Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection (1981, 1984, 1989, 2008) **** 1/2
JOHN WILLIAMS
Concord CRE-31000-02
94 tracks - 355:51
It’s a daunting prospect to review any great work of art—more so when the work of art in question represents a transcendent archetype. One does not casually “review,” for example, the Mona Lisa, or the original manuscript of Romeo & Juliet. Now, I do not mean to suggest that John Williams, as a touchstone of the Arts, is in league with Shakespeare or DaVinci (I don’t mean to suggest he isn’t, but that’s an argument for another day)…in the arena of film scores, however, it’s clear that the iconic music for Indiana Jones isn’t just another contender. Probably no theme is so well-known around the world, or so indelibly—and necessarily—identified with the character for whom it was created. James Bond…Superman … heck, M-I-C K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E…I’d wager good money Indy beats them all.
To paraphrase: If adventure has a sound, it must be John Williams.
For all its popularity, however, Indy has never been a marketing juggernaut to equal Star Wars or Superman (just look at action figure sales). That, and the vast corporate forces surrounding the franchise—the stuff that legal nightmares are made of—may in part explain why it’s taken so long for expanded versions of all three classic scores to hit the market. Concord Records’ new box set, containing newly remastered and expanded versions of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (packaged with the original album release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a bonus disc of interviews and additional material) is a long, long time in coming. Indeed, it represents a personal “holy grail” for many soundtrack fans. The question remains: Was it worth the wait? And also: Did they get it right? More on this later. First, let’s break down the set, film-by-film. Notes on the overall sound quality and presentation will follow.
Disc 1: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Everyone knows (or should know) by now the story of how John Williams’ original “Raiders March” came to be. Two themes were prepared for Spielberg’s consideration: what we now know as the “A-theme,” or the march’s opening verse—the part everyone and their grandmother can hum for you—and the “B-theme,” or bridge section. Spielberg’s wise reaction: Why not both? The result, it can truly be said, was history. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is a genuine masterpiece of movie music—a perfect “five out of five stars” score if ever there was one. It’s a compendium of brilliance, from Marion’s sweeping love theme, to the threatening brass declamations of the Nazis, to the numinous awe and terror of the Ark of the Covenant. Sure, there’s the occasional “breather” where the music isn’t about the spectacle…but in terms of epic highlights, Raiders is a parade of them: the Idol’s Temple sequence; the Flight from Peru; the Basket Game; the Map Room; the Desert Chase; the Miracle of the Ark…just to name a few! This is the score that cemented forever John Williams’ status as a pop culture icon. Attempts to pin down and explain its magic are doomed to melt away like so many wax Nazi faces.
What’s new? Compared to the original LP and CD, an awful lot. Virtually the complete score is here. Compared to DCC’s 1995 expanded release, less is new, but the additions are still significant. Three tracks are previously unreleased: “Washington Men/Indy’s Home,” “Bad Dates” and “Indy Rides the Statue.” The first is the most significant, featuring the initial appearance of the Ark theme in a restrained setting that can’t mask its latent power. The second is actually a combination of two short cues (in the original manuscript, “Poisoned Dates” and “Don’t Touch That”), while the third features a nice callback to music from the Idol Temple sequence. Several cues that were combined on the DCC release are separated here (DCC track 3 becomes Concord tracks 2 & 3; DCC track 15 becomes Concord tracks 18 & 19), which follows the film presentation. “Washington Ending & Raiders March,” by contrast, has been combined into a single, overlapping cue, as was probably Williams’ original intention (the film transition is an obvious chop job). The End Credits coda has also been restored, having been truncated on the DCC.
What’s on Disc 5? Kicking off Disc 5 is a short version of the Raiders March that was artificially created by editing material from Raiders’ End Credits. This was previously heard on the original LP/CD, and on the DCC release (although the latter featured a new edit, and kept the coda). Second, we have “Uncovering the Ark,” which sees its first release on CD. This was previously heard as a part of “The Well of the Souls” on the DCC LP. It’s an essential cue, featuring as it does the actual discovery of the film’s legendary artifact.
What’s missing? Not too much. There was a short insert Williams wrote to modify the beginning of “Escape From the Temple” (you can hear it in the finished film). “Indy Rides the Statue” is actually a replacement section for the first half of Williams’ original composition for that scene. Interestingly, the complete original version—much more low-key, and containing the second half of the cue for the escape through the mummy cave—was originally slated to appear on the Concord disc. (Williams wrote a second, revised version of his “fix” that has yet to see the light of day; and no version made it unadulterated into the final film, which tracked in a fanfare from the airplane fight sequence.) Curiously—and frustratingly—Concord’s Raiders is the only score in the set to fail to feature all previously released music. First, it uses the abridged “Desert Chase” from the original album, whereas the DCC release featured the complete composition. (Producer Laurent Bouzereau has stated that this was in direct accordance with Williams’ wishes.) Second, there is a short cue for Marion being thrown into the Well of the Souls that DCC included on the LP. So if you’re a completist, don’t throw out your old releases just yet!
Disc 2: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
By comparison to its older sibling, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) is every inch the tempestuous middle-child—barreling along at top speed and full volume, determined to show up its predecessor by sheer force of energy. Temple is a whirling dervish of a score, carousing from one high-velocity escapade to the next, mixing up the pace and tempo just enough for us to catch our breath. My fellow FSM’er Doug Adams has often referred to this score as the “Indiana Jones Dance Suite.” (Think Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite rather than Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite—indeed, chunks of the score play very much like Prokofiev cross-pollinated with Carl Stalling, e.g. “The Mine Car Chase.”) From the first film, Indy’s theme is of course retained (and there’s a fun quote from “The Basket Game” woven into “The Sword Trick”). New to the party are a spunky theme for Short Round; a big, boozy love theme for Willie; and a dark march for the evil Thuggee priest Mola Ram. Most prominent, however, is the bold theme for the slave children. A demonic Sanskrit chant for the temple rituals and a mystical theme for the Sankara stones round things out…to say nothing of the numerous set-pieces like “Bug Tunnel and Death Trap” and “Water!” Did I mention the show-stopping arrangement of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” (in Cantonese, no less, and actually performed by Kate Capshaw) that kicks things off? If all this leaves you thinking, “Whew!” you aren’t alone. The experience of Temple has been justly compared to a roller coaster. If you’re looking for a score to leave you breathless, shot through with adrenaline, and sporting an ear-to-ear grin, this is the one.
What’s new? The original album arrangement of Temple was painfully short, clocking in at under 40 minutes and completely omitting key themes (Mola Ram’s theme is barely heard, while the motif for the Sankara stones is entirely absent). As such, it benefits most from the expanded treatment. Here finally are the opening nightclub sequences; the harrowing flight to India; the incredible trek to Pankot Palace; the religioso music for Indy’s attempt to steal the stones; Short Round’s frenetic escape and Willie’s rescue; the tour-de-force battle through the diamond mines; and the tremendous brass of “Water!”; all culminating in the confrontation on the broken bridge that is the true climax of the score. One listen to this new disc will tell you why this was the #1 item on many fans’ wish lists.
Making things even more thrilling, numerous cues on Concord’s release contain bits and pieces that wound up edited from the film (or were inaudible), meaning they are heard here for the very first time. Unless you’re very familiar with the score as heard in the film, not all of these will be easy to spot, but “Water!,” for example, has some very fine new measures.
What’s on Disc 5? Three cues: “Indy and the Villagers,” which is the scene where the old priest explains how the village’s stone was taken; “The Secret Passage,” which in the film organically connects “Nocturnal Activities” to “Bug Tunnel and Death Trap”; and “Return to the Village/Raiders March,” which covers the film’s finale up through the start of the credits, and reprises the major themes.
What’s missing? Minor cues still MIA include the reprise of “Anything Goes”; the nightclub source music; a short insert in “Fast Streets of Shanghai”; the entire palace feast sequence; and additional variations/elaborations of the Sanskrit chant material, which were recorded and used in various places in the film. More notable omissions are: additional scenes in the Indian village, especially the grand build-up to “Short Round’s Theme”; Mola Ram’s speech and Indy’s subsequent “conversion”; a portion of Willie’s sacrifice; and the tension-building rope bridge percussion that connects “The Sword Trick” and “The Broken Bridge.” An overlay of “Anything Goes” is also missing from “The Nightclub Brawl,” which is irksome since it leaves us with a clever orchestral backdrop to a now-absent melodic line.
Most frustrating to many will be the absence of around 30 seconds of music from the beginning of the End Credits. It’s a short bit, but an important one, combining Indy’s A-theme with Short Round’s theme in counterpoint—a unique compositional device that reveals the final evolution of their thematic relationship. It was excised from the original album in favor of the opening of “Return to the Village,” an awkward edit that has been preserved on Concord’s Disc 2. That wouldn’t be so bad if “Return to the Village/Raiders March” on Disc 5 actually contained the full, film version of the End Credits (as the track title seems to suggest)…but it doesn’t. Whether this omission was the result of creative considerations or budgetary/contractual realities, it’s nonetheless regrettable.
Finally, it’s worth noting that two major cues contain alternate passages. The first is “Map/Out of Fuel,” where the actual “map transition” portion of the cue is taken at a slower tempo and lacks the full statement of Willie’s theme as heard in the film (by way of compensation, it offers a few additional bars of exciting build-up). Frustrated fans are advised to seek out the Lego Indiana Jones game for PC and sift through the OGG music files. (Listen carefully to the Lego files and you’ll also discover an alternate version of “Indy and the Villagers,” which showcases more musical development of the Sankara theme than actually appears in the finished film!) The second alternate passage is heard in “The Scroll/To Pankot Palace,” where the moaning chorus of the film is exchanged for a never-before-heard development of the Mola Ram/Pankot theme.
Disc 3: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
After Temple, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) can sound downright leisurely. Much of the score—the part focusing on Indy’s relationship with his father and the spiritual nature of the Grail Quest—is subdued and introspective, with Williams working in a distinctly English idiom. But there’s plenty of action and old-fashioned high-stakes drama on hand here. Indy’s theme returns in force, and the score is graced with the usual collection of top-notch set-pieces. Williams goes further, however, adding more new recurring themes into the mix than in any of his other Indy scores. There’s the Spanish-flavored motif for the Cross of Coronado, and the sinister muted trumpets of the villain known only as “Panama Hat.” There’s a theme for the Holy Grail and a theme for the Grail Knights. Indy’s father, Henry Jones Sr. has a theme; father and son together have at least two themes—one for bonding, one for adventuring. The film’s not-quite-love-interest doesn’t merit a proper melody this time around, but the Nazis get an appropriately wicked march. Even Hitler gets a minor motif (hear it at the beginning of “To the Blimp”). As a whole, the score is not quite as lean and well-balanced as Raiders, nor as dazzling and dynamic as Temple, but its rich character makes it a common fan-favorite. It is unquestionably one of the great scores of the 1980s.
What’s new? Quite a bit, all of it good: the second half of “Indy’s Very First Adventure” and the subsequent “Boat Scene”—which means that Panama Hat is now present and accounted for; the short but spellbinding “Journey to Austria,” and Indy’s intrusion into Castle Brunwald; Elsa’s farewell kiss; and father and son’s escape from the burning room. Finally, and most notably, the thrilling middle portion of the tank sequence gets its first official release (although it has not been integrated between parts one and three, which are still merged as “Belly of the Steel Beast,” as they were on the original album).
What’s on Disc 5? Last Crusade gets the most representation on Disc 5. Indy exploring his father’s ransacked house is here. “Marcus Is Captured” is strangely combined with “To Berlin,” although it’s nice to have both cues at last (the former was severely truncated in the film, and until now has only been known from horrible-sounding bootlegs). “To the Blimp” is my personal favorite of the Crusade cues on Disc 5, featuring as it does Williams’ unused music for Indy’s face-to-face encounter with Hitler. “The Blimp Turns Around” features a gorgeous, if brief, variation on the Grail theme. (A nit-picky aside: The airship in question is a Zeppelin, not a Blimp. In his original manuscript, Williams uses the term “dirigible,” which is technically accurate; blimp, however, is not.) “Death of Kazim” is a particularly nice surprise, as it was cut up with inserts in the finished film. “Wrong Choice, Right Choice” finally gives us the music for the film’s climax, as Donovan is destroyed and Indy heals his father.
What’s missing? Indy being picked up by Donovan’s men at the beginning of the film, for one, followed by the score’s first appearance of the Grail theme; breaking through the library floor and the initial descent into the catacombs, with a sly quote of the Ark theme from Raiders; Indy’s first conversation with his father and Elsa’s betrayal; all of the source music, including “Der Konnigratzer” from the Nazi rally (not by Williams) and two pieces for Iskenderun; numerous brief inserts of Indy’s theme and the Nazi theme; finally, the music where Indy’s father is shot, followed by the real “The Penitent Man Will Pass” (the track with that title on the album actually underscores trials number two and three). A few overdubs are missing (a calliope in “Indy’s Very First Adventure” and additional mandolins in “Escape From Venice”), as well as two alternate cue beginnings (for the newly released portion of “Indy’s Very First Adventure” and the intro to “Escape From Venice”), but these are minor quibbles.
Disc 4: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
As regards Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I am not among the score’s detractors. I find the new material—a sultry theme for femme fatale Irina Spalko; a creepy and far-ranging theme for the Skull (with a great B-section, to boot); Mutt’s charged orchestral runs and variation on the main Indy theme (the fourth note drops an octave, as heard in “The Jungle Chase”); and the versatile Russian theme—to be invigorating and worthy of admittance to the Indy canon. The disc is full of fine set-pieces such as “A Whirl Through Academe”
(check out the witty references to the traditional German student songs well-known from Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture”) and “The Snake Pit,” and gains depth with multiple listens.
What’s new/What’s on Disc 5? Absolutely nothing. Disc 4 is identical to the CD that came out at the time of the film’s release, and according to Bouzereau no expansion was ever planned. Fans would do well, however, to check out the film’s 2-disc DVD. Glimpses of unreleased cues can be heard on various menus, and the VFX reels on Disc 2 feature many minutes of exciting unreleased music—albeit heavily edited in places.
What’s missing? As album presentations go, Kingdom is average, playing fast and loose with the film’s chronology and skewing heavily towards the skull-oriented cues. Much of the score’s best action material is omitted, and you won’t hear a note of Marion’s theme between the album-opening “Raiders March” and the album-ending “Finale.” Approximately a third or more of the music Williams wrote for the film remains unreleased, and its inclusion would go a long way towards balancing things out. Cross your fingers and hope that an expanded album for this one doesn’t take almost 20 years!
Incidentally, while the album contains four “concert cues,” Williams has been performing two new concert pieces in recent months: a new arrangement of “Irina’s Theme,” and a first-ever concert version of “Marion’s Theme,” featuring a new bridge section. These were presumably written after the film’s recording sessions, and so were not available for inclusion on this set. Hopefully they will see an official release in the not-too-distant future, perhaps as part of an Erich Kunzel, City of Prague or (ideally) Boston Pops compilation.
Disc 5: Interviews and More Music From Indiana Jones
In addition to the previously discussed tracks, Disc 5 features a lengthy series of interviews between producer Laurent Bouzereau and John Williams, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. If you’ve been a devoted Indy follower, there’s not much new here…in fact, most of this interview material has already been released on the various Indiana Jones DVDs. That said, there’s no evidence that additional unreleased music was left off to make room for this track (Disc 5 has plenty of unused space remaining), so there’s no real reason to object to the interviews’ inclusion.
As a side note, Bouzereau has stated that the intention of Disc 5 was to present a cohesive listening experience. For casual or undemanding fans this will very probably be the case. Others will want to engage in a bit of reprogramming. In any case, Bouzereau informs us that Disc 5 was not initially on the menu, meaning we should be doubly grateful for the additional music it contains.
Notes on Sound-Quality and Presentation
This is bound to be the most controversial portion of the review, since any criticism of the boxed set (both legitimate and of the “sour grapes” variety) on various messageboards has sparked a backlash from fans who complain, “We’ve waited for this for so long, and there’s so much fantastic music! Why can’t we just enjoy what we have?” Valid as that sentiment may be, there’s no reason not to critically evaluate such an ambitious presentation of these historic scores, “warts and all,” so long as we retain a proper sense of perspective.
Let’s start with the box set’s visual appeal, which is very strong. The embossed slipcase is sturdy and attractive, with a leather-like look and classy logo design. This is a set you’ll want to display full-on. The enclosed disc cases are digipaks, a la Concord’s earlier release of Kingdom. Provided you aren’t one of those who rages against digipaks, this is not a problem; the individual releases are well-designed, incorporating each score’s original album cover. The exception here is Disc 5, which comes in a simple cardboard sleeve…not likely to damage your disc, but handle with care all the same.
Liner notes are minimal, which is disappointing when you consider the virtual book that accompanied the comparable Star Wars anthology set many years ago, and the actual book that accompanied FSM’s “blue box” Superman saga. But this isn’t really unexpected, and certainly not unusual for a mainstream release. Bouzereau writes a few (mostly generic) paragraphs in the booklet for the main box, and three more paragraphs are duplicated—word for word—in the booklets for each of the first three films (this was probably done with individual releases in mind for somewhere down the line). Happily, Spielberg’s original notes have been retained for each of these three scores. Each booklet is fleshed out with a handsome assortment of stills and photographs.
Moving on to the sound quality: The first thing to note is that the overall balance of the mix is improved for each of the first three scores. The difference is especially dramatic with Raiders, which sounds cleaner and more robust than ever. Those who were disappointed with the DCC album’s choral mix in cues such as “The Map Room: Dawn” will be thrilled to discover that the full potency of the choir has been restored. Unfortunately, all three scores have also been volume-compressed, meaning that while the overall volume is louder, there is considerably less dynamic range. This is commonplace today among record companies, across all genres, but it’s long been a pet peeve of mine, and it’s a shame to see it done to Indy. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around it. For most listeners, the loss in dynamic range will be worth the overall improvement in sound.
More problematic are issues that should have been avoidable. Many tracks fail to fade out completely, and the cut-offs can be noticeable and distracting. There are a few “pops” present in Raiders where there were no pops on the DCC. Most alarmingly, several cues—mainly from Raiders and Temple—were transferred at an incorrect speed, and therefore have an incorrect pitch (it varies from track to track—some are slightly sharp, some slightly flat—and there are additional fluctuations within some tracks). “The Map Room: Dawn” is a good example. These are errors, plain and simple, and should have been caught and corrected before the set was released. It’s a safe bet that many of the people who buy this box will never realize the problem. Among those who do, many will not care. (A similar situation occurred with the DVD release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, where John Williams’ score was swapped in the rear channels—a fact that escaped the notice of many reviewers who praised the “perfect” audio mix.) But for those with “ears to hear” (and admittedly, not everyone is equally sensitive to such microtonal shifts) this is a serious flaw. The discrepancies can be corrected with a decent waveform editor, but not everyone has the time, patience or skill for such an endeavor. It’s not worth boycotting the album, of course—the copious unreleased music is simply too valuable to pass up—and I’m not sure what positive effect letters of complaint would have (the opposite effect, if the campaign surrounding the disastrously flawed Phantom Menace: Ultimate Edition is any indication). But this is a mistake that deserves to be recognized and pointed out. Those who do should not be accused of “nit-picking.”
(Note: The click-track is audible on several Last Crusade cues. While distracting, this is something that was present in the original recording, and is not an error on Concord’s part.)
Finally, there are those who will gripe about album arrangement issues. Some tracks, like “Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra,” are out of film chronology. Two non-sequential cues are combined (“Marcus Is Captured/To Berlin”) while at least one cue transition is seemingly not the way Williams intended it (“The Scroll/To Pankot Palace”). Furthermore, many cues that were clearly designed to be combined are not. In all this, we must draw a distinction between mistakes and deliberate creative decisions. In his FSMO interview, Bouzereau takes pains to point out that this method of presentation came at Williams’ specific request, and was approved by Spielberg and Lucas. Many online fans have come to their defense, expressing their relief that some of the larger passages (which, in Temple especially, would regularly exceed the 10-minute mark) have been broken down into discrete chunks. To my ears, however, cues like “Map/Out of Fuel” sound too strange for comfort when presented on their own. Again, this is a question of taste. Those with decent audio-editing skills will be able to construct something more to their liking on their computers. (If you are so inclined, be warned: the aforementioned pitch fluctuations will lead to some sour notes between cues if left uncorrected!)
Ultimately, it’s important not to get too bogged down in negativity. To be listening to some of this music after so many long, long years seems nothing short of miraculous. The many revelations and hours of sheer joy to be extracted from this set make it an unconditional recommendation. I’ll state it plainly: No serious film music fan should be without a copy. That said, it is important to acknowledge the set’s mistakes and shortcomings, notable as they are—and avoidable as they ostensibly were. My dock of a half-star from the rating reflects this. Perhaps somewhere down the line truly complete Indiana Jones releases will be put into production, and their producers will remember the errors of this set and avoid repeating them. In the meantime, this is a landmark release containing a staggering quantity of some of the greatest, most important film music ever written. Buy it, and bask in the glory.
As an addendum, an excellent online resource has been set up for the music of the Indiana Jones films by Jason LeBlanc and JWFan.com’s Ricard L. Befan. Go to http://www.indianajonesmusic.com/ for exhaustive details on how each score breaks down, including many of Williams’ original cue titles and slate numbers.
—FSMO
|