Release Round-Up: Week of September 2

Willie Hutch, In Tune (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Willie Hutch, Midnight Dancer (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Esther Phillips, Alone Again, Naturally (Expanded Edition) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. ) /Ullanda McCullough, Ullanda McCullough/Watching You, Watching Me (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Ray Griff, The Entertainer – Greatest U.S. & Canadian Hits (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Rick Wakeman, Rick Wakeman’s Criminal Record (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / The Ides of March, Vehicle (Expanded Edition) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.) / Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Vol. 16 – Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 11/8/69 (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. ) (all Real Gone Music)

Real Gone Music is kicking off September with classic soul, disco, country, prog rock, jazz-rock and more on this packed slate of eight titles!

George Benson, Breezin’ SACD (Audio Fidelity) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Audio Fidelity makes a splash in the multi-channel audio arena with this hybrid SACD release featuring stereo and surround mixes of the guitar great’s pop breakthrough!

Big Star, # 1 Record and Radio City (Stax)

# 1 Record : Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Radio City: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Concord has a pair of standalone reissues of Big Star’s first two albums with new liner notes from R.E.M.’s Mike Mills!

Jackie DeShannon, She Did It! The Songs of Jackie DeShannon, Volume 2 (Ace) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Ace has a second volume filled with hits and rarities from the pen of the great Jackie DeShannon – including tracks from Olivia Newton-John, The Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers, Peter and Gordon, Rita Coolidge, Tammy Grimes, The Carpenters, Randy Edelman, and of course, Kim Carnes with the smash hit “Bette Davis Eyes” – plus an exclusive demo from Jackie herself!  Look for Joe’s review coming soon!

Game Theory, Blaze of Glory (Omnivore) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Omnivore has CD and vinyl reissues of the 1982 debut album from power pop/new wave band Game Theory, generously expanding the CD edition with fifteen bonus tracks – eleven of which are previously unissued!  The label promises this will be the first in a series, so don’t miss out – this is the ground floor!

10cc, Ten Out of 10 and Windows in the Jungle (UMC)

10cc’s eighth and ninth albums get the deluxe treatment in the U.K.!  The expanded  Ten Out Of 10  features 7 bonus tracks including B-sides and live versions; Windows, 10cc’s first collaboration with Andrew Gold, adds seven bonuses including B-sides and tracks from the U.S. version of the album.

Ten Out of 10: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Windows: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

Michel Legrand, The Other Side of Midnight: Original Music from the Motion Picture (Intrada)

Intrada is now shipping the CD premiere of composer Michel Legrand’s (The Thomas Crown Affair, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) lush, atmospheric score to director Charles Jarrott’s (Lost Horizon) 1977 film based on Sidney Sheldon’s novel.

James Horner, Gorky Park: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack (Intrada)

Also newly-available from Intrada: a newly expanded presentation of James Horner’s (Titanic, Braveheart) score to Michael Apted’s 1983 crime thriller.  This edition features the complete score in true stereo for the first time, and a brace of bonus tracks!

“Star Trek,” “Abyss” Surface in Surprise Varese Club Batch

Varese Sarabande has opened up a new batch of CD Club limited edition soundtrack reissues for the holidays. Beginning in 2014, six titles – including two deluxe editions – will start shipping from the long-running soundtrack label.

First up, a milestone from the final frontier: Varese expands the soundtrack to 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis. This time, the USS Enterprise encounters a dangerous foe from within the Romulan Empire: a villainous clone of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (played by a then-unknown Tom Hardy, later celebrated for his performances in Inception and The Dark Knight Rises as the criminal mastermind Bane). Nemesis was the final mission for both the crew from Star Trek: The Next Generation and composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose scores to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Insurrection became icons of the franchise. Goldsmith’s dark, sinister score ultimately gave way to that heroic fanfare we all know and love, and was one of the few high points of the critically-maligned, financially-unsuccessful film. It was also one of the final scores by the ever-prolific Goldsmith until his passing the following year. With this double-disc expanded release, one now has the exciting ability to purchase the complete scores to all ten of the original TOS and TNG-era Trek films.

Varese next heads from space to undersea with a double-disc presentation of Alan Silvestri’s score to The Abyss. James Cameron’s third blockbuster of the 1980s (following the critical and commercial smash hits The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986)) has a crew of Navy SEALs hoping to recover a lost submarine before a Soviet crew does – but what they find deep under the waves could be much more dangerous. Featuring Oscar-winning special effects (including the iconic “pseudopod” sequence, where a computer-generated water tentacle appears before the crew), The Abyss is one of Cameron’s more underrated big-budget efforts, a film that increased in critical appraisal after the release of a “Special Edition” in 1992. (With the film’s 25th anniversary approaching this year, a Blu-Ray premiere would certainly be optimal!) Silvestri’s score is now presented on two discs with 10 alternate cues.

The label’s reissue wave concludes with four straight reissues, all of which have been out of print for years. There’s the 1978 suspense Brass Target, a fictional tale suggesting the car crash that killed U.S. General George S. Patton was in fact a conpsiracy; Laurence Rosenthal’s score was the very first album of original material ever released by Varese Sarabande, and makes its CD debut here. Michael Kamen’s score to the 1987 courtroom drama Suspect, starring Cher and Dennis Quaid as a public defender and jury member working together to solve the murder of a Justice Department clerk (a then-unknown Liam Neeson plays the deaf-mute, homeless Vietnam veteran accused of her killing), also gets reissued onto CD, this time featuring all 17 of its cues indexed individually instead of as the two suites that occupied each side of the original album. The batch is rounded out by reissues of James Horner’s score to Vibes, a maligned 1988 comedy starring Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum as psychics in search of a fabled lost city, and Jerry Goldsmith’s first all-electronic score to Runaway, a Michael Crichton-penned and directed sci-fi thriller with Tom Selleck. (Goldsmith’s original LP was greatly expanded as a limited edition CD in 2006; this program is now back on disc.)

All titles are strictly limited: Star Trek tops out at 5,000 units, The Abyss at 3,000, Brass Target at 1,000 and the remainder at 2,000 apiece. They ship this week, so hit the jump and place your orders!

Intrada Conjures Up Magic, “Miracle”; Kritzerland Returns to “Alien Nation”

This week has seen some great archival soundtrack releases courtesy of Intrada and Kritzerland – all featuring some big names in the film score world.

Kritzerland’s latest title is already shaping up to be a hot one: a greatly expanded double-score reissue from the cult classic Alien Nation. This 1988 film featured James Caan and Mandy Patinkin as partnered cops in a future Los Angeles where a race of aliens, called Newcomers, have landed on Earth and have done their best to fit in with our planet’s culture. The catch, of course, is that Patinkin is the first Newcomer detective on the LAPD. The unlikely pair eventually have to solve a case that takes them into the criminal underbelly of the Newcomer culture. The film was successful enough to spin off a short-lived TV series, five subsequent TV movies and a host of comics and novels.

The music of Alien Nation has an intriguing pedigree: Jerry Goldsmith originally wrote a strongly thematic, electronic-dominated score for the film before it was significantly re-edited. Composer Curt Sobel stepped in to record a new, somewhat darker and noir-inspired score, while Goldsmith reused his Alien Nation theme for the 1990 spy film The Russia House. (The theme was in fact rejected once before, for Oliver Stone’s Wall Street.)

While Varese Sarabande released Goldsmith’s score years back, Kritzerland’s double-disc set remasters and presents both scores, with Sobel’s appearing on CD for the first time anywhere. (The score on this release was prepared in part from a cancelled album.) Limited to 1,200 copies (and likely selling fast), Alien Nation is shipping now.

After the jump, find out what Intrada’s scared up from Elmer Bernstein and The Walt Disney Company!

Come Out and Play: Soundtrack Spotlight on Latest from La-La Land and Kritzerland

Kritzerland has served up quite the “miracle” with their latest release, and two of La-La Land’s latest feature favorite composers and cult titles – all here in our semi-regular soundtrack round-up!

The acclaimed adaptation of the Broadway play The Miracle Worker – featuring original playwright William Gibson and director Arthur Penn and returning cast members Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke – told the amazing true story of Anne Sullivan, caretaker to the deaf and blind Helen Keller, whose teachings enabled Keller to not only communicate but become an outspoken voice for workers’ rights, women’s suffrage and more. Bancroft and Duke each won Oscars for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress (at the time, the 16-year-old Duke was the youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar), while Penn and Gibson received nominations.

Laurence Rosenthal’s evocative score eluded accolades at the time of the film’s release, but it has since deservedly received accolades from film score enthusiasts – especially after Intrada released the score for the first time in 2010. That version is now out of print, but Kritzerland has ably stepped in to bring the score back into circulation. What’s better, they’ve corrected some minor audio issues (removing some reverb and audio dropouts from the previous release) and appended it with two bonus tracks from the film.

Limited to 1,000 copies, The Miracle Worker is expected to ship at the end of September, although pre-orders tend to ship a few weeks early.

After the jump, check out two of the latest releases from La-La Land!

Soundtrack Watch: Intrada’s Busy Month

Calling all soundtrack lovers: Intrada has been pretty busy in the last few weeks, reissuing or expanding three diverse scores and premiering another on CD.

The label’s most recent batch saw a pair of double-disc score sets, and the first up was James Horner’s action-packed score to 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. Based on the Tom Clancy novel, Clear and Present Danger finds the irascible agent Jack Ryan (played again by Harrison Ford, his second turn in the role after 1992’s Patriot Games) serving as acting deputy director of the CIA, only to find a covert drug war in Colombia is being conducted behind his back – and the President may be in on the scheme. Many of Horner’s dramatic action cues from this film are making their proper debut on this two-disc set, along with a few extras from the original soundtrack CD.

Last week also saw the reissue of Intrada’s double-disc presentation of Inchon, Jerry Goldsmith’s score to the Terence Young dramatization of the pivotal Korean War battle. Initially released on LP by the Regency International label upon initial release in 1981, Intrada oversaw a release of the original score as heard in the film on CD in 1988, and then expanded that program in 2006 as a two-disc set featuring both complete score and original soundtrack LP. That program is now available once more – and as an unlimited title, preserved in the label’s catalogue from this point. It’s another traditionally strong mid-period Goldsmith score for everyone to enjoy again.

Intrada also bowed a few single-disc sets in the weeks before their latest batch: first there was a straight remastered reissue of Maurice Jarre’s score to Dreamscape, a Dennis Quaid-anchored sci-fi film about infiltrating people’s dreams two decades before Inception, and the premiere of Jerry Fielding’s score to Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, which found a few all-star groups of explorers revisiting the half-sunken ocean liner. Full details on all four sets, including track lists and order links can be found after the jump!

Soundtrack Watch: Intrada Debuts Unreleased Goldsmith, Horner Scores, La-La Land Has “The Fury”

The past week has been a boon to fans of A-list composers of the Silver Age of film scoring. Intrada has unearthed two unreleased scores (one entirely unused) by two of the most beloved composers of recent memory, while La-La Land has put back into print one of the most underrated scores by another genius of the same vintage.

James Horner had one of the best years of his career in 1989, scoring Field of Dreams and Glory that year and earning an Oscar and Golden Globe nod, respectively, for those works. He also lent his talents to In Country, a drama by Norman Jewison based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s novel. It tells the story of a Kentucky teenager (Emily Lloyd, a recent breakout performer from the film Wish You Were Here) who uncovers the mystery of her father, who died in the Vietnam War, with the help of his brother (a Golden Globe-nominated Bruce Willis), a fellow veteran with whom she lives. A tender score with some military undertones, Horner’s In Country was never released, an LP program having been scuttled in post-production. Now, Intrada and Warner release that album with another eight tracks, presenting the complete score in its entirety.

Not to be confused with the Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe film, 1992’s Gladiator was a little seen sports drama about the friendship between two young men (James Marshall and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) trapped by circumstances in an underground boxing circuit. While the released film’s music wasn’t much to write home about (a solid electronic score by Terminator composer Brad Fiedel, a strange compilation album on CBS Records featuring tracks by C+C Music Factory, 3rd Bass and Warrant), the original plan featured a score by legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith. Featuring full orchestra with synthesizers and percussion on display, the results were classic Jerry – and perplexing that the cues are only making their debut now. But it’s the full score, direct from the original session mixes and produced by longtime collaborator Bruce Botnick – and it’s yours to order from Intrada.

After the jump, John Williams scares the daylights out of you with the sound of The Fury!

As the Globe Turns: Universal Adds Classic, Possibly Rare, Soundtrack Material to Blu-Ray Box Set

In 1912, an ex-dry goods merchant and owner of the nascent Independent Moving Pictures (IMP) studio stood in a New York office with five other movie moguls and made history.

These six men, organized by IMP founder Carl Laemmle, were keen to merge their businesses with an eye toward the growing big business of moviemaking. As they struggled for a title for their venture, Laemmle allegedly saw a wagon zip by on the street below with a grandiose name: “Universal Pipe Fitters.” Turning back to the window, he announced the venture would be named Universal, an apt name for the magnitude of what they wanted to accomplish.

A century later, Universal is one of the biggest entertainment corporations in the world and the longest-running American film company. Dozens of their blockbuster films sit toward the top of the all-time box office lists, and their bi-coastal studio backlot/theme parks in Los Angeles and Orlando are prime vacation destinations. For film fans, Universal has been keen to celebrate their 100th anniversary this year, releasing not only stunning restorations of classic films on Blu-Ray (JAWS hit shops last week, with boxes devoted to Alfred Hitchcock and Universal Studios Monsters due in the next few months along with the hi-def debut of Second Disc favorite E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) but at least one classic soundtrack in the form of the premiere release of Henry Mancini’s original film score to the classic Charade.

On November 6, the studio will release their biggest box set yet – a collection of 25 of their most classic films with value-added bonus content. But soundtrack enthusiasts will want to keep an eye on this package for the possibility of exceptionally rare film music. We explain all after the jump.

Near, Far, Wherever You Are: “Titanic” Soundtrack to Be Reissued This Spring

A hundred years ago, it was the largest maritime disaster in history. Fifteen years ago, it was the highest-grossing film of all time and the last massive soundtrack on the pop charts. Now, Sony Classical brings the soundtrack to James Cameron’s Titanic back to the surface in a major way with two collector’s editions of the popular album.

On paper, Titanic would have been your average romantic tearjerker: lower-class boy woos upper-class girl to the displeasure of her wealthy suitor. But that simple story was set against the real-life backdrop of the April 15, 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, the world’s largest luxury ocean liner touted for its unsinkability. In total, 1,517 people did not survive the ship’s collision with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean.

A story that grandiose earned its stripes as a filmmaking epic when James Cameron, the creator of the Terminator series and The Abyss, tackled a $200 million film adaptation. Despite the major financial stake, three hour-plus running time and cast led by relative unknowns Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, Titanic was a dizzying success. It grossed $1.8 billion worldwide, made stars out of its cast and won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director – a tie for the most statuettes won in a single night.

The film’s stirring score was composed by noted composer James Horner. Though Horner had a rocky past with Cameron thanks to the high-pressure scoring of Aliens in 1986, his evocative melodies, colored with wordless solo vocals, were lauded by critics.

Coupled with a bombastic end title single, “My Heart Will Go On,” written by Horner and lyricist Will Jennings and recorded by Canadian megastar Celine Dion, the Titanic soundtrack was as much a smash as the film it came from. Altogether, the album was certified diamond in the U.S. with over 11 million units shipped; it topped the charts for 16 consecutive weeks and won a total of four Oscars and Golden Globes (one of each award for the score and one for “My Heart Will Go On,” respectively). “My Heart Will Go On” would win four Grammys of its own, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

Now, to tie in to the 100th anniversary of the sinking and subsequent 3-D theatrical reissue, Sony Classical will release two expanded editions of the soundtrack next month. Does the Heart of the Ocean (musically speaking, anyway) lurk within these sets? Find out after the jump.

Friday Feature: “An American Tail”

Let’s get the opinions out of the way: An American Tail is not a great movie. I’m not even sure it’s a good movie; I probably wouldn’t even be writing this had it not been an early childhood favorite. But while the film doesn’t quite pan out as a cohesive piece of work, there are some great parts – an interesting approach to plot and animation, and certainly a brilliant batch of soundtrack writing – that make the film worth writing about.

The thing you have to remember about An American Tail, released 25 years ago during the holiday season of 1986, was that the animated flick didn’t have much in the way of direct competition. Disney was three years away from their stunning reinvention as a pop-art animation studio, having most recently released The Great Mouse Detective months earlier. Adding insult to injury – at least for Disney – was the fact that the director was Don Bluth, an ex-Disney animator who had enjoyed some success with The Secret of NIMH (1983) and the laserdisc-based video game Dragon’s Lair (1983).

The story, however, is the kind of classic family yarn you’d expect from the film’s producer, Steven Spielberg. It’s the story of a family of Russian Jews who move to America, and the son, Fievel (named for Spielberg’s grandfather), who gets separated from the family before arriving at Ellis Island and has an adventure trying to find them. Of course, it’s an animated movie, so the family is made up of mice (the Mousekewitz family), but the fine-tuned pathos, not to mention a genuine interest in maintaining a modicum of accuracy to the real-life uphill climb of immigrants in America, is palpable when you watch this movie as an adult.

Part of the fun of An American Tail is its musical sensibilities, both in orchestral score and the four Disney-esque musical numbers peppered throughout the film. Anticipating the trend of classic Disney soundtracks from the likes of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (renowned for their offbeat Broadway-pop tunes in Little Shop of Horrors) in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the production team recruited rising composer James Horner to provide the musical score, and paired him with legendary songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for the numbers “There Are No Cats in America,” “A Duo,” “Never Say Never” and “Somewhere Out There.” The work as a whole brims with hummable themes, from the mournful, Eastern European-flavored violin solo representing the plight of the Mouskewitzes to the multi-national pastiche of “There Are No Cats,” where various immigrants justify their risky travel to the New World.

But the film’s signature song, the yearning “Somewhere Out There” (sung in the film by Fievel and his sister Tanya, neither of whom realize they’re both in the same city), was a surprise to even Mann and Weil. The composers stated in interviews that there was no pressure to write a hit single, and were in fact surprised when Spielberg suggested that “Somewhere Out There” would have crossover potential. A version uniting Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram and produced by Peter Asher was recorded and indeed became a smash, peaking at No. 2 in the U.S. and winning Song of the Year at the 30th Grammy Awards in 1988. (It lost both Oscar and Golden Globes to Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun.)

After the jump, check out the soundtrack’s release history and read about the music to the sequel!

Soundtrack Round-Up: Intrada Commits “Robbery,” La-La Land Bows Final Titles for 2011

The end of the calendar year is a boom time for all those working in reissues, especially the soundtrack labels. Today, six major titles go on sale that are certainly worth a look here at Second Disc HQ.

Intrada’s two latest sets, announced last night, are pretty major. One is a brand new reissue of the score to The Great Train Robbery, Jerry Goldsmith’s classic soundtrack to the film directed by author Michael Crichton from his best-selling novel. Though the score is no stranger to CD, having been released and expanded by Varese Sarabande years ago, this special double-disc presentation expands the original score to completeness from newly-discovered two-track stereo masters. That includes 16 unreleased, alternate and source tracks. As an added bonus, the original soundtrack LP, released by United Artists at the time of the film’s release, is included as well. (It boasts alternate edits and mixes, as is often the case on original score albums.) And best of all, the set is both unlimited and selling for $19.99, the price of a typical single-disc set from Intrada.

The label’s other project is a very significant one: the premiere of the score to Wolfen, composed by a young James Horner. This horror flick, featuring Albert Finney as an NYPD detective pitted against a clan of shapeshifting murderers, was one of Horner’s first major screen credits, predating the one-two punch of 48 Hrs. and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by a year. The CD features all of the music (including two alternate takes) written for the film. (It does not, however, feature all the music in the movie; some tracks from Horner’s then-most recent score, The Hand, were tracked in, to the point where they actually sounded like they could have been written for the film.) Knowing as score fans do that Horner is usually very reluctant to release early works, this is a pretty big coup for Intrada.

Speaking of coups, La-La Land didn’t disappoint with their Black Friday announcement of four major catalogue soundtracks, available to order now. The titles are a double-disc expansion of Michael Kamen’s adrenaline-fueled score to action classic Die Hard (1988), the premiere release of Danny Elfman’s score to the Bill Murray Christmas comedy Scrooged (1988), and expansions of two latter-day film adaptations of World War II events – Jerry Goldsmith’s score to the Pearl Harbor Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and Ennio Morricone’s music to 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy, about the carrying out of the Manhattan Project, the nuclear missiles which ended the Second Great War.

You can order all these sets right now, after the jump.