Evolution takes a left turn.
20 Tracks - 81:29
1. WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK 6:25
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
2. MALCOLM'S JOURNEY 5:32
(The Lost World - John Williams)
3. TREE PEOPLE 1:40
(Jurassic Park III - Don Davis)
4. JURASSIC PARK GATE 0:42
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
5. HAMMOND'S PLAN 2:15
(The Lost World - John Williams)
6. JOURNEY TO THE ISLAND 8:40
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
7. ISLA SORNA SAILING SOLUTION 4:11
(Jurassic Park III - Don Davis)
8. LUDLOW'S DEMISE 3:35
(The Lost World - John Williams)
9. HATCHING BABY RAPTOR 3:16
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
10. THE STEGOSAURUS 5:02
(The Lost World - John Williams)
11. BONE MAN BEN 7:05
(Jurassic Park III - Don Davis)
12. THE HUNT 3:23
(The Lost World - John Williams)
13. REMEMBERING PETTICOAT LANE 2:35
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
14. RAPTOR AFTERMATH 0:46
(Jurassic Park III - Don Davis)
15. MY FRIEND, THE BRACHIOSAURUS 3:24
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
16. THE HAT RETURNS 4:33
(Jurassic Park III - Don Davis)
17. HIGH WIRE STUNTS 4:03
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
18. VISITOR IN SAN DIEGO 5:22
(The Lost World - John Williams)
19. T-REX RESCUE 0:58
(Jurassic Park - John Williams)
20. FINALE and JURASSIC PARK THEME 7:50
(The Lost World - John Williams)
JURASSIC PARK & THE LOST WORLD
Composed and Conducted by JOHN WILLIAMS
Orchestrations by ALEXANDER COURAGE, CONRAD POPE, JOHN NUEFELD and DENNIS DREITH
Engineered by SHAWN MURPHY Assisted by SUSAN McLEAN
Recorded at Sony Scoring Stage, Culver City, California
JURASSIC PARK III
Composed, Orchestrated and Conducted by DON DAVIS
Incorporating Original Themes Composed by JOHN WILLIAMS
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at the Newman Stage, Twentieth Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, California
I remember reading Royal S. Brown's review of the Jurassic Park score where he said that John Williams' theme for the island was so elephantine that it "would overstate things if Luke Skywalker teamed up with Indiana Jones to defeat Saddam Hussein." I can't really disagree with that assessment; the theme is obnoxious in its grandeur, gaudy in its splashing Williams-isms... and I love it. It was certainly the aspect of the film that I responded to the most; while the dinosaurs were certainly impressive for their time, the leaden dramatics - many of which already existed in Michael Crichton's book, itself just another variation on his Westworld and Futureworld concepts - combined with Steven Spielberg's inevitable attack of the cutes left me rather cold.
While I enjoyed much of the score for Jurassic Park, I feel that its album presentation is somewhat annoying. Nevertheless, while the island theme may be overstating things a bit, the score has some very arresting other themes as well. While the music is, on the whole, fairly a traditional adventure score, there are moments that Williams imbues with a transcendental quality. The dinosaurs themselves are often given noble accompaniment in keeping with their majesty; I can forgive Williams if his score gets a little saccharine for the parts of the film that feature Sam Niell Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards; it works for the scenes.
However, my lukewarm reaction to the film also made me indifferent to the sequels that followed. That meant that I missed the scores as well until lehah recommended them to me. For the sequel, Williams concentrated primarily on new material, but also further developing the familiar themes. The addition of the percussion gave the score a very different - and refreshing - flavor. The Lost World turned out to be one of Williams' most exciting action scores, also one of his best albums.
What Don Davis achieved with the third film's score is very impressive. He effectively integrates Williams' thematic material - even developing some of his themes further - with his own very distinct style. This is a feat perhaps only matched by John Ottman's Superman Returns score; the previous Superman sequels were for the most part just re-arrangments of the 1978 original, William Ross' contribution to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was primarily to fill in what Williams didn't write for the new film with pieces from the predecessor. Jurassic Park III isn't like that - it's a Don Davis score that uses some of Williams' themes - the music is full of his trademark oscillating string figures, and when the action gets really intense, those blaring brass blossoms (say that three times real fast) are pure Davis. And yet, he manages to bridge the gap between what the Williams themes sound like (which are often heard in fairly straight arrangments) and how he approaches a score so well that I had absolutely no problem integrating his pieces with those of Williams (the only difficulty being the disparity between Armin Steiner's rather crisp, concise - and loud - sound, versus Shawn Murphy's much more ambient recording style).
Now, I have never seen the two Jurassic Park sequels, and I haven't seen the film since I saw it in the theater in 1993 - which was a dismal experience, even though it was the premiere of the new DTS system (the theater I saw it in was, until 2004 when it had fallen into disrepair, the best sounding theater in Queens). So I was, in fact, approaching this mix blind for the most part. I concentrated on making a satisfying album out of the music available to me rather than relate anything to the movies themselves. This was a similar situation as when I put together my Rambo trilogy mix, where I hadn't seen the films at the time but was familiar with the music. Actually, another parallel with the Rambo trilogy can be made here... the Jurassic Park trilogy shares the same sequel title insanity; as First Blood gives way to Rambo: First Blood Part II, which in turn inexplicably leads to Rambo III so does Jurassic Park pave the way for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which then somehow lands us at a Jurassic Park III. I really don't get it (in fact, I don't understand why sequels suddenly require having the original film's name in the title at all - I'm not saying that it should always be avoided, but why is it thought to be necessary? Bond films still make money).
This disc turned out to be a lot of fun to make. While I did a bit of editing, most of the work was in finding which tracks fit best against one another and in what sequence. I actually landed on a structure I liked very much pretty early on. While I have used the "side one" and "side two" idea before, this one was programmed as four sides, like a double LP. I didn't make any such notations on the track listing or label because this wasn't meant as a literal point of demarcation (some of them aren't even audible). It was instead simply a reference for myself; the first three sides were to have a bit of everything in order to keep the sequencing engaging (side one was tracks 1 - 5, side two was 6 - 10, side three was 11 - 15), while side four (tracks 16 - 20) would lean heavy on the action. It also made it fairly easy to keep the album balanced; many elements of it are symmetrical, both from the full presentations of the materia primoris opening and closing the disc to the mirroring of the use of "Journey to the Island" to get the album into full swing with "The Hat Returns" - both tracks featuring very fleshed out settings of themes - to signal the album's endgame. The Davis choices were hard to make, but they slid so easily into the Williams tracks from the other two films that once I had made my selections, it was fairly easy to place them. I ended up favoring his family theme because it made a nice impression when contrasted with the Williams tracks, but the lengthy "Bone Man Ben" .
"Welcome to Jurassic Park" is not the album track, but rather "Theme from Jurassic Park" and "End Credits;" this allows the album to start with the four note 'warning' motif that Williams opened the first film with (albeit in a much more forbidding key); I also like the arrangment of the former track better than its counterpart in "Welcome to Jurassic Park," which I feel is a bit too long. Most of the rest of the edits are just nips and tucks here and there, but I'm really happy with how a lot of these transitions worked out - the album moves from film to film without missing a beat. "Raptor Aftermath" is an excerpt from "Raptor Repartee" on the original Jurassic Park III album. There is one index marker on the album, at the very end right where "Finale" becomes "Jurassic Park Theme" in the selection from The Lost World. I really enjoy ending with a reprise of material from an opening track to give an album in order to give an album some closure. Thus, the "Jurassic Park Theme" reprises many elements from the opening track (including a few phrases that existed in the actual "Welcome to Jurassic Park" album track, but not the edit appearing here), but this time instead of the dark coda featuring the aforementioned four-note motif, Williams ramps up the orchestra in an adaptation of the very end of the "Finale" from the first film (which followed "T-Rex Attack" on that film's soundtrack), to authoritatively close off the album.
Strangely enough, I was immensely popular on the two nights during which I compiled it, recieving quite a few phone calls, during which I puttered about online to gather up images for the album artwork - which ended up being completed before the final edit of the album. I also think that the artwork looks quite nice - I did a little fiddling with an image of the "Jurassic Park" logo carved in stone to make it a decent backdrop that text would be clear against. I really like the result.
