And now a geek moment
This is actually a cool deal for me. I was about to say “big deal,” but that’s overselling it:
I follow the film music industry. Over half of my CD collection is music used in film and TV, ranging from famous John Williams stuff to obscure but classic work like Bernard Herrmann’s score to Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. I even wrote for Film Score Monthly a few times (really: go to the Search option and type in either “Christopher Walsh” or “Chris Walsh,” and see some of what was crossing my mind and flowing from my fingers in the late 1990s). My college thesis talks about the use of music to help along the story of The Fisher King. Interviewing Michael Kamen by phone was a highlight of my life as a reporter. I really enjoy this stuff.
This morning I made an online order through Varese Sarabande - the largest label to concentrate on film and TV music, and a place I covered in a 1995 article for the former print version of FSM - and its Soundtrack Club release of a major work that was never released until now: Elmer Bernstein’s score to Ghostbusters. The old soundtrack was 90% songs and the orchestral theme. This will have everything Bernstein wrote for the film, including at least one major unused cue (for when the ghosts start spreading across Manhattan; this was replaced by that kind-of-spoken-word song with the guy deadpanning “I believe it’s magic, magic…”). It’s limited to 3,000 copies, and I didn’t even know about it until yesterday, but I’m making sure I’ll get one.
Other orchestral thunder coming my way via this order will be Alex North’s music for The Agony and the Ecstasy in 1965 (North + Epics = some of the best film music ever) and, veering back to the ’80s, the utterly thundering score to RoboCop that Basil Poledouris wrote. The RoboCop march is one of my pieces of motivating music: “Duh Da duh duh DUH! Duh DA duh duh!” sometimes plays in my head as I head off somewhere…
I follow the film music industry. Over half of my CD collection is music used in film and TV, ranging from famous John Williams stuff to obscure but classic work like Bernard Herrmann’s score to Beneath the 12-Mile Reef. I even wrote for Film Score Monthly a few times (really: go to the Search option and type in either “Christopher Walsh” or “Chris Walsh,” and see some of what was crossing my mind and flowing from my fingers in the late 1990s). My college thesis talks about the use of music to help along the story of The Fisher King. Interviewing Michael Kamen by phone was a highlight of my life as a reporter. I really enjoy this stuff.
This morning I made an online order through Varese Sarabande - the largest label to concentrate on film and TV music, and a place I covered in a 1995 article for the former print version of FSM - and its Soundtrack Club release of a major work that was never released until now: Elmer Bernstein’s score to Ghostbusters. The old soundtrack was 90% songs and the orchestral theme. This will have everything Bernstein wrote for the film, including at least one major unused cue (for when the ghosts start spreading across Manhattan; this was replaced by that kind-of-spoken-word song with the guy deadpanning “I believe it’s magic, magic…”). It’s limited to 3,000 copies, and I didn’t even know about it until yesterday, but I’m making sure I’ll get one.
Other orchestral thunder coming my way via this order will be Alex North’s music for The Agony and the Ecstasy in 1965 (North + Epics = some of the best film music ever) and, veering back to the ’80s, the utterly thundering score to RoboCop that Basil Poledouris wrote. The RoboCop march is one of my pieces of motivating music: “Duh Da duh duh DUH! Duh DA duh duh!” sometimes plays in my head as I head off somewhere…