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| REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT LABEL |
| Posted By: Thomas Rucki on July 10, 2013 - 4:00 AM |
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 Here's my farewell tribute to Film Score Monthly which has spent seventeen years of hard labor and has crossed three decades. To double-check my selection of soundtracks and listen to audio samples, I advise you to go to FSM's complete list page.
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THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE |
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“I trust Mr. Brown, I do not trust Mr. Grey. I think he's an enormous, arrogant pain in the a.. who could turn out to be trouble. I also think that he is mad. Why do you think they threw him out of the Mafia?”
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“Alright then… from the beginning,” as Dan Briggs used to say to his IMFers in the first Santa Costa assignment. I bought the very first Film Score Monthly CD back in 1996 and I was in heaven: David Shire’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three which was urban, tough, modern, hip, tense and gritty as hell—listen carefully to the grim dissonant organ-oriented a la Lalo Schifrin’s THX 1138 track “Smoking More, Enjoying It Less” (24 seconds of pure minimalism). In 1997, they released their first European score by English composer John Barry: Deadfall and more from the man will come. In 1998, FSM used to spread the complete recording of Jerry Fielding’s The Wild Bunch (Warner Brothers) that I picked as fast as I could. Still the same year, we saw the first Jerry Goldsmith title: the double header Stagecoach/The Loner.
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In 2001, FSM presented their very first Herrmann title: the stellar Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. In 2002, they released the unused score for The Man Who Loves Cat Dancing by their first French composer: Michel Legrand. In 2003, FSM offered their first Schifrin and a versatile masterpiece of avant garde entitled THX 1138 featuring fascinating dissonant organ tracks (“First Escape” and “Second Escape”) and the same year the first official Legrand entitled Ice Station Zebra and a great Bernard Herrmann score: On Dangerous Ground but transfered from an uneven 33 1/3 rpm acetate discs source. In 2005, the label offered Crossed Swords by another notorious French composer: Maurice Jarre. In June 2006, the company achieved their first big box set: Elmer Bernstein’s Film Music Collection that contained 12 discs. In 2007, the label produced the first archive CD edition meaning a combination of original recording and music-and-effects tracks from the film for Jerry Goldsmith’s The Satan Bug: a terrific score. In 2008, the magnum opus Dark of the Sun of another French composer (Jacques Loussier) was highlit.
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From 2009 to 2010, the label knew its peak with fabulous titles like Time After Time by Miklós Rózsa, Bullitt by Lalo Schifrin which contains first the 1968 album version and the original recording with unreleased and unused tracks and source music, Black Sunday by John Williams, Islands in the Stream by Jerry Goldsmith, Prophecy by Leonard Rosenman, Marathon Man/The Parallax View by Michael Small.
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In 2013—the swansong year of the label—, we had their absolute masterpiece in terms of music and achievement: the 3-CD set of The Wild Bunch by Jerry Fielding that contained many extras like alternate and additional tracks, the album version and the demo score. This new presentation is different from the 1998 version especially through two tracks: “Angel Confronts the Gorch Brothers/1st Denver Hotel” and “Denver Flashback” that feature a haunting banjo overlay effect.
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Among my favourite titles, some are experimental and edgy: Fantastic Voyage, The Omega Man (I ordered the two editions), Beneath the Planet of the Apes, The French Connection, The Illustrated Man, Logan’s Run, THX 1138, Point Blank, Soylent Green/Demon Seed, Coma/Westworld/The Carey Treatment, Klute, Prophecy, Marathon Man/The Parallax View, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. And that was the reason why I loved FSM because they took risks, they went beyond the markers. Some of their best titles were strange, poetic and beautiful at once like The Appointment by a trio of composers (Michel Legrand, John Barry and Stu Phillips), The Yakuza, The Swimmer, Wait Until Dark (a unique and highly dramatical score by Henry Mancini), Eye of the Devil, The Wreck of the Mary Deare.
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LALO SCHIFRIN • JERRY FIELDING |
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All their Schifrin’s titles were worthwhile and some more than others like THX 1138, Kelly's Heroes and Bullitt and the amazing multi-set of Lalo Schifrin Film Scores, Vol. 1 (1964-1968). They also provided some of the best Jerry Fielding film scores: The Outfit—that includes a key sneaky motif in “Assault on Impregnable Fortress of Anti-Social Adversary”—, the music concrète-oriented Demon Seed, the rejected score for The Getaway, The Super Cops, The Wild Bunch, the television scores for Hawkins, Hunters Are for Killing whose main title anticipates The Big Sleep and Shirts/Skins.
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Silver Age television scores initiated by the label were exquisite: the four sets of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Jericho paired with John Williams' The Ghostbreaker—Jericho has a score by Lalo Schifrin entitled "Upbeat and Underground" that anticipates "The Plot" from Mission: Impossible—, two volumes of I Spy, Logan’s Run: The Series, the proto-Escape from Planet of the Apes-oriented Crosscurrent by Jerry Goldsmith paired with Dave Grusin's The Scorpio Letters, Jerry Goldsmith's Dr. Kildare and Cain’s Hundred, Hunters Are for Killing, TV Omnibus: Vol. 1 (featuring the Silver Age vanguard as Leonard Rosenman, Don Ellis, Jerry Fielding, Gil Mellé, Lalo Schifrin, Billy Goldenberg), Nightwatch by John Williams paired with Quincy Jones' Killer by Night.
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My single favourite double header remained Zigzag/The Super Cops by Oliver Nelson and Jerry Fielding and it ended up with rare television scores for Hawkins. FSM exceled with Goldsmith and Rózsa: needless to list the scores—we finally got the complete recording of The Power but from another big box set entitled Miklós Rózsa Treasury (1949-1968).
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Of all Herrmann ones they brought us, I would pick one that I found superior in all departments (music, art direction—see the most inspired cover ever conceived featuring Rudolf Koch’s Bauhaus-influenced geometric sans-serif typeface Kabel): The Wrong Man. Thanks to FSM, I discovered composers from the Golden Age as Bronislau Kaper (Invitation) and Hugo Friedhofer (Between Heaven and Hell).
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Graphic design-wise, from January 2000, the label abandoned the Golden and Silver front banners and explored a minimalistic artwork with Take a Hard Ride but the first front cover I noticed was for The Omega Man: black background, actors’ profile, fancy sans-serif typeface derived from Tom Carnase’s Neo-Art Deco-oriented Busorama. I also enjoyed the one for THX 1138 with the white on white bare leaning.
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THE SUMMIT OF THE SILVER AGE |
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What made FSM different was the lavish art direction of Joe Sikoryak supervised by Lukas Kendall’s demanding input over the booklets and his memorable track-by-track analysis. The alpha of FSM was a Silver Age title and the omega was also a Silver Age title therefore the cyle was complete. Hats off to FSM which was the king of the Silver Age! All good things come to an end “but” they will be remembered as a turning point in the confidential history of soundtracks. The Man from FSM Lukas Kendall works now as a mercenary for other labels since 2012.
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Today in Film Score History:
April 19 |
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| Alan Price born (1942) |
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| Alfred Newman begins recording his score for David and Bathsheba (1951) |
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| Dag Wiren died (1986) |
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| David Fanshawe born (1942) |
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| Dudley Moore born (1935) |
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| Harry Sukman begins recording his score for A Thunder of Drums (1961) |
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| Henry Mancini begins recording his score for The Great Race (1965) |
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| Joe Greene born (1915) |
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| John Addison begins recording his score for Swashbuckler (1976) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score for Fitzwilly (1967) |
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| Jonathan Tunick born (1938) |
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| Lord Berners died (1950) |
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| Michael Small begins recording his score to Klute (1971) |
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| Paul Baillargeon records his score for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “When It Rains…” (1999) |
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| Ragnar Bjerkreim born (1958) |
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| Ron Jones records his score for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "We'll Always Have Paris" (1988) |
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| Sol Kaplan born (1919) |
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| Thomas Wander born (1973) |
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| William Axt born (1888) |
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