By not taking the obvious, boring, tinkling piano approach - instead employing a unique assortment of synthesized sounds to create a cold, whirring, mechanical sound to sit threateningly and purposefully behind Kevin Bacon's psycho antics and a smooth but sparse and shapeless melody for Gary Oldman's flawed but well-meaning lawyer.
It's a neat score. You have to see the film.d
I like Criminal Law as well - but you are aware that the main title (minus the melodic line) is a 100% carbon copy of the first part of Peter Gabriel's "The Heat" (which in itself is an instrumental re-working of his "Rhythm Of The Heat" from the fourth album), right?
EDIT: I tried about 10 goddamn times to embed the youtube vid. I'm either too stupid, too tired, too outdated all all of it. Sorry, look it up yourself ;-)
EDIT Part 2: Your friendly neighborhood moderator fixed the link for you, Burnie.
I like Criminal Law as well - but you are aware that the main title (minus the melodic line) is a 100% carbon copy of the first part of Peter Gabriel's "The Heat" (which in itself is an instrumental re-working of his "Rhythm Of The Heat" from the fourth album), right?
Interesting. Definite similarities. I wonder if that was hailed the WORST Peter Gabriel track ever? ;-)
I like Criminal Law as well - but you are aware that the main title (minus the melodic line) is a 100% carbon copy of the first part of Peter Gabriel's "The Heat" (which in itself is an instrumental re-working of his "Rhythm Of The Heat" from the fourth album), right?
Indeed there are some similarities between both tracks.
But YOR doubts that Goldsmith would steal from Peter Gabriel.
Maybe the movie was temp tracked with his music and Goldsmith needed to follow it?
It is tough to pick one because there are several not-so-good Goldsmith scores for movies that YOR has never seen in his life, like "Inchon", "McCarthur", "Seven Days in May", "Stagecoach", "Criminal Law", etc.
Inchon? McCarthur? Seven Days in May? Stagecoach? Criminal Law? Clear demonstration that Yor not only doesn't know anything of Zimmer (this we already knew), but also of Goldsmith and probably of anybody alse in film music.
How can we define Yor? "the most ignorant (and sad) troll ever appeared in this board".
So far no one can point to a film he scored that he did a "Bad Job" on, only how they didn't like the work APART from the film on CD.
Most of the comments I've read are highly subjective and IMHO most inane.
Ford A. Thaxton
Of course they're subjective. What else could they be? Whether he did a "Bad Job" or a "Good Job" is irrelevant. If his employers said he did a bad job on Legend, that doesn't mean we have to agree. If his employer said he did a great job on Link, we don't have to agree either. Doing a "Bad Job" is subjective from our viewpoint too, isn't it? Which puts your rude comment about other people's comments being inane in perspective. Herrmann didn't do a "Bad Job" on The Birds, but that has nothing to do with whether people find that noise to be his best or worst score or somewhere in between. It's obvious the question from the original poster related to the music in terms of the impression it made on the listener/viewer, not whether Goldsmith did a good job of meeting the director's requirements or was hampered in his creativity or had total freedom to express himself or was sick throughout the entire project.
Inchon? McCarthur? Seven Days in May? Stagecoach? Criminal Law? Clear demonstration that Yor not only doesn't know anything of Zimmer (this we already knew), but also of Goldsmith and probably of anybody alse in film music.
How can we define Yor? "the most ignorant (and sad) troll ever appeared in this board".
Agent Dunhan is very brave to call YOR nasty names since he is on her ignore list.
Count me among the minority who love his 1980s synth-fart scores. Extreme Prejudice and Legend are great listens. I honestly can't think of a Goldsmith score that didn't help the film in some way. I'll give it further thought.
Count me among the minority who love his 1980s synth-fart scores. Extreme Prejudice and Legend are great listens. I honestly can't think of a Goldsmith score that didn't help the film in some way. I'll give it further thought.
Like I said about MR ZIMMER, I will say about MR GOLDSMITH, he has done so many fine scores in his career I could not pick out a distinctive bad one. some I like more then others but it is just a subjective thing. Sought of like saying or playing on tape the strikeouts of WILLIE MAYS OR MICKEY MANTLE.
Was this change in sound due to the hear-say frustration with how TOTAL RECALL's score was buried in the mix, so "why bother?" His ailing health in that period? The influence of the Zimmer sound, which he went along with (Mr. Goldsmith certainly went with the flavour of the times throughout his career, he just tended to do that flavour better than anyone else)?
I'm glad you mentioned this. I recently picked up a copy of Goldsmith's "The 13th Warrior". I've been enjoying it; it's a very good and fun listen, but nowhere near the top of his work as I know it. At some point, it crossed my mind that the strong, "muscular" main theme was almost in the vein of something Hans Zimmer would do, but much better IMO (based on what I know of Zimmer from his work that I own). I had thought about starting a post with the title "13th Warrior - Goldsmith tries to out-Zimmer Zimmer?" or something like that, but I was worried that I'd be crushed by the response.
Was this change in sound due to the hear-say frustration with how TOTAL RECALL's score was buried in the mix, so "why bother?" His ailing health in that period? The influence of the Zimmer sound, which he went along with (Mr. Goldsmith certainly went with the flavour of the times throughout his career, he just tended to do that flavour better than anyone else)?
I'm glad you mentioned this. I recently picked up a copy of Goldsmith's "The 13th Warrior". I've been enjoying it; it's a very good and fun listen, but nowhere near the top of his work as I know it. At some point, it crossed my mind that the strong, "muscular" main theme was almost in the vein of something Hans Zimmer would do, but much better IMO (based on what I know of Zimmer from his work that I own). I had thought about starting a post with the title "13th Warrior - Goldsmith tries to out-Zimmer Zimmer?" or something like that, but I was worried that I'd be crushed by the response.
Actually, I agree with TxIrish on THE 13th WARRIOR and Zimmer. I always thought that Goldsmith came closest on that score to doing a Zimmeresque "power anthem". You may agree or disagree about that, but nobody should get their knickers in a twist.
Goldsmith's worst score? I don't know - I always felt embarrassed listening to RENT-A-COP. It was like a game show theme, and the rest of the score very uninspired. Somebody here (I think) once said that he put more effort into listening to WARLOCK than Goldsmith did writing it. I wouldn't go that far, but I kind of see what he meant. And the rejected TIMELINE I found almost stultifying.
Luckily, there's a huge run of immensely inspired Goldsmith scores out there. For me he hardly put a foot wrong between about the mid-'60s until the end of the '70s - which is really quite incredible.
Ford, that a score works (to a greater or lesser extent) in the movie doesn't mean it's good music. John Carpenter's "scores" work in films like Halloween and The Fog, yet they are lousy music, if they're music at all!
Getting slightly off-topic, but both those scores are brilliant. The Fog is one of my all-time favs, just fantastically moody, beautifully produced, flawless atmosphere.
Ford, that a score works (to a greater or lesser extent) in the movie doesn't mean it's good music. John Carpenter's "scores" work in films like Halloween and The Fog, yet they are lousy music, if they're music at all!
Getting slightly off-topic, but both those scores are brilliant. The Fog is one of my all-time favs, just fantastically moody, beautifully produced, flawless atmosphere.
I totally agree with you, Carpenter's score for The Fog is definitely one of his best - brilliant score!
I'm glad you mentioned this. I recently picked up a copy of Goldsmith's "The 13th Warrior". I've been enjoying it; it's a very good and fun listen, but nowhere near the top of his work as I know it. At some point, it crossed my mind that the strong, "muscular" main theme was almost in the vein of something Hans Zimmer would do, but much better IMO (based on what I know of Zimmer from his work that I own). I had thought about starting a post with the title "13th Warrior - Goldsmith tries to out-Zimmer Zimmer?"
The Fog is one of my all-time favs, just fantastically moody, beautifully produced, flawless atmosphere. 
