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hainsmyway or whatever his profile name is, I can't remember I think he knows or was involved with this company or something.
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All I can tell you is that it was a sad day for devoted soundtrack fans.
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I've held on to the ones I have, reissued or otherwise. Bay Cities seemed to be so interested in presenting a line of real music quality, and not merely film scores. In fact, I keep my eye out for several I don't have.
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hainsmyway or whatever his profile name is, I can't remember I think he knows or was involved with this company or something.
Yes, I was involved with the company or something - I sort of owned it and was its president, along with our financial person, Alain Silver, our third partner, Michael Rosen, and, of course, Nick Redman. Bay Cites was my idea and I roped in Alain and Michael - Nick came along soon thereafter, maybe six months into the company.
I loved Bay Cities dearly, as did Nick - all of its aspects, from American classical music, to the soundtracks, to the show stuff, and the vocals and occasional jazz albums - but for my two partners it was more of a sideline. After three years, we'd done something like over ninety albums (in those days, that was a LOT - pre Internet, you know). If the Internet had been in existence back then we'd probably still be around.
After three years, I wanted to do some original recordings of show stuff and I had two albums planned and the money that was supposed to fund them just kept being used for other things and I got very frustrated. I felt the company had to do original recordings.
We were mostly undone by our various independent distributors, who were either inept or dishonest (toward the end, mostly the latter refusing to pay us on time and always keeping us behind). The story of that is simple: Our then distributor wanted to buy part of the company and we didn't care to sell - they then bought into another company and I believe set out on the path to destroy us, which they certainly had a hand in doing.
At the end, Chris Kuchler of Varese (a company I'd helped with right at the beginning by getting them into soundtracks - I could have owned a third of Varese for $2500 - one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made - I passed) called me and made me an offer I couldn't really refuse - a job for life doing anything I wanted to - my own division of the label. Since the writing was on the wall with our distributors, and because I knew that the company could never grow to where I wanted it to, we shut it down and I went to Varese and Nick went to Fox.
And yes, it was a sad day for all of us.
I spent the next seven years at Varese producing over 125 original albums, and then Mr. Kuchler, for very ignorant reasons (IMO) pulled the plug on our show division (some job for life!). Had he not done that, Varese would not only be one of the biggest soundtrack labels, but we would have owned Broadway. Being short-sighted is not something Chris usually is, but he screwed up big time back in 2000.
If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Nick and I were very proud of our releases - we did some doozys, including the Fielding limited editions - again, if there'd been an Internet back then, Bay Cities would have been a whole different story. Finally, would you like to know hands-down what our most successful CD was? Brent Spiner - Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back. I cannot tell you how many albums he sold - it was amazing.
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I must say, BK, you are one hell of a sport to share that. I think there is a great deal of appreciation all around for the work you did, that is still there.
$2500 for a share of VS? I'd probably vomit.
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I knew yonks ago he was Bruce. He's often talked as himself as Bruce whilst using his profile name and I knew of him from Bay Cities and then Varese. If you recall, I asked him in-thread about his two Karlin CDs last year.
Bruce, did you get my email about continuing the Karlin-like albums?
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Indeed. Matter of fact, I'm looking for CHILDREN OF THE CORN II: THE FINAL SACRIFICE (Daniel Licht), if anyone's selling...
Is the $20 on Amazon too much?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000008E7F/ref=dp_olp_2/104-3192648-9664731?ie=UTF8&qid=1204308230&sr=8-4
I actually did the same thing (sold it in need of cash) about 10 years ago. I finally bought it again recently. Fans of Christopher Young should find a lot to enjoy in this score. Licht's scores for Children of the Night and Amityville: A New Generation are also fantastic.
I agree Bruce Kimmel has produced some sublime releases. Some of my favorites are The Molly Maguires (Mancini), Return to Oz (Shire), The Three Musketeers (legrand).
NP: Comin At Ya! (Carlo Savina)
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Return to Oz, thanks so much for releasing that. Great album, greath length, all the best music is on it. Thats the only CD that listening to the first track brought me to tears and track 11 is just incredible.
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I knew yonks ago he was Bruce. He's often talked as himself as Bruce whilst using his profile name and I knew of him from Bay Cities and then Varese. If you recall, I asked him in-thread about his two Karlin CDs last year.
Bruce, did you get my email about continuing the Karlin-like albums?
I did - not financially feasable for Kritzerland right now, but maybe in the future.
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Many thanks for sharing this, Bruce. There is indeed one question I have: what happened to the album rights Bay Cities owned? Are they still with you, or did they revert to the studios? Maybe some of the more popular albums could be re-issued on Kritzerland (like the David Shire CD last year). I'm quite sure - as you already said - that there would be more public response these days due to internet distribution.
I recently listened to one of the CDs you produced for Varese and it's almost unbelievable that Marilyn Monroe's recording of "Heat Wave" has been commercially unavailable until the Varese stereo restoration of "There's No Business Like Show Business". To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed by Varese's releases these days and most CDs I buy from them (except for the club titles) are pre-2000 back catalog titles.
For the soundtracks, all our licenses were for a certain number of years, and those have all elapsed. So, the only CDs we put out that can be reissued are the ones we actually paid for and produced. Of those, Varese bought several, including a couple of the Classical Hollywoods, the Herrmann and Korngold string quartet CDs, and the Elizabeth and Essex CD.
We still owned the Shire, obviously, which is why I put it out as a limited edition. There are a couple of others I'm thinking about putting out again, such as the Joanie Sommers Jerome Kern album, and maybe the Classical Broadway CD.
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Bruce, weren't you also involved with Fynsworth Alley? Where did that fit into your chronology? FA also had some amazing releases.
Yep - I created FA right after the Varese news. It was my baby, and was, at that time, a really unique sort of thing in its approach to its website and Internet presence. We bought almost all my Varese CDs, so we had an instant catalogue. But, and it's a big BUTT - the people I went to who funded the company were, let's just say, not people I should have gone into business with, and my involvement ended a year later, after we'd done close to 1.2 million in sales our first year. Directly after that the company lasted another year or two, and then karma did its work.
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And thanks to all for the kind words. And Nick Redman deserves the lion's share for most of the soundtracks, especially the then current stuff. He wasn't there for Return To Oz, I don't think (or maybe he was), and I got us the Capitol licensing deal (we reissued several wonderful Capitol albums), but the majority of the soundtrack titles were his ideas.
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