Yavar Moradi

Bonnie and Clyde was not a Black Friday release I’m pretty sure; wasn’t it a rare late December tie-in release from LLL? Yavar

So this thread is only for shows which have had *no* episodes released yet? That hasn’t seemed to be the case, and The Peripheral only just started so majority of even its first season is still upcoming. Yavar

It’s by the Cobra Kai composers and it’s excellent! Yavar

Wagon Train would be a cool place to start. With two original scores by Goldsmith and a whopping SIX (or more) from Williams, that’s a bunch of guaranteed sales already even before you add in names like Schifrin, Moross, Green, DeVol, Fried, Skinner, Amfitheatrof, Harline, Salter, Gold, Courage, Roemheld, Webb, Buttolph, Murray, Mockridge, and Shores… Plus it’s owned/controlled by Universal, an entity which seems friendly to the labels (though admittedly we haven’t gotten much TV from them as yet). Yavar

Yeah, or an expansion of: Yavar

Bonnie and Clyde was not a Black Friday title, but a rare late December announcement. Yavar

Sainton’s concert scores sound very much like his sole film score. Yavar

You don’t like concert music? If you like Moby Dick I definitely recommend you expand beyond his sole film score! Yavar

Poledouris wrote tons of orchestral scores! My personal favorite is Les Miserables, the year after Starship Troopers and the much greater score IMO. Yavar

Yavar

It’s a rather complex question Jay, because some of the longer alternates (“I Can’t See Him” is the big one) were written for an earlier cut of the film, which later got released (on Blu-ray even) as a Director’s Cut that runs 1 hr 59 min, which is 6-8 minutes longer than the theatrical cut I believe (which is what got the Goldsmith commentary/iso score track on the DVD edition). So some of these alternates were indeed “used” and can be heard in a commercially available version of the film, just not on that commentary. If you check out our new Soundtrack Spotlight podcast you can hear comparisons of some of these, including the one I mentioned: https://goldsmithodyssey.buzzsprout.com/159614/11577733-odyssey-soundtrack-spotlight-hollow-man-2000 Yavar

It is the year of Horner! Yavar

I saw the first episode and really liked it but I haven’t gotten around to seeing more yet. I did however catch the first two episodes of The Peripheral (based on a book by William Gibson) on Amazon Prime. Really good stuff so far, if you like hard sci-fi! The trailers don’t especially capture its quality but here they are anyway: Yavar

Even if you totally write off the 47.5 minutes of alternates, some of which are quite interesting and others of which do admittedly feature some repetition, I don’t see how you can say there’s not actually much new here. There’s like half an hour more score proper! And there are some really great previously unreleased highlights, from Chasing Isabelle early on to more of the climactic action music as well. The old album was longer than a lot of 90s Varese Goldsmith releases (because it wasn’t done with the AFM so reuse fees weren’t an issue), but they still left off a lot of music. Yavar

Soundtrack Spotlight needs just a few tweaks and will be out in a couple days! Yavar

The complete expansions of Matinee -- and the imminent Hollow Man -- were not Varese Deluxe Editions, but done by Intrada Records. Mainly I just enjoy these as complete experiences now, but off the top of my head I can tell you my #1 favorite new cue from Rudy ("More Training"... with ironically "More Girls" probably being the runner up) and my four favorite new cues from US Marshals (because together they constitute every appearance of a GREAT "new" theme which was inexplicably omitted from the original album): "The Pen", "Consider Him Dangerous", "The Humidor", and "Take It All". Yavar

Yeah. Spreadsheets are comprehensive. My list of favorite previously unreleased cues from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was closer to that; it was hard to leave off any of the new cues honestly! But with Prudence and the Chief I really was just trying to focus on a modest three unique highlights and not indulge further — the literal opposite of making a spreadsheet. If I DID make a spreadsheet there would have been far more unique moments that didn’t use the modified Lonely Indian theme from Rio Conchos OR the main theme that Rio Lobo later reused. But I guess to make a dismissive joke, Publicist wants everyone to believe I listed literally the only three unique cues in the score. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Yavar

Maybe you could explain the “humor” to the board members who might not get it? As the subject of your little jab, it certainly didn’t feel particularly friendly or good-natured, though I was just planning to ignore it before Jay said something. Your “joke” also just doesn’t make sense; I didn’t spreadsheet shit on Prudence and the Chief. All I did was list my three favorite highlights of the more unique material. And honestly, the whole score is unique, having its own tone/feel/sound that’s quite distinct from either Rio score, because of course it was written to accompany a very different western! That said, I really appreciate the rest of your post and even agree with a decent amount of it. Room 222 and Only in America are going to end up at the bottom of my ranking, similar to your assessment it seems (though probably more charitable in terms of my written assessment). I’ll just correct you on Only in America: there are four cues presented here on three tracks, and the only actual bumper cues constitute the middle track. The opening is a full main title, and the ending is the full end title. The lengths are short because this was a half hour sitcom, but I’m personally fairly impressed at what Goldsmith was able to encapsulate within those short pieces and I *certainly* don’t agree with you that they sound anonymous, like they were written by anyone. His voice is quite distinctive in these. This is however the one score on this set which is difficult to judge fairly, because while all the other scores are complete (or virtually complete), this one was just the music that could be salvaged from the mixed film audio. So the majority of the score, any dramatic “meat” or development of it, if you will, is missing. Yavar

Re: Anna and the King, I decided to play around with my own track order a bit in iTunes, for (IMO) a slightly superior listening experience. Here's what I did, for anyone interested: 1. I created a chronological order for Goldsmith's original Pilot score -- to do this: a) I swapped the first two cues, so that the unique Pilot version of the Main Title follows the cold-open cue "Anna Arrives", as it does in the episode itself. I just think Anna Arrives is a great opener, and leads into the Main Title well. b) I moved "My Secret", the reused Sand Pebbles cue which was freshly recorded for this series' music library, from the bonus section of this release back to where the Varese Fox Box had it, right after "March of the Royal Children". Maybe I just got too used to the Varese suite over the past couple decades, but even if Goldsmith didn't write it for this series I missed it in the sequence where it had previously been, and it does appear as part of the episode score in context there. 2. I thought to myself... Goldsmith made three different recordings of the Main Title, as well as scoring three episodes of the series. So why not move the "library version" from the bonus section to earlier, with "The Chimes", so that each of the three episode scores is with a version of the Main Title? (This also avoids the feeling of repetition at the end of the program by having the library version of the Main Title follow the End Titles.) This way, there's no bonus section at the end at all (just the End Titles, of which there was only one version), and it feels like everything has a home, of sorts. Anyhow, I like it better this way and I'm curious if anyone else feels inclined to try what I did, and see if they like it better too... Yavar

But their 20% off sale is still on! Yavar

I'm super interested to hear what other folks here think about this diverse set of wonderful scores, so I guess I'm going to get the ball rolling here with my own ranking of favorites released on this set... I look forward to others keeping that ball rolling if possible! I myself will write descriptions of why I rank each thing where it is, but if anyone doesn't feel like going to that trouble I'd still be curious just too see you put up a simple ranking from 1-7. Without further ado, here's my pick for #1 FAVORITE thing on this packed 2 CD set: 1. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1974) -- This was a TV movie that was apparently also intended as a backdoor pilot for a potential series (think what The Homecoming was for The Waltons) which never came to be. Alas that it's never been commercially released on a home video format because it's really quite a nice film. But Goldsmith treated it with real class and delicacy; I think he knew how much the book was beloved and took his responsibilities even more seriously than usual. This is "gentle Jerry" in the vein of something like A Patch of Blue... only this score, while occasionally troubled, doesn't have that score's moments of real darkness/pain. There's not a single cue of of these 16 which I *ever* feel tempted to skip; it's gorgeous all the way through, I love every second, and there are many highlights among the previously unreleased music: "My Favorite Day", "Morning Chores", "A New Address", "The Cake", "A New Child"... Yeah, I've been waiting for a complete stereo edition for years, and IMO it's worth the price of the new set on its own. Next up, we have: 2. PRUDENCE AND THE CHIEF (1970) -- I think this will be the biggest surprise on the set for most people, because folks already had some idea of how good A Tree Grows was, from the Fox Box. Thanks to generous FSM board member Ron Burbella, we at The Goldsmith Odyssey podcast have had a B&W film transfer of this rare unsold (but not unaired!) western TV pilot for several years now. I adore Goldsmith westerns, and I really liked the score when I originally heard it in context, and always found it to be a fascinating missing link between two of my favorite Goldsmith western scores, Rio Conchos and Rio Lobo. But even with the nice thematic links to those two scores, this 15 minute complete score reveals a lot of very unique and cool material which particularly stood out to me in the superior sound quality available on LLL's release compared to the film rip we got: the bit of synth that opens "The Village" before we get a nice bit of brass and percussion, the badass 70s brass riff that surprises in "The Visitors" after the really lovely opening, or the unique propulsive ostinato that runs through my very favorite cue in the score, "Missing Child". Nearly tied with it in my affection is another significant expansion, going from less than 16 minutes of music on the Varese Goldsmith at Fox box set to almost 34 minutes at the beginning of this set... and for this we have TWO nice and different custom covers made by steffromuk so take your pick! 3. ANNA AND THE KING (1972) -- This with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was always a highlight of the Varese box for me, and ironically they were the two that took the longest to see expansion. And in both cases it's a whole new experience! The pilot score is I suppose the least changed, since it was represented by about 8 minutes, over half of the Varese Anna suite (but four minutes shorter than this new presentation). But over two minutes of that was a cue we now know was outright reused from The Sand Pebbles -- "My Secret" was simply re-recorded for this new series, along with some other pre-existing Fox film cues, as they did on other TV projects of the era like Lost in Space! So it really was only about 6 minutes of original music Jerry wrote for the pilot that Varese released! Debuting here is Jerry's original pilot version of his main title, noticeably different from -- and in my opinion better than -- the regular series version which Varese included. The other *truly* significant addition here is the majority of the a highlight cue: "March of the Royal Children" now properly runs 2:14 and features an impressive full development of Jerry's theme instead of being very awkwardly truncated less than a minute in! The other added pilot music is more minor, but still nice to have as it still fleshes out the musical story/journey. "A New House" in particular is a really lovely close to the pilot score and I'm glad it's been restored to make it feel like there's an actual conclusion. "Anna's Romance" is a fine further exploration of the sound world and themes Goldsmith established in the pilot score, with a bit of a different tone and some new ideas interspersed throughout its brief runtime of just under 6 minutes (still about twice as much music as the two cues Varese included on their Fox Box suite!) Goldsmith constructs a new romantic version of his main theme which is practically a new theme in itself. Even though it's the most brief of Goldsmith's three scores for the series (perhaps the episode was partially tracked?) it's a lovely score with its own identity, allowed to shine now as a little gem in complete form. My favorite cue is the fairly brief but lovely new development of his main series theme in "A Great Person". And right after it is a unique "King Waltz" that sounds like a music box; just gorgeous! "The Chimes" I think is the score on this entire set that's going to blow a lot of people's minds! It sounds pretty much NOTHING like the other two Anna and the King scores Jerry wrote! Less than three minutes of the score (only a single cue, "You Lose") was included on the Fox Box, but on this release it's revealed as the longest Goldsmith wrote for the series at over 13.5 minutes long -- which is about as much original Goldsmith Anna and the King music Varese included from the entire series on their Fox Box! And this score is one of the most unique things Goldsmith ever wrote, like sort of an aural fever dream, sometimes mystical/magical, sometimes vaguely threatening. There are parts of other Goldsmith scores which sound a bit like it (maybe even some eerie parts of Planet of the Apes!) but this sustains a cool eerie mood throughout almost the entire runtime. This ended up being my friend David Lichty's favorite thing on the box set and I can understand why. It's kinda trippy and very, very cool! The previously-released "You Lose" is now revealed as the end of a vaguely creepy journey, and thus has a lot more impact which benefits from the added context of the preceding 10.5 minutes. NOTE: The short 38 second cue "A Practical Woman" which Varese put at the end of their Anna and the King suite was supposedly from this score, but is omitted from this new release because it was *actually* a (strangely anachronistic-sounding for Anna and the King) Richard LaSalle cue written for an episode of Room 222 recorded around the same time at Fox ("You Don't Know Me, He Said")! Credit goes to Neil Bulk and Jon Burlingame for working out the details: This cue coincidentally had the same title as Goldsmith's final short button cue for this episode, which was alas misplaced and couldn't be located for this release. But hearing that cue in the episode, it's frankly a very minor loss, as it really was just a short and simple "everything's all right" capper cue which didn't connect much with the rest of this unique score. I'll make a follow up post later ranking the remaining four titles on this set. Yavar

Yeah, this is pretty much how I see it. LLL's Earthquake was both an expansion of the album recording and a significant premiere of the film recording. Intrada's The Eiger Sanction was a similar and even MORE significant film recording premiere, very different from the album. Yavar

AWESOME news. Actually this is kind of a PREMIERE, because all that was released before was the 28 minute album recording, and the complete original film recording was apparently discovered just recently. Yavar

I’m kinda meh on She-Hulk overall; easily my least favorite MCU show, but this video does a good job addressing its strengths and weaknesses: Going from the heights of Ms. Marvel to this though was a bummer. Yavar

I have always thought a lot of the vocal stuff in the score sounds Farscape-esque. But which Farscape intro theme do you have in mind? SubVision (seasons 1 & 2): Guy Gross (seasons 3 & 4): Yavar