Despite his acclaimed scores to films such as Klute, The Parallax View, Marathon Man and The China Syndrome, Michael Small (1939-2003) remains one of the most underrated names in the film score pantheon. Too few a number of Small’s works have been made available on CD, yet his singular voice enhanced a number of great films (and even some bad ones - Ed.). This is especially true during his 1970s peak in which he collaborated with directors as celebrated as Alan J. Pakula, Bryan Forbes, Sidney
A "Cliffhanger" Coming from Intrada
Intrada knows how to make film score fans hang onto every release: their latest batch includes a long-unreleased, underrated suspense score and the long-awaited deluxe reissue of a classic early '90s action score. Released in 1993, Cliffhanger, starring Sylvester Stallone as a mountaineer unwillingly forced into a heist led by John Lithgow was a critical and commercial success, and featured a great action score by Trevor Jones. The soundtrack called back to classic scores by luminaries like
Friday Feature: "Catch Me If You Can"
It's hard not to be skeptical over the fact that Catch Me If You Can, the amazing "true story of a real fake," is coming to Broadway. Modern musicals based on existing properties either hew too close to their original musical source material (if they were already rooted in song, like Footloose) or not close enough; consider Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, for instance. (Or don't!) The few songs this author's heard from the Catch Me musical score, sent on a promotional disc, are jaunty and fun
La-La Land Goes Straight as an "Arrow" on New Soundtrack Batch
La-La Land's got two soundtracks ready to order today, including their first-ever expansion of a score by Hans Zimmer. The German composer is one of a remaining few "household name" composers to even the least knowledgeable of film scores thanks to titles like the Oscar-winning The Lion King, Gladiator, Rain Man, Gladiator, the Pirates of the Caribbean series and Inception. But only last year was he treated to an expanded reissue - Perseverance's new Rain Man CD - and it was criticized for less
The Gremlin May Be Out of the Bag
It was an innocent question. A Facebook friend of Screen Archives Entertainment, the online soundtrack merchant most notably associated with the Film Score Monthly label, asked if there would ever be a release of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Gremlins. It's not an unfair question, either: it's one of Goldsmith's most popular and fun scores, and with yesterday having been his birthday (he would have been 82), there's no better time to ask. What nobody expected was SAE's answer: "Sometime this
Friday Feature: "Born Free"
Remembering his great friend John Barry upon the composer's recent death, lyricist Don Black regaled the press with stories of the "blunt-spoken Yorkshireman" with his divine gift of music. Black relished the tales of Barry's epic battle with Barbra Streisand which led to the mercurial composer's departure from Streisand's The Prince of Tides and his succinct rebuke to producer Harry Saltzman on the producer's criticism of his theme song for Diamonds Are Forever: "What the f--k do you know about
The Price of Box Sets: How Much is Too Much?
The revelation of The Rolling Stones' CD singles box set is pretty cool, and living proof that the catalogue music business is still thriving. It's a year that's given or will give us a box set of Danny Elfman's music for Tim Burton, all of Aretha Franklin's Columbia-era material and an enormous run-through of The Grateful Dead's European tour of 1972. But how much is all of this worth? The Stones set, when one converts from pounds to U.S. dollars, is nearly $300. How worth it is that for some
Reissue Theory: "Purple Rain"
Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, where we reflect on great albums and the reissues they could someday see. One of the biggest-selling albums of all time. A rock and roll classic. Soon to be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Still un-reissued in any way, shape or form. This is Purple Rain. With the Grammy Awards on Sunday, there's been some thought at Second Disc HQ regarding some of the Grammy Hall of Fame inductees. While there are more single recordings on the list than
More Gerhardt LPs Coming from Masterworks in March
In October, to the delight of film score fans everywhere, Sony Masterworks reissued a portion of the Classic Film Scores series, vintage RCA LPs of great soundtracks as recorded by Charles Gerhardt and The National Philharmonic Orchestra. In March, the second installment of the reissue series is happening, covering some of the greatest composers in motion picture history, including Hermann, Waxman, Korngold and Steiner. Masterworks' reissue campaign, announced today, covers compilations
Frakkin' Awesome! Intrada Releases Original "BSG" Score
It's kind of amazing that the Sci-Fi Channel's reboot of Battlestar Galactica which ran from 2003 to 2009 was a critical smash. This is especially true when one considers the campy nature of its original source material, the Glen A. Larson-produced ABC program which ran for one season in 1978-1979 and was considered by many to be a quick capitalization on Star Wars mania. Of course, the show was a bit more than that, with a rather captivating story and, for a modest television show, a
Elmer Bernstein Duo and "Gone with the Wind" Musical Coming from Kritzerland
Frankly, my dear, the Kritzerland label has given us even more reasons to give a damn. On Monday morning, the label announced its latest releases: the first-ever CD release of the Original London Cast Recording of Gone with the Wind, the 1972 musical written by composer/lyricist Harold Rome (Wish You Were Here, Fanny, Pins and Needles) and librettist Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, The Trip to Bountiful), along with a two-on-one CD presenting Elmer Bernstein’s scores to Fear
The Softer Side of Soundtracks Explored by FSM
Film Score Monthly's newest release is ladylike - at least, the scores presented therein are from films that appeal to the ladies. Appearing for the first time anywhere are a pair of scores: Georges Delerue's score to Rich and Famous, a 1981 film featuring Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset as writers and lifelong friends and Michel Legrand's music to One is a Lonely Number (1972), which chronicled the plight of a recently-divorced woman (Trish Van Devere, who received a Golden Globe
The Second Disc Interview #4: Talking Soundtracks with MV Gerhard of La La Land Records
The wide berth of reissues, box sets and compilations across major and independent labels the world over, means some releases can fall through the cracks at times. At The Second Disc, it was always an early mission to make sure the labels handling catalogue soundtrack reissues did not suffer this fate. Intrada, Film Score Monthly, Kritzerland, Varese Sarabande - all are essentials for the catalogue music fan with a taste for soundtracks, and their work is hard to ignore. La La Land Records,
Getting "Clue" Plus Some More Exciting La La Land News!
As promised, La La Land Records put the score to Clue up for order yesterday. The soundtrack to the comedy board game adaptation, composed by John Morris, is full of bonus content and limited to 3,000 copies and is yours to order here. (The track list is of course after the jump.) But that's not the only exciting La La Land news we have here at The Second Disc. Tomorrow afternoon, we're running an exclusive interview with the head of the label, MV Gerhard! He's going to talk about the great
Short Takes: Legacy's New Essentials, Concord's New Jazz Reissues and a Catalogue Score from Perserverance
Legacy's latest release schedule update promises three new titles in the Essential series: Paul Revere & The Raiders, Django Reinhardt and Eartha Kitt. All are going to be double disc sets, and specifically, the Raiders set (compiled by Bob Irwin of Sundazed Music) will feature some promo-only tracks and some mono single mixes. All are due on March 15. Concord has four new reissues of classic jazz titles also planned for March 15. They are Monk's Music (1958) by Thelonious Monk, Cal
The Name Was Barry
It is with a heavy heart that I pass along to you the news that film composer John Barry died on Sunday. Barry, a five-time Oscar winner, is of course best known for his work on 12 of the 22 James Bond films. Though his authorship of the iconic theme is under dispute even after a U.K. court ruled that it was Dr. No composer Monty Norman's work alone, Barry is still the name most synonymous with Bond music, and crafted some of the series' best themes. The timing of Barry's passing comes at an
All Aboard "The Big Bus"! FSM Releases Comedy Score by David Shire
Released some years before Airplane! - hell, even before That's Armageddon! - the world had The Big Bus, a 1976 comedy lampooning the then-fashionable swath of disaster films. Though The Big Bus received nowhere near the accolades that Airplane! got, it was a pretty silly romp with stars like Stockard Channing, Ned Beatty, and John Beck (best known as Mark Graison, one of Pamela's beaus on Dallas). It also boasted a score by David Shire, who composed the scores to '70s classics All the
Friday Feature: "Almost Famous"
Thank you, Cameron Crowe. You had me at "hello." You cost me plenty, but my record collection has long been grateful for the education! The integration of popular song and cinema has been around as long as the talking film itself, since the day Al Jolson prefaced his performance of "Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goodbye)" with the epochal dialogue "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet!" These lines from 1927's The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length "talkie" in which
La La Land to Get a "Clue" in February
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHEpuz_gUGM] The mystery has finally been solved: it was La La Land Records, on the Internet, with a batch of CDs. Well...in other words, it's been confirmed that one of the label's most hotly-anticipated releases is happening soon: the world-premiere release of John Morris' score to Clue (1985). Clue, of course, comes from a simpler time when movies based on board games and television shows weren't the only ideas circulating throughout Hollywood. In
Short Takes: Soundtracks on Tap from Barry, Horner and Mancini
It's already been a busy week here at Second Disc HQ, and the news just keeps on comin'. Three more soundtracks are due from some of the finest composers in film score history: John Barry, James Horner and Henry Mancini. Before becoming an eminence grise in the world of film scoring, John Barry was best-known as the leader of the John Barry Seven, an association which led him to one of his earliest film projects, the score to the 1960 British film Beat Girl. The long-unavailable soundtrack to
Intrada Partially Finds Missing "Link"
It's always a cause for celebration in the soundtrack community when a Jerry Goldsmith score is put into print. Today is no different; one of Goldsmith's scores from the 1980s is one of the two new releases from Intrada. Link was a strange 1986 horror film from England in which Elisabeth Shue and Terence Stamp were pitted against a super-intelligent orangutan. Goldsmith was in his typical '80s form - orchestra augmented with synthesized instruments, not unlike another favorite at Second Disc HQ
Friday Feature: "Men in Black"
Once in a while, a great comedy comes around that makes an incredible impact on film, thanks to its quick wits, original ideas and great performances. In the 1980s, there were several great films that deftly blended comedy with science fiction and action film tropes - 1984's Ghostbusters and 1985's Back to the Future - that remain generational touchstones and modern-day classics of popular cinema. When children of the '80s say, "They don't make 'em like they used to," it's not hard to imagine
La La Land Goes Live with First Releases of 2011
La La Land Records' first titles of 2011 were promised earlier this month, and they're now available to order. Two television shows, the '60s war program The Rat Patrol and the late '80s Western The Young Riders, are being presented in premiere releases (1,200 units each), alongside a straight, unlimited reissue of the original soundtrack to Solaris (2002) with improved sound quality. It's a smaller-scale start, but La La Land also recently promised they're again appearing at this year's San
Back Tracks: Queen, Part II
We continue our coverage of Queen's previous reissues - in anticipation of the band's forthcoming remasters on new U.K. home Island Records - with a look at Queen during most of the '80s, where they went increasingly pop-friendly before returning to their rock roots in the 1990s, losing their iconic frontman and becoming anthologized in nearly a dozen or so compilations. The show must go on, after the jump.
From "Walter Mitty" to "Inner City": Masterworks Broadway Reissues Due
Sony’s Masterworks Broadway division continues its dig through the vaults of the Columbia and RCA Records labels with three new titles, to be released as CD-Rs exclusively through Arkiv Music or as digital downloads. Today, January 18, sees the reissue of Originals – Musical Comedy 1909-1935, an RCA compilation dating from 1968. This collection remains one of the best ever to anthologize the sound of musical comedy in its earliest days, and is a “Who’s Who” of that golden era. The vaudeville
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