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Amazing Stories! Yay!


sulky

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Vol.1 (Ghost Train and Mummy Daddy)

Vol.3 (The Mission)

But I got so used to the 1998 re-recording of The Mission that listening to the original Williams recording sounded a bit strange at first... is some moments, the re-recording sounded better, and I don't mean in sound quality...

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Get all three volumes if you can. Vol II has just as much good music as the first two. Some people here might tell you to ignore it because there is no Williams but it has Jerry Goldsmith's quirky little score (Boo!) and a lovely score by Georges Delerue from the episode Dorothy & Ben.

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Get all three volumes if you can. Vol II has just as much good music as the first two. Some people here might tell you to ignore it because there is no Williams but it has Jerry Goldsmith's quirky little score (Boo!) and a lovely score by Georges Delerue from the episode Dorothy & Ben.

I'd love to, but with the economy the way it is and the terrible exchange rate (the peso has devaluated 40% against the dollar since October) I'll ony get one right now.

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  • 13 years later...
2 hours ago, Jay said:

Today I'll be listening to all 3 Anthology releases from Intrada and sharing brief thoughts on each score included

 

Cool! I look forward to it. Many talented composers on that show... though I gotta say the Goldsmith score is super underwhelming and easily my least favorite thing he did for Dante.

 

Yavar

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James Horner - Alamo Joe

 

Oh man, this is a fun one!  A bit of a Zorro-esque flair years before he wrote that score, with some of those optimistic horns from his Trek scores showing up too

 

Bruce Broughton - Gather Ye Acorns

 

Wow, this is a real winner! Nice really nice delicate passages early on eventually give way to a smorsasboard of swing, country, rock and roll and a variety of other styles - and it all works!  What a very nice score!

 

Georges Delerue - The Doll

 

This one didn't do much for me overall, though the final wrap-up track was quite lovely!

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34 minutes ago, Jay said:

Bruce Broughton - Gather Ye Acorns

 

Wow, this is a real winner! Nice really nice delicate passages early on eventually give way to a smorsasboard of swing, country, rock and roll and a variety of other styles - and it all works!  What a very nice score!

 

Yea yea yea, I love this one! Kind of a hidden gem. 

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Billy Goldenberg - The Amazing Falsworth

 

A very quiet an unassuming end to disc 1

 

John Williams - Amazing Stories Bumper #1

 

4 seconds of JW goodness :P 

 

David Shire - Moving Day

 

The least interesting score so far, a lot of slow synth stuff without much to grab you and make you take interest at all.

 

Georges Delerue - Without Diana

 

Another quiet entry, nothing too memorable here for me personally apart from the lovely orchestration.

 

 

 

 

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Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek - Mummy, Daddy

 

The first really wacky score of the set is pretty good, though somehow feels like it's holding back despite all the flamboyance.  The final wrap-up track is good!

 

Lennie Niehaus - Vanessa In The Garden

 

Wow!  I had never heard of this composer before, but this score kinda blew me away!  I was really into it the entire 13 1/2 minutes.  I want to revisit it!

 

Bruce Broughton - Welcome To My Nightmare

 

Woah, another good one!  Had a good flow and pace to it, felt like it told more of a story than some of the scores so far.  This Broughton guy, he knows what he's doing!

 

John Williams - Amazing Stories End Credits

 

Love the opening piano bit that is reminiscent of the ET end credits, the whole piece is nice!

 

John Williams - Amblin Logo

 

The ET-ness is even more apparent here.  I'm surprised I haven't heard this music more in my life, didn't Amblin make a lot of shows?

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John Williams - Amazing Stories Main Title (Alternate #1)

 

I admittedly didn't notice the difference from the disc 1 version - don't shoot me!

 

 

Jerry Goldsmith - Boo!

 

Wow, this score comes really close to the sound of Elmer Bernstein's Ghostbusters at times!  There's a cool little percussion passage in track 5 I liked.

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1 hour ago, Jay said:

Lennie Niehaus - Vanessa In The Garden

 

Wow!  I had never heard of this composer before, but this score kinda blew me away!  I was really into it the entire 13 1/2 minutes.  I want to revisit it!

 


 

I know him mostly through his work with Clint Eastwood for a stretch.  The stuff I do have is pretty darn good, but in a lot of the albums the score track or tracks is buried in songs.

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Billy Goldenberg - What If... ?

 

Huh.  I really liked the surrounding tracks of this score, but right in the middle is a weird rock and roll track that didn't fit at all (or was particularly interesting on its own).  The rest was pretty good though!

 

Georges Delerue - Dorothy and Ben

 

Woah.  That was lovely!

 

Craig Safan - Main Attraction

 

Wow, that was a pretty well-developed and well-rounded little score!  Another one I instantly want to revisit.  I heard a little bit of Last Starfighter but mostly it was its own thing

 

David Newman - Such Interesting Neighbors

 

Wow!  Another winner here.  At 17 minutes it is one of the longer scores represented so far, but it earns that runtime by being pretty interesting and engaging throughout.  It has an interesting, quiet ending rather than a big finish, but it still leaves an impact

 

Bruce Broughton - Thanksgiving

 

Another good one - damn, this guy did good work for this show!  Why didn't get get more big film jobs?

 

And so I only made it halfway through the collection; Hopefully I can finish up on Friday!

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John Williams - Amazing Stories Bumper #2

 

4 seconds of goodness

 

David Shire - Hell Toupee

 

Fun little sci-fi score with synth work by Craig Huxley!

 

Johnny Mandel - One For The Road

 

Short, but really fun score!  I liked it a lot!

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Arthur B Rubinstein - Remote Control Man

 

A quiet, somewhat unassuming score - but it was nice!

 

John Addison - The Greibble

 

Pretty good!  I'm finding all the scores on this Vol 2 release have a pretty good flow; Some of the Vol 1 scores seemed more stop and start-y.

 

Leonard Rosenman - No Day At The Beach

 

This one didn't leave much of an impression

 

Thomas Newman - Santa '85

 

Woah!  This was really good!  He seems to find ways to use the piano in interesting ways that grab me every time.  I gotta listen to more T Newman...

 

John Williams - Amazing Stories End Credits

 

Yep, still good

 

John Williams - Amblin Logo (Christmas Version)

 

Woah, this was super fun!

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I rarely revisit this set.  It's not that it isn't good, it's that The Mission is next level, up in the stratosphere looking down good.

 

But it's been some time, and I'm due for another listen.

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John Williams - Amazing Stories Main Title (Alt #2)

 

OK this alternate is noticeably different, and still really good!

 

Alan Silvestri - Go To The Head Of The Class

 

What a weird score.  It's twice as long as most scores in these collections and yet doesn't have a lot to say; It goes through a few ideas and then goes through them all again without a lot of cohesion, and it's also all electronic.  I have nothing wrong with all-electronic scores, but this particular one often tries to emulate a real orchestra, and just sounds really fake as a result.  Oh well

 

Craig Safan - The Wedding Ring

 

This opens with a fun song from a 1940s musical, though whoever is singing this version is uncredited.  The rest of the score is pretty good!

 

Michael Kamen - Mirror, Mirror

 

This opens with a 6 minute long source cue consisting of muddy electronics that is honestly difficult to get through.  After that, however, the score itself is pretty good little suspense thriller!

 

Bruce Broughton - Mr. Magic

 

Wow, another real winner here!  A lot of really nice fun, lite, breezy jazz and swing, culminating in a quirky little wrap-up cue.  A real nice score!

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John Williams - Amazing Stories Bumper #1

 

I think this was an exact repeat

 

Billy Goldenberg - Secret Cinema

 

Another good, albeit very short, score

 

Fred Steiner - Life on Death Row

 

A really good old fashioned score, I liked it a lot!

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John Addison - The Pumpkin Competition

 

Wow!  A very fun Halloween-y score with harpsichord and other fun orchestration.  Good stuff!

 

Pat Metheny - Grandpa's Ghost

 

Pretty unmemorable score right here.  Not very interesting.

 

John Williams - The Mission

 

Wow!  Easily the best score of the lot, and the one that most resembles a film score instead of a television episode score.  Wonderful theme that gets plenty of variations, and I love how it all climaxes in a 10 1/2 minute track that is compelling its entire duration.  But boy, I had forgotten how much of that track he re-used without too much variation for the tank chase in Last Crusade 4 years later...

 

I've never seen this episode - or any episode of the show - but I really want to now!  Hopefully the show is streaming somewhere.

 

John Williams - End Credits

 

John Williams - Amblin Logo - Alt

 

I think these are repeats

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On 17/5/2022 at 4:03 PM, Jay said:

 

  But boy, I had forgotten how much of that track he re-used without too much variation for the tank chase in Last Crusade 4 years later...

 


I adore the Mission. It’s a frequent go-to when I need a short fix.  I will say it definitely has an Indiana Jones style “action” motif, but I hear more similarities with the Airplane Fight from Raiders than the more exotic sounding latter portion of LC’s Tank music.  Either way, it’s a superb piece of Williams action and it really does do well to intensify the unfolding drama that Spielberg was trying to make almost unbearable for the audience. 
 

Williams isn’t really inventing anything new here. The resolving joyous, quasi-religious music that breaks loose isn’t much different than the Flying Theme.  But man, for a television project back when television and cinema were two separate worlds, this was glorious. 
 

I watched the show in It’s original run and enjoyed it for the most part. As you can imagine there are a lot of stinkers along with the highlights.  It probably hasn’t aged well at all. If you decide to check it out, I’d set your expectations very low and be ready for a lot of cheese.  But I happen to like cheese, so there you are. 

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On 10/05/2022 at 5:58 PM, Jay said:

Georges Delerue - The Doll

 

This one didn't do much for me overall, though the final wrap-up track was quite lovely!

 

 

This is my favorite non-Williams score from the series. I'm surprised it didn't leave you much of an impression

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9 hours ago, Romão said:

This is my favorite non-Williams score from the series. I'm surprised it didn't leave you much of an impression

 

Same here. In fact, not only my favourite non-Williams, but my favourite, period. IMO it blows Williams' material out of the water. But I can understand how Delerue's style is not for everyone. You have to have a penchant for that rather European, bittersweet melancholy that he excelled at.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I wonder if Intrada or another label would consider revisiting and remastering these scores?

 

Maybe a single disc release of both Williams scores with all main title / end title / bumper / logo variations

 

And then a big box set for every other composer's score all together?

A guy can dream...

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I think they'd then be guaranteed great sales for the Williams single disc, and very poor sales for that big box set...

 

At the time these originally came out, Roger or someone at Intrada said that if they really sold like gangbusters and/or the missing Elfman score turned up, a fourth volume would be a possibility. For whatever reason, that fourth volume never came and I suspect Intrada is done with this. (I'm sure it also didn't help that their wonderful 3-CD 80s Twilight Zone set sold horribly.)

 

Yavar

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