Dr. Jacoby
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Ennio Morricone: Il Grande Silenzio
And THE HATEFUL EIGHT.
Yup.
Since snow westerns are my favorite genre of western, and since McCabe and Mrs. Miller is my favorite snow western, I guess my favorite western score is Songs of Leonard Cohen.
As for that album you speak of, I believe that is John Thomas Williams on keys, not “our” Williams. Easily confused, with two John Williams jazz pianists active at the same time.
Thanks. I didn’t know the other guy was sometimes credited as Johnny, as he is on the CD I am looking at.
However, to use “wallets” to hold your CDs instead of the jewel cases? That’s my nightmare. I hate sliding my CDs out of something(Looking at you RCA Victor with your original “Star Wars” trilogy releases, the ones in the booklet sleeves). That’s where the damage and value drops significantly.
No solution is perfect. For what it’s worth, I have both bought and sold CDs online without the jewel cases. Some buyers don’t want them, and would just as soon save the money on shipping, especially the way things are these days.
And the Bernstein version of THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is all I ever need of this.
Agreed. I think I mentioned this in another thread, but there is an additional Ghost track on the McNeely 451 album. I bought a lossless download of this track and add it to the Bernstein album. Not sure how much it adds to the overall experience, but in that context, it works better than it does in a grab bag collection.
I have officially deemed my collection complete for the simple reason that I have run out of shelf space. That’s it.
I’m not on the hunt anymore, because the thrill of picking something up has been replaced by stress over where to file it.
I’ve recently recycled a bunch of jewel cases and placed the disc and inserts into disc wallets. Those come with their own set of headaches, but it was the lesser of two evils in this situation.
If something absolutely amazing is released, I will make an exception, but I’m not holding my breath. Most of the stuff I care about would have been released by now, or it probably ain’t gonna happen.
First out is the eternal classic PLANET OF THE APES, which is the earliest I have on CD. I have the Varese release from 1997. The sound is very dry and muffled. I’m guessing they did their best with the material at the time. It’s fine, I feel no immediate need to upgrade. But just for curiousity’s sake, how are later releases in terms of sound?
I had that early Varese POTA CD. I remember watching the film and thinking the opening music had much more presence in the film than on the CD, like it was a different mix or even a different take. I did get the POTA box set, and the sound of the first film was much improved on there, including some overdubs that were not used (or found) for the earlier Varese CD.
Were they (Swingles) used in Burt Bacharach’s BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (which of course has a rather baroque jazz melancholy sound to begin with)? Because I immediately thought of “South America Getaway”.
I don’t think so. Check out their Bach albums.
As I mentioned in the Francis Lai thread, I unloaded and re-purchased Live for Life because I was haunted by the track “Zoom.”
I hope you know the Swingle Singers. They were all about baroque jazz, sometimes melancholy, sometimes not.
I am obsessed with the track “Zoom” from Live for Life. In fact, it is an example of repurchasing an album I unloaded and then regretted. I missed having “Zoom” in my life.
That’s a straight comedy. Isn’t it?
But yes. The music has some typical elements of gothic horror. But the movie?When I’m listening to an album, I don’t care about the film. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is a comedy, but it is a noir score. I’ve never seen Family Plot and I probably never will. Hitch was irrelevant by that time. But the album plays like a gothic horror score, albeit with some comedic moments.
October is definitely the month for spinning horror scores. My taste in horror is more gothic/supernatural than slasher. Here are a few faves, in no order:
Gil Melle – The Sentinel
Harry Sukman – Salem’s Lot
Les Baxter – House of Usher
Jerry Goldsmith – Peter Proud
Jerry Goldsmith – The Omen
Gary MacFarland – Eye of the Devil aka 13
Komeda – Rosemary’s Baby
John Williams – Family Plot
John Williams – Images
Philippe Sarde – Ghost Story
Francois de Roubaix – Daughters of Darkness
Carlo Rustichelli – The Whip and the Body
Carlo Rustichelli – Blood & Black LaceHonorable mention: Robert Cobert’s Dark Shadows library.
Lots of 1970s (and earlier) library stuff was being commercially released in the 1990s and early ‘OOs. So many great series – Easy Tempo, Stroboscopica, Mo’ Plen, Beat at Cinecitta, Pop Boutique, Sound Gallery. Mostly Italian but not exclusively. I would find cheap promos from retailers who didn’t know what they were. I snapped up as many as I could.
Giving this a go, after Doc mentioned it in the “What are you listening to now?” thread. As I said there, I suddenly realized I had seen this album in record stores years ago, but had forgotten about it. Love it! Funkalicious. Didn’t expect the oodles of sitar, though.
I knew you would like it! This is one of the first things I spin every year to usher in Halloween.
Since I always “hated” LPs — even back in the day when they were my only true source of music — I sure never had the craving of creating anything that resembles an old-school LP out of an actual full film score (not to mention that I don’t enjoy spending my time editing and pasting and mastering other people’s music… even though I know my way around the tools).
I am a child of the LP era, and those 15- to 20-minute sides represent a perfect length for digesting music. I don’t know if that is how my brain is hard-wired, or if I was trained to become accustomed to these lengths just through exposure.
I heard some nice fan made suites of scores on YouTube, I always found that kind of disrespectful against the original work and the composer.
I think it’s far more disrespectful to a composer to do a complete score dump onto a CD without any consideration of pacing or dead weight.
I have a lot of Goldsmith spanning circa 1960 to about 1980. A few favorites:
Twilight Zone TV scores
City of Fear
Seconds
Flint x 2
Sebastian
Planet of the Apes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
The Last Run
Chinatown
Peter Proud
Logan’s Run
The OmenThe final scores I have are LPs of his late ’70s-early ’80s horror/sci-fi schlock.
I have only one score from his ponytail era, LA Confidential, which doesn’t really do anything for me, although I liked the film.
I’m familiar with Jess Franco by name, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything he’s done. I understand he was very prolific.
But it’s a tantalizing description, Doc. As you know, I’ve had a bit of an erotica film score phase recently, at least up until that thread dried out, so the title caught my attention.
You should check out at least one of his films. I think you would love the Vampyros comp. It was released on CD and LP and sold pretty well in the late-1990s, so there are probably cheap second-hand copies. It was on Crippled Dick/Hot Wax.
Is VAMPYROS LESBOS erotica?
It is a compilation of soundtracks from Jess Franco films, including Vampyros Lesbos and She Kills in Ecstacy. Have you seen any of his films? The music is like nothing else you’ve heard, early ’70s erotic horror. Imagine standing at a window looking in at the greatest party ever thrown, and you’re tapping on the glass hoping that someone invites you.
October, so breaking out the Halloween stuff.
Daughters of Darkness – François de Roubaix
Vampyros Lesbos – Hübler and SchwabWhen CD-Rs were a new technology, I backed up a lot of CDs that I also had on LP, and unloaded the CDs. I thought that CD-Rs would last forever, like CDs. I learned otherwise.
I have only one album of his, The Formula. How is that one regarded? I can’t really remember it. I also have one track on an Easy Tempo comp.
Yes, I call them “film music gimmicks” somewhat derogatorily. Lots of tenuto strings and stingers in horror music, for example. I like it when the sharp edges of these are grinded down for re-recordings. But I know that others get their panties in a twist when that happens, because it doesn’t sound exactly like it did in the film.
This begs the question: For contemporary labels that license original recordings, are they legally prevented from making any sorts of editorial decisions, or are the producers simply afraid to do so, knowing that a few hardcore accuracy proponents will be offended if the CD has only, say, 8 repetitions of a phrase rather than 64?
If I want to hear film music exactly as it was used in the film, I can watch the film.
Some musical details that are effective in the context of a film don’t work for me as part of a standalone listen, such as a final note held out forever, or a few bars repeated multiple times. The film context includes visual, dialog, and sound effect elements that add variety to the repetition, but without those elements, the music can sound monotonous.