I listened to the clips over at their site. The Day of Triffids is the second cue, the main title. Pretty good. The complete This Island Earth should be really good. That one cue for War of Satellites, a really crummy Allied Artists film I saw once, is an excellent piece.

Good to know David & company got around to releasing this stuff after so much time.

For those who don't know the website: http://www.mmmrecordings.com/

CDs will be out before the end of this year. I'm in the middle of moving our audio samples around, but they should all be working (I hope!) by Friday. You can hear samples from all five of our releases at:
http://www.mmmrecordings.com/Audio_Samples/audio_samples.html

I've got the two Monstrous Movie Music releases, and they're hugely great. An obvious labour of love went into them. What bold, imaginative scores! And fun too. Of course, a lot of this may be mere nostalgia speaking, but they take me back to more innocent times. I love the archaeology involved.

I'm already impressed with the other MMM discs I have and have been waiting for these gems for a while.

As people know I'm very skeptical of most re-recorded film music. I'm used to hearing the version of the music that accompanies the film and many orchestras, conductors, arrangements, and recording mixes don't even try to come close. A lot of re-recorded film music sounds like you're sitting in the 2nd balcony in a concert hall listening to a Mozartified version that misses all the tempi, notes, and excitement that dramatic film music can provide.

As a small mom & pop outfit, Dave S and crew can't put out albums the way Silva or Marco Polo or FSM can but when they do show up they are generally at the top of the quality pile.

They've already done a few cues from The Mole People & are considering a whole disc. There's talk about a Red House from them.

No, but I can buy a large bag of rice for my Chinese stir-fries.

"I've got the two Monstrous Movie Music releases, and they're hugely great."

The third one (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) is even hugelier greater. I feel that's our strongest recording overall. Plus the jokes are even stupider than in the first two volumes.

"An obvious labour of love went into them."

That phrase really means, "What were these idiots thinking?"

"What bold, imaginative scores! And fun too."

That perfectly sums up why we went into this project.

"Of course, a lot of this may be mere nostalgia speaking"

While that's part of it, we have lots of fans who never saw the films. They just heard the music and realized how different it was from other film music they'd been listening to, and in a positive way.

"I think both Herman Stein and Irving Gertz are still with us, no?"

If they're with you, then I'm wondering what you did to deserve their always-enjoyable company? Yes, they're both 90-years-old and as lucid as I am, which isn't saying much. I talk to them on a regular basis and see them on a less-regular one, but they're just around the corner. Both are immensely-talented-and-relatively-unheralded film composers. These guys KNEW what they were doing.

"And I love that picture of a skeletally benign Herman Stein grinning in one of the photos I've seen of him."

I might have had to "touch up" that photo to make him less skeletally-benign than he was in person (just kidding).

"New Roy Webb, Paul Sawtell, Stein/Salter/Mancini, and Ron Goodwin!"

And bits of Max Steiner, David Raksin, Frederick Hollander, Werner Heymann, and others, too! It's a veritable "Who the hell are these people?"-fest!

"With extensively researched liner-notes and re-recordings as they should be done--close-mics and trying hard to get the music to sound like it does on the actual film recording."

In the future, I think it will be easier if we just get to the original film masters and alter the music as heard in the pictures so it matches what we've already recorded. One of the reasons you don't hear a lot of close-miked recordings is because the editing is a NIGHTMARE. You hear every little mistake, glitch, hum, burp, cricket, microphone placement change, volume difference, etc. when you have to edit from different takes. Much easier (and smarter) to set up two mics down the block and let it go at that. I think if we do more recordings we will set up two mics in New Jersey, by the coast, and point them toward Eastern Europe and see what we pick up...

"As people know I'm very skeptical of most re-recorded film music."

You shouldn't be. You should just be a careful consumer. Because there are lots of incredible re-recordings out there, including many of the Marco Polo discs, the Rozsa Intrada CDs, the Varese VERTIGO and TWILIGHT ZONE Herrmann scores, some of the Silva releases, like VALLEY OF GWANGI, the James Bernard and Horror! albums, the Gerhardt series, Rozsa's BEN-HUR, QUO VADIS, his three Polydor/DG albums, etc. There are some dogs out there, to be sure, but if you are a careful shopper, many delights away your ears.

"As a small mom & pop outfit, Dave S and crew can't put out albums the way Silva or Marco Polo or FSM can but when they do show up they are generally at the top of the quality pile."

It's comments like that that make us feel good while we're counting the money from our three sales!

It may be a nightmare to edit close-miced stuff from different takes but don't stop doing it or you'll sound like crap.

"It may be a nightmare to edit close-miced stuff from different takes but don't stop doing it or you'll sound like crap."

Yeah, but it'll be SCARY crap!

"No offense but I didn't care for many of the re-records you named as being solid. I'm very picky."

quote:

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Originally posted by MMM:
I promise not to argue with you -- just curious.

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But you argue so eloquently...

That has GOT to be sarcasm of the highest degree, as you have obviously read some of my 'arguments' on the FSM site!

In general, the Gerhardt re-records were top notch & there's no doubt that they had a strong influence on the course of things. So I'm surprised even myself when I'm playing one and go, hey wait, that isn't quite right. Usually I let it go and it doesn't always matter, because even if the original acetates for Lost Horizon exist, their suite is so good that little things can be ignored. Or rather, I carry a wince & cringe meter inside me and they don't set it off. However, Christopher Palmer tended to go overboard on the heavy side in his reconstructions & orchestrations. A quick comparison of the Search for Paradise finale withthe original shows the original to be spartan and the Palmer version loaded with the works. Now that FSM has issued the acetates to The Thing, we can hear how off the Gerhardt version is. Maybe this isn't fair since they didn't plan to release it originally.

I cannot slight Rozsa's DG-Polydor series. If a re-recording moves away from the original, one thing I insist is that you can still listen to it as music. Bad arrangements & misnoting immediately sets off my cringe meter, but these suites that Rozsa did are so wonderful in spirit that they don't have to match their originals (which they pretty much do anyway).

I'm less happy with Rozsa'a Ben-Hur & Quo Vadis? Both are solid enough, but he's doing a Herrmann on them, slowing their tempi to a crawl. Quo Vadis? is a trade-off, he loses all that speed but gets more beauty & richness out of the sound.

The Horror! album is great. The Devil Rides Out album a little less so. And yet so far I've pretty much agreed that these are all good to great re-records. They all have slight problems, some not so slight, but in general these are the cream.

Now we're getting into the territory where I said "I didn't care for".

I'm no fan of the Varese Vertigo (their Marnie is even worse), the Twilight Zone, and the Gwangi re-records.

It's tough to articulate why a re-record goes back and sets off the cringe meter, especially to people who love it. There must be pages of text between me & Ford Thaxton about the Moross recording. Probably the same here on MM.com. Boiling it down, it misnotes, the spirit is wrong, the tempi are slow, even when the speed is right, not close-micing takes all the power out of it, etc.

Vertigo comes off better than the T-Zone though whether the organ is off in the OST or here, I couldn't listen to a note of it. The T-Zone just isn't crisp. I need to play it again to discuss it. I played it twice & hated it so much I haven't played it since & now I can't remember what was specifically wrong with it. I suppose once I put it on again the cringe meter will remind me exactly why I wanted to throw it across the room but I'm not going there just now.

quote:

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Originally posted by MMM:
You know, I am now so scared that you won't like our new recordings that I have decided not to release them.

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HEY, HEY, HEY! You can't do that! (Can you?)

Count me in as one of the eagerly waiting consumers (and a new one at that) of MMM's wonderful recordings!

Cindy

Bad arrangements & misnoting immediately sets off my cringe meter

It's tough to articulate why a re-record goes back and sets off the cringe meter

misnotes, the spirit is wrong, the tempi are slow, even when the speed is right, not close-micing takes all the power out of it, etc.

I couldn't listen to a note of it.

I played it twice & hated it so much I haven't played it since & now I can't remember what was specifically wrong with it.

I suppose once I put it on again the cringe meter will remind me exactly why I wanted to throw it across the room but I'm not going there just now.

To produce a passable & superior re-record, you have to go through hell and you have to put the orchestra through hell.

Film music is not other music.

Producers need to listen to & know the scores so their own cringe meters go off

The minute you distance yourself from the sound, it becomes concert music which it isn't. T

So don't shirk, cut-back, cheat, take it easy, or rest on your laurels.

Otherwise you'll sound like crap.

It might be "scary crap" but it'll still be crap.

Whether you like it or not, you have to do the work.

The composers were up at 4am writing, you have to be up at 4am editing.

No short cuts.

your re-records should be able to fit in on the soundtracks of classic films and fit them to a tee in terms of sound, power, and precision.

If you can't do it, close shop.

Look, I realize that there simple is no way for a re-recording to sound exactly like the performance & sound you hear on the soundtrack of any given film. However, if an orchestra can play something once, they can do it again. In any case, I'm not talking about perfection and you know it.

And Oh, I happen to like the Fred Steiner Star Trek re-records. I also think the Collura Best Years isn't too bad either. But putting re-records into Yes and No camps isn't the issue.

What I'm talking about seems pretty simple to me. You get the conductor to listen to the durn score as it is the film, you look over the sheet music to see that what you play sounds like how it is in the film (atleast the notes & arrangements are closely similar), you close mic, you play a cue that lasts 1:32 somewhere around 1:32 plus or minus a second, and you make sure you don't strangle the life and joy out of the music in the process.

I can take an oboe going 1db over or under. What I can't take is the oboe playing a B-flat in the movie and the re-record oboe playing an F-natural.

Ok, maybe it is impossible, but you should try hard to hit the mark. You shouldn't call something Marnie or When Worlds Collide or Sink the Bismarck and have blatant misnotes, wheezing sound, or finale music in there that the composers never wrote replacing what the composer did write. I don't rank MMM with losers like Silva who could care less and issue it regardless.

But maybe you're right. Forget it. If your latest MMM issues aren't going to be on par with the last ones, don't release them, keep them on the shelf, it'll save me $40.

quote:

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Originally posted by MMM:
It's too much pressure! I can't take it! I can't take it! I can't...[/B]

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Going for an Oscar nomination, Sir Triple M? Yuk Yuk.

I THANK YOU for your recordings. Even with the Persian flaws.

So I've come to a final conclusion about re-records: they should stop.

I know people love 'em and so there'll be a market. And I'm sure even I will continue to buy & try them myself, but at some level every re-record is disappointing. You see a film or TV program, you hear music, and that's the only music that's really going to satisfy, hearing the same stuff you heard originally. All attempts to copy it, no matter how well done are still not the same you heard to begin with.

So, for me at least, they just don't work. I've always been critical of re-records seperating a few choice ones out from the pile, but now I think people should stop trying altogether. What we need is increasing money & pressure put into getting original tracks released. This whole re-record thing is just a bad detour. In the end, none of them really work.

Dave, Stromberg & Morgan, Silva, et al. should close shop & find other work to do. Re-recording of film music should stop. It's a hopeless attempt to re-capture what can't be reproduced. Really, it's art forgery. And not even good art forgery since it can always be detected.

You can perform & record Beethoven's 9th 500 times but film music just isn't like concert music & the equation between them has to stop. Film music is FILM music, married body & soul to a film, only the music that's recorded for a film is the music that can really pass muster when it comes to listening to it as music away from a film.

Rerecordings should continue because they offer better sound.
Vintage stuff is great, but when you can barely hear the music because of the tape hiss, I'm quite willing to put up with a few discrepancies here and there in order to get better sound.

Different / more emotional performance.
There's no reason to stop comparing to Beethoven. Each recording of Beethoven brings something different. People are different. What appeals to some, may not to others. Since a rerecording is by its very definition not the original film score, there is no reason to take it as a faithful representation of the actual score in the movie. However it does allow for a different view on the music. As much as I like Alfred Newman's tight-assed, control-freak style of conducting, I also like the more relaxed Gerhardt versions. They bring something completely different to the music.

Not binded to the scene / freer
Hence this follow up to the previous point. Many movie scores just sound wrong on CD - they were so bound by action on screen that they had to stick to that on CD they end up feeling weird and some cues incomplete. A rerecording, since it is not meant to follow the picture, can fix that and create a more flowing transition between cues.

Better this than nothing
What can you do? Some of those tapes are burned, others lost, others locked. Better to have a rerecording, reconstructed by ear if necessary than nothing at all, or a wobbly transfer from a damaged tape which distorts the score even further than a bad rerecording.

For example: I love all the different recordings of El Cid except for some of the Koch one with the echoing. I dont like that reverberation in there. I love the score though. On that Koch one they did not perform the Valencia battle piece well at all. I do like the March version on there though and that one cue "Love, grace and honor" or whatever its called is a great cue with that super action music at the end. I like the old Graunke Orch recording from the early 60s on the original LP better though. The brass on that is superior and the string work is so much better. I also like the other two cues on other CDs from El Cid o n the Rozsa CD and on the Big Movies CD by Kunzel. Both of these cues are very good.

Another example: I really like the original music in the Killers although the sound is not good. The cue on the old Polydor themes LP is excellent and so is the Koch version. I like both of those. So all three of them give you a fuller pic of it, even if the more recent are not just like in the picture. So you see, I like both of them.

There are hundreds more like these. I just enjoy them all, but in many cases like the film version the best.

Stromberg & Morgan often retain the composer's sketches over how things are in the finished film. I can follow Dinko's arguments & I used to share them. And I'm no idiot: Re-records aren't going to stop just because I say they should. Heck, I'll probably order THIS ISLAND EARTH off the website this week myself.

I just felt like throwing the baby out with the bathwater because, mistakes, misnoting, performances that the composers don't like, etc. don't change the fact that what I hear in the film is usually what I fall in love with. Re-records are like marrying the younger sister or twin of your recently-deceased wife. She looks like your wife but it's just not the same experience.

And I'm not sure I'm looking for a different one. Better sound, music that comes closer to the composer's intentions, it still doesn't compare to the music I know from watching a film 5 or 6 times. That's the music I want to hear.

I gave this a lot of thought and I realized that with lost acetates and aging damaged tapes, we may never get the ideal situation. Perhaps someday they will perfect sound engineering to where they can take the crude oil of a film's soundtrack, its dialogue, music, and effects, and refine out the score, so that we have the exact music that's in the film, every film. It's probably impossible or 100 years off in the future though.

That's absolutely impossible. In many instances, the music has been "dialed out" of the soundtrack so you can hear the sound effects and dialogue. Or just "dialed out" because the filmmakers didn't want music there. There is NOTHING to engineer back, in these cases! You can't take "no music" and somehow bring forth a symphony orchestra playing where there was none!

In the meantime, you'll have to settle for things like our re-recordings, which, in many cases, we feel far surpass the original soundtracks. One reason why? Because even in those original soundtracks, you are MISSING so much of the music because time and how the tapes were stored/treated/copied has affected their sonics. You just can't hear all the instruments any more, or else they've lost too much of their clarity. In these cases, the ONLY way to hear what the composers originally wrote and the studio orchestras originally recorded is to listen to a wonderful, new re-recording.

Anybody who has half an ear and can read music scores would KNOW that they are only getting an approximation of what the composer wrote by listening to tapes that are many decades old. They know this because they can't hear a lot of things on the original tapes that they can see in the written scores. And when they hear a good re-recording, all of a sudden a lot of that written instrumental detail can finally be heard!

Let me give you an example that surprised & effected me personally. Before the recent US set of Val Lewton DVDs, you could only get some of the films in a DVD set the French issued. I picked it up. On the title menu, they had a short selection of the Cat People music. I put this in, remembered I had to answer an e-mail, and sat down at the computer without turning off the TV and this cue excerpt repeated over & over.

When I was done, I shut the thing off & reached for the Stromberg/Morgan re-record of the Webb scores. Gone was the hiss, the scratchiness, the thin 40s sound engeneering, but also gone was whatever ambiance all those factors contribute. In a sense it was strip-mined, all the movie dramatics were gone and what was left was a mere piece of music that sounded as dull & lifeless as most pieces of newly-recorded classical music do. It's very hard to articulate in words an element of sound that goes beyond words.

And even if you recorded in mono with old studio mics, you can't re-capture the sound & without the right arrangements, orchestra, & hell, maybe even the composers conducting, you can't re-capture the spirit.

That said, I completely follow your rationale. A guy writes a score. Half of the orchestration is lost in the recording & mix, the other half is dialed down or out. Then you get to go back to the score, find unused cues, bring all what the composer intended back, and this all sounds good on the surface and noble to re-instate. The tapes or acetates or what-have-you are lost and so this also gives us a chance to have the music in any form as opposed to non-existance. So far so good. Then you re-record it with all that "improvement" & even the composers themselves think the job is better than they did originally and yet I find myself unmoved. Hearing the music that's in most older films is an experience that can't be repeated. As I said, you can meet someone & lose her, and replace her with someone new but it's just not the same.

Think of an analogy to jazz recordings. We have lots of jazz recordings from the 20s, 30s, 40s, & 50s, most are still in print and this is what we consider jazz to be. Now a lot of people playing today could re-do the songs, come close to the old performances, but it's hopeless. Charlie Parker in '48 can't be re-done by some studio sax guy today in '06. They can play the same notes & replace that old sound with the best sonics we have & you'll still go back to listen to Parker anyway. And, unfortunately, that's how I feel about film music. Re-records have their place but they'll always be 2nd best even with all the extras they bring. As I said before & repeat: film music is different, it is not concert music. You can play it 1000 times in performance just like concert music, but like having Satchmo do Potato Head Blues back in the 20s, no other performance besides that old recording carries the magic. And re-recorded film music doesn't seem to bring any new magic of its own, new cues, or phrases, or orchestrations, yes, but no new magic. Re-records are like rhinestones, costume jewlery.

However, there are techniques and standards which make some re-records stand high above others and if there are going to be re-records, the people doing them shouldn't abandon those approaches. Trying to record music that comes close to the old umph is to be applauded: so close-mic, record lots of takes, and watch the arrangements, make sure they stay close to what's on the page or in the film. If the composer wrote ABA as a finale, don't replace it with a Coda or BAA. These hard to do things do make the difference.

I love & care for film music. I own a great many re-records, and although I keep buying them out of curiosity, I'm routinely very disappointed in them and only play a few while the rest gather dust.

My statement might seem like hyperbole but I've come to realize that even with the improvements of better sound, unheard of music, and all the rest, re-records taken as a whole just don't have the magic that originals do. It's as simple as that.

And because that's how I feel about it, I wonder if the whole attempt to re-record film music isn't a detour down the wrong path somehow.

Sure, I realize a lot of people love re-records and that by saying this that few will agree. That's fine. I can't think that just because I have certain tastes that everyone will share them. In the end, my comments are just how one man feels about it, simply that if I take my feeling about re-records to an extreme or look at them on the whole or follow my responses to their logical conclusion, re-records are a mistake.

Why they can't re-capture the magic is hard to say. I've pointed to certain factors. I think the studio orchestras were some of the best ever. I think the composer/conductors were perfectionists and exacting and they put out solid versions of their cues. In comparison, the current orchestras and conductors playing on re-records are just lackluster. And when they aren't lackluster they can be easily sabotaged by having poor arrangements and poor recording & engineering. In the end, despite all the sincere effort of people like Morgan & Stromberg who love film music as I do, the end results still can't hack it. I realize they're trying and trying hard but they're mining fool's gold.

Certain things help a re-record sound better than not: close mic-ing, spirited conducting & playing, arrangements that match the film, etc. The re-records I simply can't listen to at all suffer from not following these guidelines. The ones I can listen to have these things in their favor.

Re-records provide a different experience than listening to originals. I understand many people like this experience & I certainly wouldn't want to deprive anyone of it. Oddly, I'm debating this with someone who I think has put out some of the best re-records there are & I'm worried by some of his comments that they might not be as good in the future.

But just the same, I think, for all the few but fine examples to the contrary, 90% of re-records suck or have some problem that makes them hard to take and that makes me question the whole attempt.

Let's go back to the idea of original performances I brought up earlier how in jazz the performance can't really be repeated. In classical music, supposedly, this isn't true. You have a score, you perform it, and every conductor brings new nuances out in it, etc. etc. etc. and as a result we have 100 recordings of the same music. The music lives & breathes anew with each playing.

But even with classical music there are prized & favorite recordings regardless of age. Of 100 versions, there has to be 1 that's the best or only a few that most people would place at the top.

Toscanini recordings are ancient but still in print. Solti's Ring cycle is also a favorite. Dinko & I both feel the Schippers Nevsky is the best we've heard and can't be topped. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Now maybe it's a good thing other versions exist besides these. But if other people attempt Nevsky and they fall short of the Schippers, in Olympic terms, the Schippers holds the world record and no one can come close to beating the mark, then what are you going to say about all the silver & bronze or 6th place winners? You know what you're going to say: nice try but you're not the Schippers.

Some conductor decides he wants to re-record Nevsky. Already I say, why bother. Unless you're a genius and unless you have the money & resources to spend 6 months to a year working & refining a Nevsky that can top the bar the Schippers has already set, give it up, what's the point, you'll suck.

Now some other conductor says he's going to re-record Guns of Navarone. You see where I'm getting to with this. If you can't top the one performance of it we have, what's the point? Just to give us another one to compare it against? Fine. I've compared it. Guess what? That's right, the re-record sucks.

Re-records are what we settle for because the studios didn't preserve or won't issue their material. I'm glad we have sheet music of film scores but the re-records have been so poor that it seems a shame we have the sheet music & no one who can play it.

The very reason re-records should exist is because not everyone feels that the original performances are the greatest. And I'm not even talking about "magic" (a term I find dubious when used in conjunction with technical complaints) but simply a preference of performance. For example, I really don't like the Schippers Nevsky. I find some of his tempo changes insufferably melodramatic and the orchestra seems to have trouble staying together in some of the faster passages. I still enjoy parts of it and the sound quality is certainly superb, but when I want to listen to the Nevsky cantata I'll continue reaching for my Reiner/CSO recording.

What I'm getting at is that it's good to have options. Lou's comments seem to have more to do with blind nostalgia than any sort of attention to musical detail. And I have no problem with that as long as he's Lou Goldberg, outspoken but sincere member of a message board, and not Lou Goldberg, king of the universe. There are cases where I think he's absolutely correct. Williams has recorded "The Asteroid Field" from The Empire Strikes Back several times but there's something in the original version that all the re-records lack. And in that case the fidelity of the original recording isn't even really an issue.

On the other hand, the original recording of what is possibly my very favorite Richard Band score, The Day Time Ended, sucks as badly as anything I've ever heard. The strings are out of tune, the oboe player has zero sense of rhythm, and the recording itself has no presence, sounding like the orchestra was shrunk into the size of a baseball and they're playing from inside a box. And that's just what it sounds like on record -- in the film it's even worse. I would kill someone for a re-recording of this score, or even a partial re-recording of some cues. What I've heard of Band's Ghostwarrior (more wonderful music) has the same problems, though I haven't heard that one in the film.

Another point of contention for me are the two theremin parts on Varese's re-recording of The Day The Earth Stood Still. The score calls for two theremins. In the original recording, they were played by Sam Hoffman (an ace at that point) and Paul Shure (an amateur). In the re-record, both parts are played by Celia Sheen. I greatly prefer Sheen's version of the parts originally played by Paul Shure, as Shure only vaguely ever played the write notes and is audibly lost and confused in much of the original recording. On the other hand, Sheen is no match for Hoffman, especially in her precise and very "clean" glissandi in the Gort cues (and in the finale). They might make more sense musically, but Hoffman's playing was singular and risky and it paid off -- his theremin is terrifying in the OST.

So what do I do? Either version is a compromise to me. The re-record also has bass presence that reveals an exceptional level of musical detail which is completely inaudible in the original recording. My conclusion is that I'm happy to have both. I don't think I listen to either one any more often than I listen to the other. They make great companion pieces.

And I think that's about the extent of my stance: re-records are great but they should never be intended to replace the original versions. And also, if the re-recorders are going for accuracy as per the composer intentions rather than what showed up on the original recording, at some point a war of wills is taking place, the will of the composer and the will of people like Lou who fell in love with what they originally heard. At the end of the day, someone is going to have to be selfish, and I'd prefer it to be the composer.

But I think the ideal situation would be to have all of the original recordings intact as well as re-recordings. Of course, like all ideal situations, it's unrealistic.

Kirk

I have certain issues with the Schippers myself, especially now that I can hear every chair movement in the room. If I recall (and I could be wrong), the Reiner version has the choir chant in English instead of Russian & Latin and that just kills it for me.

I'm not King of the Universe (though I submitted my resume). I often think of myself as the center of things though. If I like Vanilla ice cream, that's a taste, not an objective fact. However, as far as I'm personally concerned, it still is subjective "fact" for me. Vanilla ice cream=good. Most re-records=bad.

Certainly, I'm not saying ALL original performances are the best versions the sheet music could receive. I'm just finding that most original performances tend to be better than re-recorded ones, putting sound quality and other factors aside. There are exceptions. And they include well-done re-records and even re-records which surpass their originals. And I have enough re-records on my shelf to have gone along with the idea. I'm sure I won't stop buying re-records either.

I agree with the ideal situation: originals and a bunch of re-records too. The problem is that I find so many re-records to be of such poor performance that having them doesn't seem to add to the overall range of things. Sure you can point to situations like The Day The Earth Stood Still where there are things to like & dislike in both the original & re-recorded versions. Actually, any mono original that's re-recorded in stereo can be said to be an "improvement".

As for nostalgia, it's hard to say. I left myself open to that charge. But, to use my own example, I'm not sure that I prefer the 40s version of Cat People over its re-record just because it's from the 40s, or even because it's the version I first heard, or the one which is associated to the film. Why I do like it brings us back to those rotten words magic & mystery, but I think part of it is that I find the 40s version more dramatic, better played, more able to reach me emotionally, even if the sound isn't state of the art (or, again, to repeat my argument against re-records, perhaps BECAUSE the sound isn't state of the art, because, perhaps, film music sounds better close-miked and in analog).

quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
"Magic" is a lousy term and I hate to use it, it really means I don't know what the deciding element is or how to describe it, and so it's a "mystery". It points to the absense of an explaination, not a real explaination.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
If I recall (and I could be wrong), the Reiner version has the choir chant in English instead of Russian & Latin and that just kills it for me.

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
(or, again, to repeat my argument against re-records, perhaps BECAUSE the sound isn't state of the art, because, perhaps, film music sounds better close-miked and in analog).

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
And so we're back to the land of compromise & only getting a part of what you want. I suppose for some that's better than nothing which is partly why we have re-records in the first place.

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The most awfully unfortunate cases are where you have originals and re-records and you're still not happy. E.g., will I ever own a decent Lost Weekend?

Yes, I ordered both albums. Yes, I enjoyed them very much. Yes, they were worth the wait and the price. Yes, I appreciate the care, research, elbow grease, and fanatical devotion to Golden Age movie scores that MMM has always demonstrated. Yes, I will be content to wait until Hell freezes over for the next offerings.

Soundtrack vs. re-record is a moot point if the score used in a film is otherwise unobtainable or can only be retrieved through shoddy DVD rips. Re-records are often the ONLY way these scores can be published and that suits me fine. Besides, I will take a re-record over the original any day if it is faithful to the source but sounds better, and the snobbish elitist attitude about "it HAS to be the original score recording" be damned.

Great work, MMM. Keep it up, you fill a niche left otherwise vacant.

As for being a snob or elitist, that's open to interpretation. At one level, it's true. I do have my tastes and can at times look down on people who "don't see the light" and share them. If some twerp comes on line and says he thinks James Horner is greater than Mozart, I'm inclined to bring my elitist goon hand down and give the guy a drubbing. Who am I to lord over some kid for liking what he likes? Nobody really. But I have fun poking fun at these types at times. And they usually respond by telling me to fork off which is what any self-respecting person should do.

On another level, I don't think I'm a snob or an elitist at all. I've heard a lot of film music over the years. I find good scores and weaker ones and I find good performances of film music and weaker ones. Just because a company has "care, research, elbow grease, and fanatical devotion" doesn't mean they'll surmount all the problems in re-recording film music. I pick out what I like, come to conclusions about things, and state them publically. I think I give things a fair chance and I'm open to most things. I'm not a John Simon for whom only high intellectual perfection counts and all else is dismissed as trash. If I say re-records suck, it's not an off-hand comment, it's based on playing a lot of them, trying hard to like them, cutting them slack, and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Even so, most make me cringe.

The last 3 MMM discs are among the best re-records there are. The booklets that come with them are also highly informative. I haven't heard the latest 2 however. They may be masterpieces for all I know. They were recorded some time ago so I suspect they are up to previous MMM standards.

However, what I find disconcerting are statements made earlier in this topic by their producer that they took too much work to produce, that next time he didn't want to close mic & and that he probably wanted to take other shortcuts as well.

Well, chances are Hell will freeze over before anything good comes out of that.

And over all, I see the whole re-record thing as a kind of R&D project. I love film music so I have to root for it. But the prototypes keep failing. Sure there are exceptions, it doesn't HAVE to be the film performance & none other, but it might as well be, since 90% of the attempts to do even a second version fall horrendously flat.

You may like them & a lot of people may like them & that's fine. They'll keep making them & you can keep buying them. But for me, in general, I don't consider them a pleasure. I consider them a risky investment. A booby prize. There are exceptions that I love but they're flukes, all too few and far between.

And gee, did I change anybody's take on anything or alter the collective perception of the universe by saying a few paragraphs? I hope so, but it's really unlikely. There aren't too many people here who don't have solidly stubborn opinions about most things.

Sorry, the point I had intended to make before I covered my previous post in snot was that despite the fact you were trying to take a jab at Lou, you decided to be coy about it and (perhaps unwittingly) made a blanket statement that applied to everyone who might silently nod their heads with him. Whether you intended so or not, your statement implied that everyone who staunchly prefers re-recordings 90% of the time was an ellitist snob, not just the one who has been posting here. The "individual" I was referring to was not essentially Lou, but any hypothetical film score fan who might share his viewpoints but not his methods of expressing them.

I knew I didn't need to defend Lou, who is not only capable but eager and skilled at doing it himself.