bollemanneke

Be honest, you are not all that sober at the moment.  

For soundtracks it’s always the year of the film even if it’s a new recording or an expanded release. I feel that’s the most useful date. For classical it’s usually the year the album was released but I’m not that fussy as I care less about year for that. For musicals it’s the year of that particular cast recording.
Don’t delete the duplicates too rashly but perhaps just consider deleting those you don’t play or don’t like. I found I had some versions of certain works I bought years ago that I don’t enjoy so much or are perhaps older Naxos releases when their output was a bit more variable!
 
However my advice on metadata is to just pick a particular composer and tidy up all of their listings. I enjoy tidying my library but it does definitely become tiresome after a while but if I can get an entire composer’s output all neatly up to date in my current preferred style it’s much more satisfying than just grinding through everything!

Ah for sure I understand that. Especially with favourite works and some new, very well reviewed version comes out and the arduous decision of whether I really need another version of whatever it is. I usually cave in eventually if only because I buy most of my classical digitally (thank you Presto) and it’s either relatively inexpensive anyway or on sale and an absolute bargain! So the arduous decision becomes an easy one but it does mean I have multiple versions of certain works and probably have never listened to some of those versions to make a meaningful judgement as to whether I like them more or less than my favoured recording. I just kinda go with it. Data storage is cheap and maybe one day I’ll listen to them all. Maybe. 

Yeah I'm missing a bagpipe-led variation on the theme that you hear whistled in track 2. And they shouldn't have eliminated the dialogue in the Oompa Loompa song. Expansion, please!

Okay, I need to say it and I need to say it now.
 
I am SICK of having to worry about classical music tags.
I am SICK of the fact that there have to be 12425 recordings of every goddamn work.
I am SICK of the fact that there are so many great conductors I want to listen to and who all do the same repertoire 50% of the time.
I am SICK, SICK, SICK of compilation albums that have nothing but ‘various fuckign artists’ in the FreeDB databse. I am SICK of having to try and find credits to all damn tracks on those albums so as to make sure I won’t duplicate things. I am SICK of being attached to some of these albums and that I can’t just throw them out and move on to albums with clearer credits.
 
Somebody help me.
 

Mike posted more information on FSM about the unknown Never Song and Stick With Me singers
 
The songs were sent to many of the singers on the project and to key people in the session singer community going back nearly two years, and no one could ID those voices. (And I was quite paranoid that doing this would result in news about the release leaking out!)
 
The Guild ultimately asserted that our efforts were satisfactory and that we could proceed with the release of the tracks, with the understanding that payment in kind would be made if we ever find out who the voices are, and also that I see that their credits are added to any new printings of the packaging, plus update the metadata.
 
The Guild actually didn't have anything on file for the movie whatsoever, not even the choir list (yet they did on the Home Alone scores, so it's a mystery).
 
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=152698&forumID=1&archive=0

Just say they’re all the London Symphony Orchestra

Does anyone else have this problem where they start singing "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" whenever Mothers' melody comes up?
 
 
...no? Just me?

Nope. It's the same performances, just edited down.

This week I didn't feel like listening to podcasts while commuting, so I listened to this album.
 
HOLY HELL, this score is good, eh?  I think one of the things that makes it so great is that is is, to me, a PERFECT sequel score.  It pays respect to the first score, and comfortably lives in the same world, yet just kinda kicks everything up a notch in all the right ways.  There's so many new and different ways to change up the old themes so it never feels like its retreading old ground, and it also has so many cool new themes, that both feel similar enough to not feel like an entirely different project, but different enough to not feel like leftover.  Everything just feels so inspired.
 
I'm glad I revisited this, it increased my hype for the Deluxe of 3 even more!

You could be the guy on the dance floor flossing and such.  

And some kind of brain alteration or drug to make me want to go to this thing…

"Can't remember. Next question."

I'd rather be a fly on the wall during the process than ask him about it. I suspect that if he could explain it any better, he would have by now. He's very eloquent but sometimes an artistic process defies description.
 
He has said that it takes a lot of work to get a theme just right. Adjusting the rhythm a bit here, shifting a note up there, etc. And like most film composers (I gather), he maps out the tempos and time signatures of a cue before he starts writing.
 
But how does he pick which note goes where? Mixture of raw talent, intense study, and decades of experience. If I had to guess.

I think this is virtually unanswerable in a general sense, but it would be great to ask him a ton of questions on one scene in particular as a case study. 
 
I guess that would be another interesting topic, what scene or sequence would we pick if we could get John Williams to go step by step through his entire compositional process from spotting to recording. I guess "Adventures on Earth" is an obvious candidate. Or what if the scene we could ask him about had to have a maximum time limit of like 2 minutes. 

The pompous people don't know how to use phones.

I do think this ian interesting question that hasn't ever been answered by the people who could have asked him yet. One thing I have always wanted to ask JW is: how do you create your music? I would then also make sure he wouldn't start talking about the spotting session, I would really want him to go into what happens between: 'right, I'm gonna have to score this scene', and, 'okay, this is what the orchestra will be doing.' I want to know, as was touched upon in the latest podcast, how he determines the tempo of a scene without music, why he wants the violins to do A while the clarinets come in at moment B etc.
 
But what do I know? The 'they're all dead' story is obviously more interesting.

2-08. Love the clock thing and the When You’re Alone variation. Spielberg was right to omit the music when Hook is eaten, though, as great as it is.
2-09. The tracking in the film is really awful here. The choral writing is so good too. To think I disliked it years ago. And the flute, oboe and violin solos! Tink once more, brilliant. This final part is basically Williams being Patrick Doyle for four minutes and it’s so great. And the ending! I always imagine myself reaching for the starts and embracing the whole world. The woodwind flourishes are… SOOOOO delicious. They’re trying to capture an almost indescribable sense of happiness to me.
2-10. I love the coda in part one, prefer it to the concert ending. I think The Lost Boys starts a bit too late, though. And we waste too much time on the theme. Exit Music might be great, but I really, really miss Tinker Bell here and Exit Music ends too quietly, too muted.
 
 

On those expansions (and other ones such as the 2012 edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture), DD's credit was "Executive Producer for Sony Music", which is more of a contractual thing that really just means he was the boss of the people at Sony Music who did their part on those titles.  It doesn't mean he had any sort of creative input into how the music is presented, like he had on the 2012 edition of Hook which is why he's listed as the main producer on that one.
 
After Didier's tenure at Sony Music nobody has taken a similar capital letter Executive Producer credit on specialty label expansions - instead individuals are now listed.  In the Close Encounters expansion from 2017 there's a block for Sony Music with 8 people listed, by recent titles like Spider-man and 2023 Hook the Sony Music guys are in the special thanks. 

Okay, so I just watched the film for the first time.
 
I really enjoyed it! I went in with low expectations (given all the reviews I've seen), but I found it really charming and touching at points too, especially the father-son relationship. Of course, Johnny's music absolutely carries the whole thing from start to finish. There were even some scenes that I very nearly shed a tear due to how powerful the score was. 
 
This new LLL release has led to my discovery of an exceptional Williams score (in the most complete and highest quality form) and a lovely Spielberg film.

A new The Legacy Of John Williams podcast episode is up, featuring @TownerFan, @mahler3, @John Takis, me, and Mike Matessino
 
https://thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com/2023/12/27/hook-podcast-special/

I agree with you. When we first see Peter, it's in the drab, modern world of the United States which seems to represent adulthood and the drudgery of everyday life. He then takes his first flight of the film, appropriately via a PanAm jet, to London, here a somewhat modern, but also old-fashioned world between worlds. With the help of his oldest friend Tinker Bell, he makes his second flight, this time to Neverland, a world of paradox and color that represents the fleeting nature of dreams, happiness and childhood itself. At the end of the film, Peter is finally able to fly on his own again and when he returns to London, he is no longer oblivious to its magic because he has bridged the worlds of childhood and adulthood, successfully incorporating the best traits of both Peter Pan and Peter Banning into one fully-actualized family man, who I would argue belongs in London more than anywhere else.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE! 'HOOK - THE ULTIMATE EDITION' PODCAST SPECIAL PART 2 The Legacy of John Williams rings the new year with the long-awaited Part 2 of the HOOK podcast special on La-La Land Records' monumental, best-selling release of John Williams' soundtrack for Steven Spielberg's 1991 fantasy epic! Producer Mike Matessino returns to discuss more of the musical contents of the 3-disc Ultimate Edition, together with associate producers and co-writers of the liner notes John Takis and Jason LeBlanc. During the conversation, the trio of special guests dissect all the riches found in the treasure chest of this John Williams’ score, analyzing the score’s main themes, how the songs’ melodies were reworked into the thematic fabric of the piece and offering their own thoughts and reflections on the film and its score. LISTEN tinyurl.com/23xppnvk Available on all major podcasting platforms.  
https://www.facebook.com/thelegacyofjohnwilliams/posts/pfbid02BV9ZRkyw7iFaDzrmrqMHkMZq7YmoEvtbcKvx3YSNuymymyV1LP2ip1xbQde8wQ73l

They're happy for me when I'm happy about a new release, but definitely don't listen to film music themselves.

And thanks to @bollemanneke I already updated it - I thought the join between Crossed Swords and Form Ranks was weak but is what it is until I looked at the film where they're joined much better, so I replicated that with the help of tiny bits from the leak for a clean opening and ending and a clean join. Of course the OST edit had to be kept for the OST track but yeah it's a bit weird that the main program version which is already different in including the two inserts didn't fix the join of these two cues.