Album Reviews

The merger of Sony Music and BMG combined two of the world’s great film music catalogs, offering the potential for a truly exceptional film score compilation. This isn’t it. Instead this piece of shit excuse for an “essential” film score package is indicative of everything that’s wrong with the music business today. It lists for $25.00.

Packed onto the two CDs are some essential, unforgettable and instantly recognizable themes: “Star Wars,” “Gone With The Wind,” “Doctor Zhivago,” “Laura,” , “Psycho,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “E.T.,” “Jaws,” “Vertigo,” “The Godfather,” “Casablanca,” “Kings Row,” “Close Encounters,” etc. A veritable John Williams’s greatest hits plus.

So far so good. Unfortunately, the lame annotation consists of a short four paragraph shallow fluff piece about film music written by compiler David Foil. It’s pathetic.

That’s followed by a listing of the track titles with composer credits, orchestra and conductor. And that’s it.

Nowhere does it say from where the music was taken. Original soundtrack? Some later performance? Nothing. Of course for us old folks who can read and who know something about the subject, when we see that the “Gone With The Wind” credit includes National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Charles Gerhardt, we know that this particular cue was taken from a wonderful film music series commissioned by RCA in the mid 1970’s. And some of us actually have the original records. We also note that Mr. Foil has had the good sense to include Alfred Newman’s “Selznick International Fanfare” as a prelude to the main theme.

So I went over to my soundtrack section and pulled out the “Gone With The Wind” LP (RCA Red Seal ARL 1-0452). There I learn that it was recorded in the UK by none other than the brilliant engineer K.E. Wilkinson, no surprise, since the sound is awesome. I also learn that the album contains a newly expanded version authorized by composer Max Steiner, including music that’s never before been recorded. That’s cool.

Inside the LP jacket is a full size double fold insert containing an actual essay, of more than 100 words (many more) written by Rudy Behlmer, author of the best selling book “Memo from David O. Selznick.” Reading the essay one is enriched by a wonderful account of the history of the movie, how the actors came to be chosen, how the score came about, and even how the modern Gerhardt conducted recording came to be. How Gerhardt met frequently with Steiner in the five years before the composer’s death, planning the recording.

We learn how the Newman fanfare came about too. We learn that it was written by Newman in 1937 and was first used as the Selznick theme before the main title of “The Prisoner of Zenda” starring Ronald Coleman, Madeleine Carroll and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and we get a learned description of the entire score, along with wonderful screen pulls from the movie.

This 1974 LP is something worth owning, worth reading, worth listening to, as is the rest of the Gerhardt series, which includes “Casablanca” and other classic Bogart scores, “The Sea Hawk,” and other classic scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, “Classic Film Scores For Bette Davis,” and others that Mr. Gerhardt’s sweat and toil brought to recording tape (and all of which were produced by Korngold’s son George), brilliantly recorded and sumptuously annotated, even though they were pressed on Dynaflex (feh!). I know because I own all of them.

Despite the Dynaflex pressing, the original vinyl just stomps all over this CD compilation, which includes no mastering credit, but you can be sure it was not produced from the analog tapes and remastered.

So, let’s say someone buys this haphazardly compiled double CD set. They learn zero about the history of the music, or of the films, they learn zero about the origin of the particular recording. They learn zero about the riches contained in the combined catalog. The label has done nothing to pique the curiosity of the buyer in the hopes that a reissue of the entire Gerhardt catalog or of even one title, say the expanded “Gone With The Wind” can find an audience in the future.

This compilation on the cheap is a disgrace. Why would anyone buy it? The folks manning the labels today have degenerated into “content managers.” Note the credits here: there’s a “product manager,” not a real producer. This is “product,” pure and simple. It needs to be “managed” so they hire someone to put it through the corporate meat grinder and out comes musical sausage. I don’t think they give a shit. They might as well be managing a meat or hardware store.