Soundtrack Round-Up: Intrada Cuts to “The Core,” Music Box Goes “Overboard,” FSM Inches Toward the Finish Line

With the release of another major holy grail in the world of soundtrack collecting yesterday, it’s worth pointing out another four awesome archival titles that may have been lost in the shuffle this past week.

First, Intrada’s latest batch of catalogue soundtrack releases, announced Monday, bring to light two underrated gems from two very different composers. First up, after years of waiting, is an official release to the score to the 2003 sci-fi cult-classic The Core. Composer Christopher Young, whose eclectic body of work ventures from horror (A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge) to action (Spider-Man 3), wrote an accessible, urgent score that many of his fans consider to be his best. (A powerful effort, indeed, despite a film consistently derided as scientifically implausible.) The two-disc set adds an additional 20 minutes of music than what’s been heard on a composer promotional disc, all mastered from Paramount Pictures’ session master tapes.

The label has also prepped the debut release of Georges Delerue’s score to Rapture, a 1965 drama about a forbidden romance in rural France. A haunting, melodic score  – one of the earliest scores by Delerue that exists in its entirety – the complete score is presented direct from tapes at 20th Century Fox as well as the composer’s personal mono 1/4″ tapes.

Another surprise release comes from French label Music Box Records: the complete score to the 1987 romantic comedy Overboard. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn (a real-life couple since 1983) star in the tale of a carpenter whose spoiled client develops amnesia after falling overboard on her yacht. The carpenter takes advantage of the situation by passing her off as his middle-class wife, and hilarity predictably ensues. The score, composed by legendary composer Alan Silvestri and released for the first time anywhere, is limited to 1,000 copies.

Finally, with all the frenzy for Gremlins from Film Score Monthly yesterday, it was easy to overlook another very exciting release from the label: two unreleased scores for two CBS television pilots composed by two music legends. Nightwatch, originally titled Chicago, Chicago, was a suspenseful drama created by Robert Altman, who had successfully brought to CBS a few similar features on Kraft Suspense Theatre, had a young jazz composer named Johnny Williams provide the scores for both those features and Nightwatch. (The pilot was ultimately never picked up, and later aired in 1968 as part of a one-off anthology. John Williams later composed the scores to Images (1972) and The Long Goodbye (1973) for Altman.) Similarly, a 1971 pilot about a doctor and cop who team up to stop a murderer in Los Angeles, Killer by Night, was not picked up for a series, but featured a jazzy score by the legendary Quincy Jones.

Both scores on this release are largely sourced from 1/4″ mono tapes, mixed with a slight stereo ambience. (The theme and format music from Nightwatch are mixed in pure stereo.) And the set, limited to 3,000 copies, is, sadly, the last releases from both composers for the soon-to-be-retired FSM label.

Details and order info for all the scores above can be found after the jump.

EMI Dives Into BBC Vaults for Deep Purple

The recent reissue of John Peel sessions isn’t EMI’s only new batch of treasures from the BBC vaults. The label is releasing a compilation of classic sessions from rock legends Deep Purple next week.

BBC Sessions 1968-1970 is a two-disc set collecting all the surviving sessions in the BBC archives from the first two iterations of Deep Purple’s lineups. Deep Purple Mk. 1 featured singer Rod Evans, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Nick Simper, drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Jon Lord; Mk. II swapped in vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover. (Gillan, Glover and Pace remain members of the band to this day.)

Eight of the tracks from the Mk. I lineup are released here for the first time, inlcuding three tracks from a 1968 Top Gear session and four from Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae Session in 1969. The other tracks have been released on reissues and box sets in the past decade. But however rare these tracks may be, some of these tracks remain among the most-loved of any recordings the band has ever put out. For Deep Purple fans, it looks like a must-own when it’s released in the U.K. next Monday, November 7, on both CD and vinyl.

Hit the jump for the full specs on the release.

Deep Purple, BBC Sessions 1968-1970 (EMI 50999 679551 2 1 (U.K.), 2011)

Disc 1: Mk. 1 Sessions

1. Hush (BBC Top Gear Session – 6/18/1968)
2. One More Rainy Day (BBC Top Gear Session – 6/18/1968)
3. Help! (BBC Top Gear Session – 6/18/1968)
4. And the Address (BBC Dave Symonds Show Session)
5. Hey Bop A Re Bop (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/14/1969) *
6. Emmaretta (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/14/1969) *
7. Wring That Neck (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/14/1969) *
8. Brian Matthew Interviews Rod Evans (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/8/1969)
9. Hey Joe (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/14/1969) *
10. It’s All Over (BBC Top Gear Session – 1/14/1969) *
11. The Painter (BBC Sounds Like Tony Brandon Show Session – 6/24/1969) *
12. Lalena (BBC Sounds Like Tony Brandon Show Session – 6/24/1969) *
13. The Painter (BBC Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae Session – 6/30/1969)
14. I’m So Glad (BBC Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae Session – 6/30/1969)
15. Hush (BBC Chris Grant’s Tasty Pop Sundae Session – 6/30/1969)

Disc 2: Mk. 2 Sessions *

1. Ricochet (BBC Symonds on Sunday Show Session – 8/11/1969)
2. The Bird Has Flown (BBC Symonds on Sunday Show Session – 8/11/1969)
3. Speed King (BBC Stuart Henry Noise at Nine Session – 10/31/1969)
4. Jam Stew (aka John Stew) (BBC Stuart Henry Noise at Nine Session – 10/31/1969)
5. Hard Lovin’ Man (BBC Mike Harding’s Sounds of the Seventies Session – 4/21/1970)
6. Bloodsucker (BBC Mike Harding’s Sounds of the Seventies Session – 4/21/1970)
7. Living Wreck (BBC Mike Harding’s Sounds of the Seventies Session – 4/21/1970)
8. Jon Lord Interview (BBC Transcription Services Session – 9/23/1970)
9. Black Night (BBC Transcription Services Session – 9/23/1970)
10. Grabsplatter (BBC Transcription Services Session – 9/23/1970)
11. Into the Fire (BBC Transcription Services Session – 9/23/1970)
12. Child in Time (BBC Transcription Services Session – 9/23/1970)

* indicates previously released material

• Disc 1, Tracks 5, 7 and 10 first released on a reissue of The Book of Taliesyn (EMI 72435 21608 2 2, 2000)
• Disc 1, Tracks 6, 11 and 12 first released on a reissue of Deep Purple (EMI 72435 21597 2 7, 2000)
• Disc 1, Track 9 first released on a reissue of Shades of Deep Purple (EMI 72434 98336 2 3, 2000)
• Disc 2, Tracks 1-9 and 11-12 first released on Listen Learn Read On box set (EMI 72435 40973 2 4, 2002)
• Disc 2, Track 10 first released on The Anthology (Harvest EN 26 0612 3, 1985)

A Dream Goes On Forever: Rundgren’s Live “Todd” Comes To CD and DVD

Who’s that on the racks again?  A portrait of a crazy man, trying to make a living off an elpee’s worth of toons!

Well, the man in question was Todd Rundgren, the year was 1974, and he was appearing on the record racks with his fifth LP (elpee?) simply entitled Todd.  The name was the only simple aspect of the album, however!   Though Rundgren was, in fact, making a living as a prolific songwriter, artist, arranger and producer, the restlessly creative polymath wasn’t taking things easy.   Todd was a mélange of the many eclectic influences that informed Rundgren’s past efforts, including but not limited to Philadelphia soul, Laura Nyro-esque piano balladry, British Invasion rock, operetta and far-out synthesizer journeys.  The self-referential “An Elpee’s Worth of Toons” (“I can see the write-ups now/The multitudes are crying for an elpee’s worth of toons/A man would simply have to be as mad as a hatter/To try to change the world with a plastic platter!”) was just one of the doggedly personal songs on the lengthy album, which took the sprawling variety of 1972 breakthrough Something/Anything (including the perennial pop smashes “Hello, It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light”) to an even more intense, avant garde level.

In recent years, Rundgren has been open to revisiting his past both onstage and on record, while continuing to create new music in various genres, from blues to arena rock to dance pop (!).  So successful were Rundgren’s live performances of his 1973 opus A Wizard, A True Star that he subsequently performed a double bill of two more classics: Todd and Healing. A Wizard was the predecessor to Todd, and introduced the same blend of beautifully-crafted songs and outré experiments and song fragments that the artist would explore further on Todd.  RockBeat Records has announced that Rundgren’s performances of both Todd and Healing will arrive on CD and DVD, kicking off with the February 14, 2012 release of Todd in concert.

Hit the jump for more details!