This may be the last great Jerry score. I’m very excited about this release.
Wait, what? You don't think The 13th Warrior is that great? I like The Haunting for sure and am excited for this expanded release, but when it comes to the topic of Goldsmith scores in his last few years, The 13th Warrior and The Mummy are tops in my book.
Was The Haunting the last score Goldsmith wrote that year? No love for The Sum of All Fears?
Based on what I've heard of "Hollow Man", and how loosely we are defining a great score, I'd say that was the last great score from him. Though I've not heard enough of "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" to rule that out.
I listened to whole score to "The 13th Warrior", to see if I could personally take anything away from it and maybe makes suites. I left with not a single second of the score. It's got nothing on Revell's superior effort.
This is great news. One by one, each of Jerry's works are being "deluxed". All that is required now is a bit of patience and eventually we'll have them all. Kudos Varese!
A deluxe edition of a Goldsmith from the Varese catalogue is always very welcome. Would rather have had US Marshals and AFO though. I wonder how many years they will take? I’m not getting any younger you know!
Based on what I've heard of "Hollow Man", and how loosely we are defining a great score, I'd say that was the last great score from him. Though I've not heard enough of "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" to rule that out.
I listened to whole score to "The 13th Warrior", to see if I could personally take anything away from it and maybe makes suites. I left with not a single second of the score. It's got nothing on Revell's superior effort.
I couldn't disagree more about your assessment of The 13th Warrior. It is a superior effort by Goldsmith and one of my favorites. It is leagues above Revell's contribution. I've listened to "The Fire Dragon" SO many times...
I agree with both actually. Goldsmith does sell well. Also a good case would be the battle of the labels if we put POLTERGEIST II releases in mind. Anyways, this is Varese territory- so no contest here
Poltergeist II I think we can all agree was an unusual case of a score getting a sudden amount of extra exposure because one label wasn't crazy about how another label did it and attempted to one-up them. I don't think the Intrada is clearly an improvement over the Kritzerland sonically, and it can't really stand as an example of what the poster was complaining about -- did Bruce Kimmel intentionally leave off that one alternate on the digital mixes because he wanted to make everyone buy the Intrada 3 disc (!) release later? No. There was no cynical cash grab at work. I don't in any way agree with the moans here but on this point I would just mention..THE OMEN. A 'Deluxe' version and then .......
Yes, this is literally the only example in the entire history of Varese where they further expanded a "Deluxe Edition" of theirs. (And I hope it isn't the last! The Final Conflict! The Matrix!) But again it is ridiculous to claim that a decade and a half ago they intentionally left off a few minutes of music because they were anticipating releasing it again down the road. I can tell you exactly why their previous Deluxe Edition was not as complete as possible, in two words:
Jerry Goldsmith. The great man was still alive at the time and still had great input on Varese releases of his music. I guarantee you that he is the reason a few cues were left off of this and The Final Conflict when they were first Deluxified. Same goes for Total Recall which was missing a few things until the definitive Quartet release. And he also participated similarly with other labels, such as Prometheus for Basic Instinct not-quite-complete.
He is my favorite composer but he was not at all friendly towards the completist "every bloody note" mentality that I and many others here share. But artists often aren't the best at judging the importance of their own work.
All that's left now is to see if it's brickwalled.
Well it's mastered by Patricia Sullivan, who did Starship Troopers. Was that one brickwalled?
This may be the last great Jerry score. I’m very excited about this release.
Let me settle this debate, fellas. The Haunting, 13th Warrior, The Mummy, all GREAT scores. Sum of All Fears might qualify just based on its truly amazing main title cue. But "the last great Jerry score" was Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Period. End of story.
The sheer youthful energy, complexity, and brilliance of his final work is staggering. The numerous musical in-jokes are hilarious and touching in equal measure. And it even spanned several genres he was famous for, including sci-fi and western. A shame that his final work was not for some critically acclaimed film I suppose, but in terms of his getting to work one last time with a favorite collaborator who let him loose creatively and inspired him to great heights, we Goldsmith fans honestly couldn't have hoped for more (except for him to have been able to finish his score rather than having to let John Debney tackle the finale). I really hope Varese gives us a DE of Looney Tunes sooner rather than later so other people can begin to really reassess this great work.
This is great news. One by one, each of Jerry's works are being "deluxed". All that is required now is a bit of patience and eventually we'll have them all. Kudos Varese!
I certainly hope you're right. But since they control so many I really hope Varese goes back to doing 2-3 Jerry titles a year rather than just a single one like they did this year with The Haunting. Even I have doubts that the CD will last another decade, and after The Haunting there are still at *least* 23 Goldsmith titles they control in perpetuity that still await complete releases!
How 'bout going back to four Club releases (and maybe four titles per batch) a year, Varese?
I really hope Varese goes back to doing 2-3 Jerry titles a year rather than just a single one like they did this year with The Haunting.
Who knows if that was the intention? There may be plenty of Jerry in the pipeline at Varèse, but we know from all of the labels how difficult clearing all of the other hurdles, legal and otherwise, to get a release out can be.
He is my favorite composer but he was not at all friendly towards the completist "every bloody note" mentality that I and many others here share. But artists often aren't the best at judging the importance of their own work.
Perhaps, but is that really the point? There's always that tension between audience and authorship (amirite George Lucas), but Goldsmith was a particularly perceptive and judicious album producer. IMHO he was the best. I would imagine that he saw the soundtrack album as the best distillation of a process that usually involved disagreements, compromises, subterfuge (amirite Ridley Scott), maybe even some acrimony. The album is the composer's last chance to put his or her own fingerprints on the composition. I've always looked at the score-in-film as the workprint, with the album being the final edit. There are probably composers who've grumbled as album producers at edit deadlines, soundtrack budgets, etc, but to put the question in audience terms I think unfairly negates the composer's role in the process.
I think with Goldsmith, many of his albums were missing one, MAYBE two, crucial cues ("Be Safe" from Chain Reaction being a recent example). With the wave of expansions that came in the wake of his death (and after the union rules loosened for the limited editions), I've mostly been blending in the one or two key "missing" cues into the original album sequence, sometimes deleting the token "dialogue" cue that seemed to be a staple of his action-based albums (like "No Security" from AFO or 'Who Are You?" from The Shadow).
Mike S, I completely, totally agree with what you're saying about how composers put together albums. Before anybody points it out, yes, there are also compromises at the album stage, and various financial and technical limitations over the years have imposed non-creative barriers to what, for all I know, may have been different choices a composer might have made at times.
But a statement like "artists often aren't the best at judging the importance of their own work" suggests that the "I want it all" approach from many fans is the best and most reverent approach. It's fine to say "I want it all" if that's your preference, but don't suggest that composers who disagree do so because they've lost their judgment (a judgment you understand in a way they don't).
All composers I've ever met want their music to live as music, not archives. Just as first edits of films are typically filled with redundant and unnecessary elements that are trimmed away to make the best experience, so are many film scores, which often include music that exists solely for extra-musical purposes. (There is no one answer – some scores have almost none of this, some are cluttered with it). I have two director friends who have bemoaned having to approve so-called "director's cuts" of films they finished to sell "deluxe editions" of DVDs. They have to add minutes of extraneous footage to their films as if they believe it makes the films better. Sometimes, directors like this. But often they don't. The idea that more is always better is silly.
So of course, feel free to prefer complete releases. But please don't suggest composers who don't are suffering from some sort of delusion.
I still like the approach Danny Elfman took with Goosebumps where he had an album program and then a selection of bonus tracks. I feel like that's a good compromise.
I still like the approach Danny Elfman took with Goosebumps where he had an album program and then a selection of bonus tracks. I feel like that's a good compromise.
Agreed (with an exhaustive spreadsheet attachment that tells you how to put it in order if you wanted to).
I think with Goldsmith, many of his albums were missing one, MAYBE two, crucial cues ("Be Safe" from Chain Reaction being a recent example). With the wave of expansions that came in the wake of his death (and after the union rules loosened for the limited editions), I've mostly been blending in the one or two key "missing" cues into the original album sequence, sometimes deleting the token "dialogue" cue that seemed to be a staple of his action-based albums (like "No Security" from AFO or 'Who Are You?" from The Shadow).
Yup. I'm a sucker for C&C as much as the next guy if it's a score I love, but more often than not I find myself sticking with the album presentation. This is especially true with Goldsmith
I think with Goldsmith, many of his albums were missing one, MAYBE two, crucial cues ("Be Safe" from Chain Reaction being a recent example). With the wave of expansions that came in the wake of his death (and after the union rules loosened for the limited editions), I've mostly been blending in the one or two key "missing" cues into the original album sequence, sometimes deleting the token "dialogue" cue that seemed to be a staple of his action-based albums (like "No Security" from AFO or 'Who Are You?" from The Shadow).
Yup. I'm a sucker for C&C as much as the next guy if it's a score I love, but more often than not I find myself sticking with the album presentation. This is especially true with Goldsmith
I found that the album presentations of Capricorn One, Alien, Poltergeist, and The Sand Pebbles (re-recording) to be far superior as listening experiences for me than the C&C.
100% purchase for me.. although I tend to prefer Jerry's earlier work when collecting JG scores, i'm not familiar with TH. Etc 90s, 2000s. Thanks again Varese, now i own a later Goldsmith score, cool.
I found that the album presentations of Capricorn One, Alien, Poltergeist, and The Sand Pebbles (re-recording) to be far superior as listening experiences for me than the C&C.
I'll take the film tracks over the re-recording, of "Capricorn One" any day. I happily traded away the old re-recording.
