One of the most-requested score expansions is finally happening – but with a twist. Basil Poledouris’ score to the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian has been considered by many fans and critics to be one of the best film scores of the 1980s. It’s a massive, classically-minded affair – easily as massive as the film’s star, Arnold Schwarzenegger – with heavy use of leitmotif to represent various locations, moods and characters. The music has been lauded by fantasy fans for years, and opened the door for a lot of scoring opportunities for…
“Dead of Winter” Comes This Fall
Composer Richard Einhorn may be best known for Voices of Light, his 1994 work inspired by the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. But Einhorn has a lengthy resume in both the worlds of classical and film, successfully marrying both in Voices. On Monday, Kritzerland began taking pre-orders for a world premiere release, Einhorn’s score to Arthur Penn’s 1987 thriller, Dead of Winter. Despite Penn’s stellar pedigree and a cast including Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowall, Dead of Winter was met with decidedly mixed reviews. The plot was pretty…
Release Round-Up: Week of November 2
Another week, another batch of reissues! Wings, Band on the Run: Special Edition (Concord) After reissues of John Lennon’s solo catalogue and the Apple Records discography, another Beatles-oriented campaign kicks off with a new reissue of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and Wings’ classic LP. It’s the first of his classic discs to be re-released on Concord, and will be available in a wide variety of formats. (Best of all, it’s the first drop in the bucket – an insert inside the sets confirms upcoming reissues of more McCartney and Wings…
Halloween Special Back Tracks: Anthony Perkins
Welcome to a very special edition of Back Tracks! For this week’s Friday Feature, Mike took a look back at the music of Psycho. One of the few films still retaining the power to shock and thrill after some 50 years, the repercussions of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece are still felt today. And its musical legacy, enhanced via some very controversial sequels and remakes, encompasses some of the greats, with Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman and Carter Burwell all having built on the foundation laid by Bernard Herrmann. Part of the reason for Psycho‘s longevity…
Friday Feature: “Psycho” Sequels
Back in May, The Second Disc did a Friday Feature on the chilling, iconic and somehow commercially unreleased score to Alfred Hitchock’s Pyscho, written by Bernard Hermann. With Halloween approaching (and a killer screening of Psycho planned tonight at New York’s Film Forum), what else is there to write about? Those of you with particularly steel-trap-like memories may recall a set of sequels – sequels! – to the film, released in the 1980s. If that weren’t inexplicable enough for you, they actually starred Anthony Perkins, reprising his role as the unhinged Norman…
Intrada Releases Two Classic ’60s Scores from the Vault
Intrada’s latest batch of titles may be on the shorter side when it comes to pure musical recognition, but they have three scores released for the first time anywhere – two of which are from two classic adapted film works of the early ’60s. Those scores are to 1961’s Raisin in the Sun and 1962’s Requiem for a Heavyweight, both penned by Laurence Rosenthal. Requiem is an adaptation of the famous Playhouse 90 teleplay penned by Rod Serling (this adaptation stars Anthony Quinn as the boxer and Jackie Gleason as his manager,…
Friday Feature: “Alien” and “Aliens”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojhGdRSkiUw] With Halloween almost approaching, there’s never been a better time to revisit notable horror film scores than with our ongoing series of Friday Features. This week, we cover the first two, multiply-reissued scores in the infamous Alien franchise. Happily, both of the reissues discussed herein are readily available, so if you’re inspired to hear the music of these classic films, you don’t have to dig particularly deep. Have a read after the jump – and remember, in space no one can hear you scream.
La La Land Spooks Up Sales, Another Catalogue Score
La La Land Records has scared up a spooktacular score from a romance film this week, as well as a bootiful bounty of titles on sale.* This week’s catalogue title (alongside an impressive, triple-disc edition of Bear McCreary’s music to the FOX television series Human Target) is a bit of an obscurity: Christopher Young’s score to the 1988 romantic drama Haunted Summer. Based on true events, Haunted Summer tells the story of Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley’s vacation to Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816 – a trip which…
Stage and Screen: John Barry, Steve Lawrence Get Reissued
Kritzerland continues to mine the MGM/UA soundtrack library for its latest release, a two-for-one CD. The disc, a limited edition of 1,000, contains the score to Bryan Forbes’ 1967 thriller The Whisperers composed by the legendary John Barry as well as Richard Rodney Bennett’s score to Sidney Lumet’s 1977 adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play Equus. (Barry’s very different score to The Deep has already enjoyed a terrific reissue earlier this year, courtesy our friends at Intrada, and it’s been mentioned over at the Film Score Monthly message board that a reissue is…
Perseverance Leads to Two New Score Reissues
To be honest, The Second Disc hadn’t heard of Perseverance Records until yesterday, but they sure did score a nice pair of score reissues for November. The label, which has specialized in smaller-scale soundtracks and soundtrack reissues since 2002 (most notably the score to the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), will release expanded scores of the ’80s action epic Red Sonja (1985) and the hugely successful drama Rain Man (1989). Red Sonja, based on the Marvel Comics character, starred Brigitte Nielsen as the titular barbarian and featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as her…
Solo Smokey, Thrice as Nice
It’s always a delight to see Hip-o Select dig up treasures from those fabled Motown vaults. It’s as much of a treat, too, to see Select tackle those hidden in plain sight bits – the music that has been around officially for years, but has yet to make its debut on CD. One of the most exemplary artists who until recently was hard to find on CD was the great Smokey Robinson. The angel-voiced Motown man had a phenomenal solo career for the label after separating from The Miracles, but those albums…
Reissue Theory: Chevy Chase
Welcome to another installment of Reissue Theory, where we reflect on well-known albums of the past and the reissues they could someday see. This time around, we shine a light on a few unorthodox musical moments from a comedy legend. “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.” For the past couple of years, no one would dare be envious of the man once considered one of the greatest comedians of the 1970s and 1980s. Today, however, The Second Disc not only defends him from his detractors but makes a case for his deserved…
Kritzerland Crosses “Bridge” and Unearths the Tortures of “Sadismo!”
Hopefully fans of classic 1960s film scores have been saving their pennies, as the limited editions just keep on comin’. Intrada just made available two classic western scores from Universal; Kritzerland has two briskly-selling new releases now available, both rescued from the MGM library. Making its debut in any medium is Les Baxter’s score to 1967’s shockfest, Sadismo. The American International release was one of a series of documentaries spawned by 1962’s Mondo Cane, each film featuring graphic scenes of torture and brutality. No wonder, then, that Sadismo hasn’t seen a video…
Universal, Intrada Raid Vaults for Western/War Scores
Intrada’s biggest release last year was the score for Back to the Future, but this month sees the label going back to the past with Universal Pictures’ help, with the premiere release of two 1960s soundtracks by Bronislau Kaper and Dimitri Tiomkin. It’s been a relatively big year for reissues of both mens’ work – Kritzerland reissued two of their Western scores on one disc last month, and Kaper was the subject of a three-disc set from Film Score Monthly in July – and now Intrada releases Kaper’s score to Tobruk, a 1967…
Review: “Curse of the Pink Panther: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Sometimes the most rewarding soundtrack releases are the least expected. 1983’s Curse of the Pink Panther marked the end – well, for a decade, anyway – of Blake Edwards’ long-running series of comedies which began with 1963’s The Pink Panther. Edwards’ seventh and eighth Panther films had been shot following the death of series star Peter Sellers, who proved to be irreplaceable as bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau. (A previous attempt to do Clouseau sans Sellers was 1968’s Inspector Clouseau, which failed despite a valiant effort by Alan Arkin in the title role….
Fourth “Alien” Score Now Twice as Nice
One of the most notable catalogue releases that planted the idea for The Second Disc happened back in 2007, when Intrada released a two-disc set of all the music recorded by Jerry Goldsmith for the 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien. That set was an eye-opener in terms of what indie soundtrack labels could release, and the results have only gotten bigger as time moves on. Three years later, La La Land Records has continued that tradition by releasing the complete score to the last entry in the Alien franchise to date: Alien Resurrection…
In Case You Missed It: “Hawaii Five-O” Soundtrack Reissued
Summer may be over, but there’s at least one more wave to catch if you’re a catalogue enthusiast. Film Score Monthly has recently reissued the original LP of music from the television series Hawaii Five-O. Broadcast from 1968 to 1980, Hawaii Five-O was a captivating crime drama involving a fictitious state police unit that busted criminals all over the islands of the 50th state. One of the many highlights of the show – a highlight that’s been replicated on the new revival of the show from CBS – was the propulsive title…
Back to the Street
Earlier this year, E1 Music struck gold with Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 1 (1969-1974), a three-disc reissue of some long out-of-print albums recorded by the children’s television show cast. It was a pleasant surprise for fans of the lovable Muppet citizens of Sesame Street, who’ve captivated audiences for 40 years and counting. On October 25, E1 continues the wave of reissues with Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 2, which will see three albums from the early, sunny days of the show put onto CD for the first time. There’s The Year…
Friday Feature: “The Karate Kid”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDi3an8WgN4] There’s probably no worse reminder of your own mortality than the idea of remaking a movie. “How long has it been since they made the original?” you wonder in silent horror. “Was it that long ago? Have people forgotten that quickly? Am I that old?” There’s no accurate litmus test to determine when the best elapsed time between originals and remakes is. George Clooney’s Ocean’s 11 came out in 2001, 41 years after the original Rat Pack vehicle. When Peter Jackson remade King Kong in 2005, 72 years had passed since…
The Burton-Elfman Monolith Emerges
It’s not every day you get to talk about two major box sets in a 24-hour span. And this one makes the U.K. Black Sabbath box look like something thrown into a digipak. The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box is ready to order. Sixteen CDs, a DVD, a 250-page book and a collectible USB drive, all loaded with a heap of unreleased music, demos, rarities and other jaw-dropping stuff. And it’s literally enormous. Check out the size of it in this video; it looks like a box for…
Intrada Displays “Uncommon Valor”
James Horner has seen quite a few of his orchestral soundtracks get the deluxe treatment in the past year or so. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Krull (1983), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), The Journey of Natty Gann (1985), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), the planned release of Jade (1995) – the list goes on, and it’s safe to say Horner has been admitted into the hall of fame for great composers. Add another one to the list from Intrada – his score to the 1983 film…
Friday Feature: “Wall Street”
Who’d have figured, 23 years ago, that Oliver Stone’s ripped-from-the-headlines drama Wall Street would have garnered enough cultural currency to warrant a sequel in 2010? Certainly not the writer-director, who went from strength to strength in and around Hollywood before finally committing to his first sequel. Probably not Michael Douglas, whose corporate raider Gordon Gekko became one of the most captivating villains of 1980s film (and later, bizarrely enough, one of the most misguided role models of the business world). And absolutely none of those real-life movers and shakers of the market…
The La La Land Slate Expands (UPDATED 9/21)
You’ve got to love La La Land Records not only for the scope of their soundtrack reissues – titles released this year included expansions of Eraser, the 1966 and 1989 film versions of Batman, Innerspace, Independence Day and the debut CD release of the Caddyshack LP – but their openness in discussing what’s on the horizon. Label head M.V. Gerhard maintains an active presence on his label’s own message board and the boards for fellow label/publication Film Score Monthly, and discusses upcoming releases as much as he can without relying too much…
Vintage Soundtracks, Live Concert Coming from Varese
Varese Sarabande Records has revealed the latest titles in their long-running Soundtrack CD Club. This batch includes some of the most lauded composers in film history (Goldsmith, Newman, Conti) and a rare treat in the form of a film music concert on CD and DVD. First up is another never-before-released score from Jerry Goldsmith. 1963’s A Gathering of Eagles was a thrilling military drama starring Kevin McCarthy and Rock Hudson as an Army general and colonel struggling to maintain order in their units during peacetime. Released the same year Goldsmith received his…
Friday Feature: “Twister”
When you feel down – regardless of your gender – you probably have some sort of ritual that gets you through your funk. This has become almost a cliche among the fairer sex; almost too easily conjured is the image of girls watching The Notebook while wearing comfortable sweatpants and eating some Haagen-Dazs ice-cream for comfort. I can at least empathize with the film aspect of that cliche, although my “comfort film” involves Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and a nightmarish load of property damage. That’s right – for some reason, Twister (1996)…
Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention
September 25, 2026
