Greetings from beautiful downtown Anaheim! Your catalogue correspondent is reporting from the D23 Expo, or “The Ultimate Disney Fan Event.” Every arm of The Walt Disney Company is here on the packed show floor, with special panels, presentations, signings and giveaways pertaining to each aspect of the company: film, television, theme parks, animation, publishing, and of course, music. As I’m immersed in all things Disney this weekend, both Mike and I thought it would be the perfect time to share with you some of our “wishes upon a star,” in Disney parlance. …
Prepare Ye: “Godspell” Turns 40, Celebrates With Deluxe Album Reissues
Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Just as the musical gears up for its first-ever Broadway revival, Masterworks Broadway is giving the deluxe treatment to Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak’s Godspell with a new 2-CD set to celebrate both the new revival and the show’s 40th anniversary. Godspell and its score announced a major new talent in Stephen Schwartz, alumnus of Carnegie-Mellon University (the birthplace of his next musical, the legendary Pippin). With its varied and diverse textures, as well as a decidedly modern feel, Schwartz’s score yielded a Top 15…
Review: Three From Dave Grusin, Cy Coleman and Henry Mancini
With hyperbole the norm, it’s questionable just how many buyers took notice of a 1957 album on the Liberty label entitled The Versatile Henry Mancini. Yet fewer record titles have proven as apt. As frequent collaborator Blake Edwards noted, “Whether the situation is romantic, humorous, tragic, ironic or full of action, Mancini creates exactly the right musical mood.” Mancini’s breakthrough came two years after that LP’s release, when Edwards enlisted him to provide the cool jazz-inflected score to the television drama Peter Gunn. Though no such albums exist, it’s easy to imagine…
Monday Morsels: Pink Floyd On 5.1 SACD, Lost Dave Davies LP Joins Kinks Reissues, Kritzerland Is In “Style”
This weekend offered so much news that we couldn’t wait to share it all with you! From the first-time release of Dave Davies’ “lost” 1969 album to Kritzerland’s restoration of a classic Italian film score and Analogue Productions’ new Pink Floyd SACD, we’ve got something for everyone to kick off the week! Why Pink Floyd? EMI answered that question with the May 10 announcement of a stunning new reissue campaign for the legendary band. Now, another component of that series is confirmed to be on the way. The eagerly-awaited 5.1 mix of…
Johnny Mathis, Alfred Newman and Basil Poledouris Coming Soon From La-La Land
Let’s hope all of you film score fans out there have been saving your pennies! On Monday, Kritzerland will unveil its latest classic soundtrack release (watch this very space for that news!) and the very next day, La-La Land continues the musical bonanza with two unique offerings. Jean Neguelsco’s 1958 film A Certain Smile starred Rosanno Brazzi (South Pacific) and Joan Fontaine (Rebecca). Adding to the luster, the soundtrack to the 20th Century Fox drama about a middle-aged man’s affair with a young student was composed by the dean of film scoring, Alfred…
Joel McNeely’s Score to “Squanto” Arrives From Intrada and Disney
Intrada Records sure knows how to keep promises! We first reported on the film score label’s partnership with Walt Disney Records back on June 27 when the initial release in a series co-branded with Disney was announced. That first Disney/Intrada release was Michael Giacchino’s Academy Award-winning score to Up (review here), and it was released simultaneously with John Scott’s score to the Touchstone picture Shoot to Kill, also from the Disney vaults under the Intrada Special Collection label. More announcements were promised for August, and well, the first of those announcements (for…
Crom Smiles Upon Intrada (But Not Surround Fans)
Fans of Basil Pouledoris’ scores to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984) had a reason to be excited when the Tadlow label recorded the City of Prague Philharmonic performing the complete score to each film (the first score has already been released, the second is forthcoming). The late composer had expressed disappointment with the original film recordings (particularly that of Destroyer), and his family participated in the release in full. Plus, with the persistent notion that the original master recordings were missing from Universal’s vaults, this new recording was…
En Garde! Hugo Friedhofer’s “Casanova” Rediscovered
Composer Hugo Friedhofer picked up the 1947 Academy Award for his score to the William Wyler-directed The Best Years of Our Lives. All told, Friedhofer would rack up nine nominations for the coveted gold statuette. But despite this success, he didn’t work strictly within the major studio confines. The 1948 Eagle-Lion film Adventures of Casanova is a B-movie take on the legendary ladies’ man, but it boasts an A-movie score by Friedhofer. Following Intrada’s release of the composer’s score to 1950’s Two Flags West and its own impressive, quickly sold-out expansion of…
The Adventure Begins With Safan’s “Remo Williams” and Mancini’s “Moneychangers”
Raise your hand if you remember the golden age of the television miniseries! Once upon a time, the miniseries was king: Rich Man, Poor Man, QB VII, North and South, Roots, The Thorn Birds. Sprawling novels were translated into multiple evenings of rich, dramatic television, with the small screen taking advantage of a length that even big screen fare couldn’t offer. One such miniseries was 1976’s The Moneychangers, based on a novel by Arthur Hailey (Hotel, Airport) and scored by the same man who would go on to win an Emmy for…
It’s “Days of Heaven” for Morricone and FSM
This has been a tremendous year for writer/director Terrence Malick. The filmmaker’s latest effort, The Tree of Life, won the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and the film’s weighty subject matter and oblique, nonlinear structure has made it one of the most talked-about pictures of the year. Just yesterday, Film Score Monthly indirectly addressed the minor Malick-mania by announcing a deluxe reissue of the Oscar-nominated score to Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978). The two-years-in-the-making tale of two lovers (Richard Gere and Brooke Adams) who conspire to bilk a farmer…
Back Tracks: CHIC
It’s a crime that when you talk about CHIC, many of the players who made up arguably the greatest band of the disco era aren’t alive to hear your words of praise. Bernard Edwards, CHIC’s bassist and co-producer, died in 1997; drummer Tony Thompson passed away in 2003. Nile Rodgers, guitarist, co-producer and keeper of the CHIC flame, could easily have met the same early fate had he not been lucky enough to discover the cancer that he’s been since late last year. (Rodgers, one of the best users of the Internet…
Steps In Time: Dave Grusin and Cy Coleman, Meet Dick Van Dyke!
What Oscar-winning composer let the world know “And Then There’s Maude,” joined Billy Joel on 52nd Street and The Nylon Curtain, and shared the music of The Graduate with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel? Something’s telling me it might be Dave Grusin. His score to The Goonies was described as a “holy grail” by this very site back in March 2010 upon the occasion of its first release on the Varese Sarabande label, and it was indeed snapped up near-immediately. But when it comes to a Grusin collection, The Goonies alone isn’t…
Review: Michael Giacchino, “Up: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Well, the release of Up is such big news here at Second Disc HQ that we felt one review just wasn’t enough! We hope you’re as excited as we are about our first-ever “tag team” review. To start things off, here’s Mike Duquette… It’s fitting, really, that Intrada’s first soundtrack reissue in conjunction with The Walt Disney Company is a score to a film about fulfilling a lifelong dream. It’s been a dream of Disney fans for years to see some sort of stable catalogue presentation from the beloved film studio. Granted,…
La-La Land’s “Golden Child” Ready to Order
La-La Land’s newest title, a three-disc expansion of The Chosen One, is ready to order. By now you already know the story behind this new release (a sort-of fake-out following La-La Land’s scheduling shift ahead of Comic-Con), so it’s worth noting instead the kind of music we’re dealing with on this set. Barry’s epic, James Bond-esque score was largely rejected by the producers for Michel Colombier’s atmospheric, synth-heavy score. But elements of Barry’s work did figure into the movie, not only in terms of instrumentals but in the form of “The Best…
Soundtrack Round-Up: Reissues and Premieres from Varese, Intrada and More
Why should La-La Land and Intrada/Disney have all the fun? We’ve got five new soundtrack catalogue titles for your perusal from Varese Sarabande, Intrada and BSX Records. The wares range from the golden age of film composition (with two heavyweights of the film score world collaborating on a special score restored as a strictly limited title) to an underrated gem of a horror soundtrack from last year. Varese Sarabande released two intriguing limited edition titles for release in the wee hours of Monday morning. First up, continuing on a theme for the…
La-La Land’s Comic-Con Surprise Goes Back to the Final Frontier
La-La Land Records is full of surprises. They teased an amount of titles for the San Diego Comic-Con this year, but announced that four of the potential titles had all fallen victim to various delays. So they announced a three-disc expanded edition of the soundtrack to The Golden Child and, fans assumed, would play it by ear from there. Then, on Friday afternoon, the label shocked the soundtrack world by announcing there was one title coming for Comic-Con that they hadn’t even hinted at. And knowing the audience of the convention, it’s one…
La-La Land Plans Some Golden Surprises
Reissue enthusiasts have often felt the sting of delays. One of our favorite soundtrack labels, La-La Land Records, announced today that the same sting had fallen upon them – but in the process, teased some great gems coming from the label in the future. As previously reported, La-La Land was gearing up several special soundtrack titles for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con later this month. (That same celebration gave fans expansions of the scores to Krull and Batman last year.) One of the titles was oft-rumored to be an expansion of Elliot Goldenthal’s score…
Elmer Bernstein Classic “Drango” On Deck From Kritzerland
Had Sweet Smell of Success been the only film score written by Elmer Bernstein in 1957, the composer’s place in the pantheon would have been all but assured. Yet Bernstein remarkably found time to score four other motion pictures that very same year. The soundtracks to two of those pictures, Fear Strikes Out and The Tin Star, were reissued earlier this year by Kritzerland. A third, Drango, was announced on Monday, July 4 as the latest release from the veteran stage and screen specialist label. (The remaining Bernstein score of 1957 was…
July 4 Special Reissue Theory: “1776: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Happy 4th of July! Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, where we take a look back at notable albums and the reissues they could someday see. In 1969, a Broadway musical about a most unlikely subject became the toast of New York. Three years later, a movie mogul in the twilight of his years shepherded it to the big screen, and while the film has lived on, its soundtrack album has all but disappeared. Today’s Reissue Theory, pulled from The Second Disc archives, imagines a long-overdue expansion of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack…
Friday Feature: “The Transformers: The Movie”
That crunching, crashing sound you hear is another Transformers movie rolling out into theaters. The series’ third installment, Dark of the Moon, features Autobots and Decepticons yet again pummeling each other into scrap metal with the fate of the Earth at stake. While it remains to be seen – at least by this author – if the new film is any worse than the abhorrent Revenge of the Fallen from 2009 (which featured an enemy with a crotch made of wrecking balls, hereafter referred to as “Decepticles”), it did provoke some thoughts on the…
Masterworks Broadway Announces Three More CD Debuts Including “Divine Hair”
In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Scott Farthing, Sony Masterworks’ Senior Director of Marketing, estimated that the Sony vaults house 80-85% of all [American] cast recordings ever made. Largely built on the combined catalogues of Columbia Records and RCA Victor (and their associated labels), the Masterworks Broadway label has gradually been making that immense library available once again in the digital domain. Masterworks has just announced its summer line-up, and as usual, it’s a varied one! July 19 sees the reissue of RCA Victor’s 1954 cast recording of one of only…
BREAKING NEWS! Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow Brings First Disney-Intrada Releases
71 years ago, a little cricket named Jiminy reassured children everywhere that “when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true” in Walt Disney’s film Pinocchio. Well, the dreams of many film score collectors and Disney enthusiasts are indeed coming true thanks to tonight’s announcement by Intrada Records. The California label, a 25-year veteran in the soundtrack business, put to rest weeks of rumors and tonight confirmed a new partnership with The Walt Disney Company. The inaugural title in the Walt Disney Records/Intrada co-branded series is the commercial CD premiere of Michael…
La-La Land Preps Reissues for Goldsmith and Trevor Jones Plus Titles for Comic-Con
La-La Land Records released its newest titles yesterday featuring some A-list composers – all the while, as always, amid speculation for their next releases at the San Diego Comic-Con. This week’s releases were Bad Girls by Jerry Goldsmith and The Sender by Trevor Jones. Bad Girls, a Western about a quartet of prostitutes (Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore, Mary Stuart Masterson and Madeline Stowe) on the run in Texas after a justifiable homicide and subsequent jailbreak. The score boasted the kind of action material (this time with a natural Western twist) that Goldsmith was…
Sinatra on Screen: Rare Dramatic Scores By Bernstein and Antheil Arrive From Kritzerland
When Frank Sinatra won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for 1953’s From Here to Eternity, it was the “comeback” story of the year. As Sinatra was earning plaudits in Hollywood, he was also beginning the most significant chapter of his recording career at Capitol Records, recording his Capitol debut Songs for Young Lovers in November 1953. After his triumph as Maggio in From Here, Sinatra’s Hollywood career was riding high, as he embarked on a number of high-profile dramatic films. This morning, Kritzerland announced two new soundtrack LPs, both from…
Review: Two By Richard Rodgers, “On Your Toes” (1952) and “Carousel” (1955)
June is busting out all over, and so is the music of Richard Rodgers. Then again, the work of the composer (1902-1979) is always busting out all over. Even in 2010, Rodgers had the third most-covered song of the year, according to ASCAP. The song was “My Funny Valentine,” with lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and it was written in 1937, proving that Richard Rodgers’ music is, indeed, timeless. Masterworks Broadway, drawing from Sony Music Entertainment’s Columbia and RCA Victor vaults, has been a leading light in bringing classic theatre titles into the digital…
