Oh yeah, my Saturday mornings with Johnny Douglas. Love the library cues in this clip from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends with guest stars, the X-Men:
D&D has long been a holy grail for me but I know chances are slim it'll ever come out. Alas.
Just been doing some research into past posts and there are differing views as to whether the music exists. In 2010 you said Douglas had told you the music is lost, while someone else says the studios only have dialogue/music/effects tracks and that Rob Walsh might have the only copies because he worked a lot with Douglas on the 80s cartoons in general.
User GigaTiamat on YouTube has uploaded some music and effects tracks (no dialogue) so we at least know those exist.
As this is Disney (thanks Lukas), it's Intrada territory, but I doubt it's the sort of thing they'd be interested in.
Were the D+D tracks reused in other cartoons? Some cartoons shared music apparently?
I'm reading that a few years ago some fans tried to produce a 'final' 29th episode for the show that resolved the storyline. Did anything ever come of it? Nothing I can find online.
D&D has long been a holy grail for me but I know chances are slim it'll ever come out. Alas.
Just been doing some research into past posts and there are differing views as to whether the music exists. In 2010 you said Douglas had told you the music is lost, while someone else says the studios only have dialogue/music/effects tracks and that Rob Walsh might have the only copies because he worked a lot with Douglas on the 80s cartoons in general.
User GigaTiamat on YouTube has uploaded some music and effects tracks (no dialogue) so we at least know those exist.
As this is Disney (thanks Lukas), it's Intrada territory, but I doubt it's the sort of thing they'd be interested in.
Were the D+D tracks reused in other cartoons? Some cartoons shared music apparently?
Fantastic to hear that music again after so many years - I remember it from both D&D and the early 80s Incredible Hulk cartoon (with cowboy hat Rick Jones...). I would love a CD of Douglas' work from D&D, Hulk and Spidey & His Amazing Friends.
I would salivate at the possibility of Tadlow doing a recording of all of Douglas's Sunbow scores!
Oh yeah, my Saturday mornings with Johnny Douglas. Love the library cues in this clip from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends with guest stars, the X-Men:
I was under the impression that Douglas handled orchestral duty while Rob Walsh performed more of the rock and synth variety tracks.
I would love a CD of Douglas' work from D&D, Hulk and Spidey & His Amazing Friends.
More chance of EON allowing C & C Bond scores.
Well, now that the Bond impossible has happened, and the Transformers impossible has happened (albeit on vinyl), I feel confident in hoping the Dungeons and Dragons impossible will happen. Disney control, so it's down to Intrada.
I ever understood the belief the liveaction are intrinsically superior even though the "Transformers" movies have demonstrated this isn't necessarily true.
I ever understood the belief the liveaction are intrinsically superior even though the "Transformers" movies have demonstrated this isn't necessarily true.
I meant that it's never had the same exposure as a hit primetime TV series or popular film. So, comparatively fewer people will have heard this piece of music. And that's a great shame, as it is, in my eyes (or ears), one of the great themes.
I would love a CD of Douglas' work from D&D, Hulk and Spidey & His Amazing Friends.
More chance of EON allowing C & C Bond scores.
Well, now that the Bond impossible has happened, and the Transformers impossible has happened (albeit on vinyl), I feel confident in hoping the Dungeons and Dragons impossible will happen. Disney control, so it's down to Intrada.
In this desert of cartoon TV releases on CD, I am still hopeful Roger Feigelson and Doug Fake manage to get this one out of the Disney vaults.
Another Sunbow series is getting a vinyl music score release, G.I. Joe. This series is a very close relative to Transformers in every conceivable way and features music from Johnny Douglas and Robert Walsh just as Transformers did. Track listings are shown on this site:
My continuing puzzlement is why there is no CD release to go with these. Are there really more people who just want to collect "vinyl" than there are people who would prefer to hear the music with the best quality and ease? Aren't CDs cheaper to manufacture than vinyl? Or how about at least a low-cost digital release of the music?
D&D has long been a holy grail for me but I know chances are slim it'll ever come out. Alas.
All those Marvel shows I think are owned by Disney now.
Lukas
Disney definitely owns the ones based on Marvel superhero characters. Marvel/Sunbow also produced a lot of shows based on Hasbro properties. The rights to the Hasbro shows changed hands several times until 2008 when Hasbro acquired them. Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons & Dragons have been owned by Hasbro since 1999. However, the cartoon series titles mentioned in the articles about that 2008 acquisition were titles like G.I. Joe, Transformers, and My Little Pony. It didn't appear Dungeons & Dragons was mentioned. So the best guess now appears to be that the Dungeons & Dragons series was always owned by Marvel and is now owned by Disney, even though Hasbro owns the rights to the D&D brand. It appears that when DVD releases of the cartoon were released, copyrights were credited to both the Marvel and D&D brands. I would assume this had something to do with the fact that the "package" of Sunbow Hasbro cartoons being swapped around for years was put together before Hasbro owned D&D, so the D&D series didn't get folded into the package with the other related shows.
To complicate things even further, the music rights for the D&D series have caused issues apart from the series itself. One of the DVD releases had some of its music score removed and replaced with other music. It's unclear what the specific problems with that music were. It is known that Sunbow used some "stock" music cues that showed up on more than one of their different series. Now that the Sunbow cartoon catalog is split between at least two different owners, Marvel/Disney and Hasbro, I don't know who knows who owns what specific music or even if it may have only been licensed from the composer (I think Robert Walsh in the case of these replaced cues) and the composer's company still owns it. On a later D&D DVD release, those replaced music cues were restored to the original ones. It seems fundamentally baffling why the music ever had to be replaced since both Disney and Hasbro apparently had to approve release of the DVD, no one else to my knowledge owns any Sunbow shows, and there has been no problem using these composers' music on other DVD releases of these series.
I was under the impression that Douglas handled orchestral duty while Rob Walsh performed more of the rock and synth variety tracks.
My impression is more that there was a transition in who was doing the music duties. Douglas definitely did many of the earlier Sunbow series, which includes the Marvel superhero ones, and I think he had the sole composer credit on those. He also did the early music for G.I. Joe, Transformers and D&D. I'm pretty sure that by 1984 or 1985, Robert Walsh was the only one composing new music for the shows. This is also when a big bank of "shared library" music was created by Walsh that did not feature any specific identifying themes from any shows. These cues were heavily re-used across all of the different current series at the time. Marvel superhero shows were probably out of production by then, but D&D, G.I. Joe and Transformers continued. Older Douglas cues would still be re-used on the shows as well, so the series distinctive themes did not completely disappear from the score.
I would say it would be very easy for any orchestral music fan to listen to an album of random tracks from these shows and pick out which ones were by Douglas and which ones were by Walsh. Douglas' music sounds more dated to the time period in general. Walsh's music sounds eons more contemporary by comparison and could probably be used in a cartoon today without anyone raising an eyebrow. The other tipoff of course is that any track that incorporated the series' theme somewhere in it was likely, if not exclusively a Douglas cue.
I am not familiar enough with the earlier Douglas-scored shows (Hulk, Spider-Man, etc.) to know how much music re-use happened across those. But I know that a small amount of music did cross over between shows that Disney now owns such as Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends and shows that Hasbro now owns like G.I. Joe. For example, when they needed source music for a party scene, there was a Douglas disco-sounding theme that got re-used. I would guess that is the one theme that showed up on the greatest number of different shows.
As for what music survived, Robert Walsh, who has since passed away, was pretty bullish about proclaiming that he had all the music. What he meant by "all" is unclear, whether it was just the music he composed or the music Douglas did as well. It would stand to reason though that since the Douglas cues were still being re-used while Walsh was working on the shows that he would've had access to them. With him now deceased, I don't know how accessible the music he had is. But it seems to be a good sign that Hasbro is still doing new releases of the music. Of course, Hasbro may have secured copies of the music for their shows at some point but that may not have included music for the shows that Marvel and Disney own.
My continuing puzzlement is why there is no CD release to go with these. Are there really more people who just want to collect "vinyl" than there are people who would prefer to hear the music with the best quality and ease?
For those who tend to be fans of the property rather than specifically music fans, the answer seems to be "YES". It boggles me too but I've seen too many things released only on vinyl (with accompanying or previous digital release or not) that I have to imagine that, at the least, making records is more profitable than CDs.
I will never understand the renewed love of vinyl. If you grew up on it, sure, maybe - for nostalgic purposes. But if you're under age 35, why are you buying this? Next thing you know, they'll be buying Ford Edsels
