In march, La-la land records is going to release the complete score from Breakheart Pass by Jerry Goldsmith in monaural sound. It is going to be a limited edition licenced from the sony vault which is certainly good news.

As you know I'm a big fan of Goldsmith and he's my nr. 3, but such news makes me yawn. It's always the same composers with these labels. Goldsmith has been released to death by now. And Breakheart Pass is certainly not one of Goldsmith's best. When in the world are they going to release some old work from Alan and James?

I mean from James only ONE old previously unreleased score has been released (The Package) :blink:

Good question.

I wonder too....I mean a proper score release of BTTF for example is long overdue <_<

I think you guys are missing the true value of this release. The rights for this score are owned by sony and releases from their vaults have long been considered impossible. Now la-la land was able to work out a three-in one deal with sony which is simply groundbreaking. Since this is a goldsmith title it will most likely sell very well. The same applies to intrada's release of broughton's silverado. Now i am pretty sure that the folks at sony see these releases as a kind of experiment how much potential there actually is in film music and if this stuff sells well then we have certainly much higher chances to see other stuff from the sony vault sooner or later. That may include stuff from our favourite composers but it is never guaranteed. These releases may not exite certain individuals and may be considered as one small release for a fan but a giant release for film music.

We simply have to accept the fact that there is material (such as the BTTF score) that the labels can't release (yet) due to licencing difficulties. That does not make the scores that GET a release a lesser effort.

Furthermore, film music fans have to lighten up since these releases are not only made to please us but also for archival and preservation purposes of the source material and, as far as that is concerned, the forces have to be invested into everything the labels can get their hands on because in a few years the masters might be gone, rotten, burned, etc. So it is even more important to focus on older scores than on newer ones. What is really frightening is that there seem to be way more tapes missing from recent scores than from older ones. You see, there is way more to these releases than just having a score by our favourite composers.

The problem is that these labels are ONLY focusing on the (mostly older) scores by a certain selected group of composers. That is what is starting to annoy me more and more. And it seems nothing is going to change. I think it is just about personal preferences of the people who run the labels and friend politics with certain composers. You could argue that that is their right, but it's not fair towards us if they systematically ignore certain major composers. So it's certainly my right to criticize these labels.

I can understand your argument about older master tapes, but I mean can't they just release just one older score of composers like James and Alan too once in a while? :(

The problem is that we have no real idea about licencing issues and whatever goes with them. The basic knowledge for any fan is of course the closed-vault studios but there is a lot more involved with it.

Let's take Alien as an example: An immensely popular score by goldsmith and a fox title so one would expect that a non-limited and expanded re-release should be possible but obviously there is more to it since it did not happen yet. A different company than fox seems to sit on the rights.

Now let's take the modern mgm scores (from the late 70's until 90's). I remember sony is holding the rights for most of them which makes the release of titles like silvestri's Blown Away very difficult. Besides that, the title (blown away) is not exactly guaranteed to sell well (judgment night does not seem to be a top seller either). Now if we try to think like a record producer we would go for the easy stuff first to raise enough money until we are able to break the tough nuts and get out of the situation with a profit. After all, this is also a business and that plays another important role. I don't really think it is so much about personal tastes and preferences of record producers.

Recently, there was a thread on the intrada board about silvestri's bodyguard score which is a warner bros. owned score and certainly possible to do. Doug Fake stated that they (warner) had no interest since they consider the bodyguard as a low priority! You see that intrada was looking into it but it was simply impossible for them to do. That's the crazy world of score releases.

Really ironic that we (the fans) are ranting against the record labels and the people who are trying to get the material released when the studios are to blame or some weird licencing issues that don't make sense. I think that happens because hollywood studios are big and anonymous things that nobody can reach with any criticism so everyone is slaming the labels instead.