere. So while the album isn’t quite jazz, that makes perfect sense for a film that isn’t quite serious, and isn’t quite funny.