Book Review: VideoHound's Soundtracks:

Review by Doug Adams

VideoHound's Soundtracks: Music from the Movies, Broadway and Television. Edited by Didier C. Deutsch, Foreword by Lukas Kendall. Visible Ink Press/Gale Research (1997) ISBN 1-57859-025-6. Soft-cover, 1,024 pp., $24.95

VideoHound's Soundtracks: Music from the Movies, Broadway and Television has to be a labor of love on the part of editor Didier C. Deutsch--the amount of time and effort it must have taken to amass this much information is staggering. Included within are reviews for over 2,000 in-print CDs arranged by "motion pictures soundtracks," "Broadway & screen musicals," "television soundtracks," and "compilation soundtracks." There's also a comprehensive index arranged by title, composer, performer, etc. and 8 pages of introductions and explanations. Preface included, the volume clocks in at 1,032 pages, and there's even a CD included of recent tracks on Hollywood Records (nothing previously unreleased).

The reviews themselves are roughly 150- to 200-word capsules written by a staff of knowledgeable soundtrack fans/writers, including four FSM regulars: Jeff Bond, Andy Dursin, Lukas Kendall, and Paul Andrew MacLean. Included for each CD is a "bone" rating (i.e., stars: 5 bones is good, 0 or "woof" is bad), catalog information, credits (orchestra, engineer, conductor, etc. where applicable), track titles, and the review itself. A collection like this has been a long time in coming, for no matter how much information a soundtrack fan has on his mental rolodex, there's always that early Thomas Newman score, or obscure Ennio Morricone album with which we're not quite familiar. And there are always people who want to broaden their horizons beyond Golden Age scores, or 1980s scores, or John Williams scores. In other words, no matter how much you know, there's something in this book to make it useful for you.

While space is at a premium, the reviewers have done an efficient job outlining the content of albums. For example, randomly picking Didier Deutsch's review for Angelo Francesco Lavagnino's Othello we will find the score described as "dark and frequently disturbing"; that it has been influenced by North African, Elizabethan, and medieval musics; and that there are choral sections and some dissonant writing to be heard. The review also tells us a bit about Lavagnino, about the film by Orson Welles, and that this CD is a recreation by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera. There's also a brief comparison with the Charlie Mole score to the most recent film version of Othello. It's a nice job of putting everything in layman's terms and quickly describing overall impressions, but without skimping on content. On its own, the bone rating system wouldn't tell us anything subjective about the scores, but with some musical specifics included, it's possible to decide whether or not you would agree with the reviewer.

Like the Gramophone Film Music Good CD Guide before it, there are probably too many good reviews in this book. The Gramophone guide was a far worse offender in that regard, but part of the problem in getting people to write about their area of expertise is that they tend to be fond of most of the material. Hence, there are an awful lot of 4 and 5 bone reviews. JFK's 4 bones seem about right; should The Lost World really get 5? Should The Land Before Time really be up there with the 5-bone King Kong and The Magnificent Ambersons? But, again, the writers have wisely incorporated enough factual information in their reviews, that we can decide whether or not we would feel the same. Where Gramophone is heavy on the adjectives, but light on the facts, VideoHound is, thankfully, the other way around.

Actually, VideoHound's factual information is probably the biggest plus in the guide. While not every review is a riveting read, there is a sizable accumulation of information to be found. Beyond the reviews themselves there are short composer bios and film music quotes drawn from the press scattered throughout. I'm sure many hours went into researching and double-checking facts. The only mistake I've found so far is in Deutsch's review for The Great Muppet Caper, where he lists the proper composer and statistics, but reviews the wrong score (The Muppet Movie, an easy mistake). I'm sure things like that will be corrected in future volumes. In fact, the biggest hurdle this book will need to overcome is that people are going to want future editions before they're possible.

While it's always seemed to me that the simplest way to hear a score is to go rent the movie, this book will probably save people a lot of trips to the video store. Say I didn't want to go see Malice, but I like Goldsmith's Basic Instinct and had heard the Malice was very similar. Well, here on page 268 is the 2-bone review. "Textureless monotony"? I think I'll pass--and hope I wasn't in the minority of listeners who feel the opposite! If nothing else, the book saves an audience of film music fans from having to sit through some horrible pictures. For that alone, I'd recommend it.