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John Williams' DISASTER MOVIE SOUNDTRACK COLLECTION (Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Earthquake) 4CD Box Set from La-La Land Records


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3 hours ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

It's too long but it has a cool Steve McQueen role.

Best line: "Oh, shit."

When he said that, and when I saw it, for the first time, the whole cinema erupted in laughter.

It's the funniest line.

The best line is: "What do they call it, when you kill people?".

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8 hours ago, Þekþiþm said:

Assuming they haven't succumbed to CD rot by then.

Playability seems to depend on when I bought them and who manufactured. German ECMs I bought 30 years ago play fine. Universal I bought 15-20 years ago when they came out, usually pop/R&B/electronic are often glitchy now near the end of the program. The FSMs seem fine, I imported them only a few years ago. Kinda nostalgic about 'em as they kickstarted me getting into JW again (I ordered FSM Poseidon over dialup in '99!) after spending much of the 90s on the sidelines except for things like Five Sacred Trees (LLL has really helped me get into that score period properly). I'll probably just sell the 2010 Poseidon, they all went back in the bin for now anyway.

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The only other 70's Williams Title missing in my collection after this set is THE EIGER SANCTION. Any one remember that? 

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Amer said:

The only other 70's Williams Title missing in my collection after this set is THE EIGER SANCTION. Any one remember that? 

 

 

 

 

I do have the OST album. I bought it a few years ago for around 100 Euros. I don't regret the purchase. 

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THE EIGER SANCTION is a fine score. It's also an important score, as it closes the first chapter of JW's career. 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Sucker!

Uncool, bro. We don't criticize JWfaners' choice of buying material...especially when it's JW.

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1 hour ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

THE EIGER SANCTION is a fine score. It's also an important score, as it closes the first chapter of JW's career. 

 

I have this as well (I was lucky to get it when it was first released). I did not find the movie all that compelling (other than the climbing footage), but I will watch it again since I just watched the three disaster movies (total coincidence to the scores releasing!).

 

I loved the Trevanian novels (upon which the move is based) when I was in high school. In fact, there is a sequel to this story called the Loo Saction, and I suppose if Eiger had done better, Eastwood would have made Loo Section too. The movie did make back its costs though, so who really knows.

 

I will listen to the Williams score again this morning as I too had forgotten it, and I like the thinking about this as part of wrapping up this period of his scoring career. I might put Missouri Breaks into this period too (despite it overlapping time wise with Jaws). I think Midway & Black Sunday belong in the Jaws-forward period.

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16 minutes ago, The Five Tones said:

Can anyone recall a 70s era LP rerecord of JW's themes (and perhaps other composers') that included Earthquake and TI? I remember only that it was an American orchestra and the hi-hats were quite prominent compared to the OST. Was a library copy and my memory of playing it is from 1981-82, so not razor sharp.

 

Might you be thinking of the Disaster Movie Suite conducted by Henry Mancini and featuring a suite from Earthquake, The Towering Inferno and Jaws?  It was an English orchestra (the LSO) but Hank was an American conductor, of course.  There is a thread about the album here.

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33 minutes ago, Bespin said:

It's funny to talk about the "disaster period".  I started mine about 2-3 years ago and I'm still in it!

 

I thought a disaster period was when a woman wears white pants without a pad. 

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50 minutes ago, Omen II said:
1 hour ago, The Five Tones said:

Can anyone recall a 70s era LP rerecord of JW's themes (and perhaps other composers') that included Earthquake and TI? I remember only that it was an American orchestra and the hi-hats were quite prominent compared to the OST. Was a library copy and my memory of playing it is from 1981-82, so not razor sharp.

 

Might you be thinking of the Disaster Movie Suite conducted by Henry Mancini and featuring a suite from Earthquake, The Towering Inferno and Jaws?  It was an English orchestra (the LSO) but Hank was an American conductor, of course.  There is a thread about the album here.

Thanks, that's gotta be it!

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13 hours ago, Thor said:

"Earthwake" -- sounds like the perfect name for an environmental issue movement! Time to wake up and save the earth, folks!

 

 

earthwake.jpg

 

This one actually secured you the most liked content of yesterday!

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Just saw this tidbit from Mike about The Poseidon Adventure posted in the FSM thread for this box set

 

Quote
Quote

 

I'm SUPER excited for this, it looks stunning. I cannot wait to order it! I just have one tiny question:

Will the two recordings of "The Morning After" performed by Renee Armand be the same as the two on the old LLL CD? Because neither of them are actually the film version.

On the two LLL recordings, Armand sings very crisply, almost with a British accent, so the word "after" sounds like "uftuh" and the word "chance" sounds like "chunce".

On the film recording, Armand's vocal performance is totally different. She is clearly trying to sound more like Carol Lynley. Armand's singing is more breathy and nasal/American, pronouncing the words "chANNce" and "aaafter". This recording matches both the rehearsal scene and the later dinner scene, so it sounds like that one recording was used in both scenes.

Someone posted the full film recording online back in 2005. I have no idea where they sourced it from.

I just wonder if it was available to LLL for this release. If so, that would be amazing!

 

Unfortunately, the two we have are all that are on the music elements. It is possible that Armand came back at the very end of postproduction to replace the vocal a second time and that those recordings then ended up somewhere else. At least Renee is represented and credited, which she wasn't at the time. We also dedicated the release to Carol Lynley.

 

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Cannot wait to hear the samples for these!  I do not have any of these scores so this definitely fills in gaps in my collection.  

 

On 11/29/2019 at 3:17 AM, crumbs said:

 

Yeah even the different studio aspect seems irrelevant now. I could definitely see this happening in the next few Black Fridays (The John Williams / Oliver Stone Collection) considering none of the 3 scores have ever been expanded. Would explain why JFK is taking so long. 

 

The idea of a "Williams Disaster Score Box," never occurred to me but it seems like the Williams camp must be reasonably fond of the concept of bundling similar scores in deluxe sets. 

 

I think you're on to something regarding JFK, am I correct to assume that each OS/JW soundtrack would fit on a single disc?  If so let's say ~ $60 for the set and come in a slip case like this release?  Someone with Photoshop skills should mock up what the case would look like :)

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I honestly doubt JW or MM would want to bundle Williams' Oliver Stone scores together in a box.  If Mike gets to do them, I'd suspect they'd all come out one at a time as they are finished

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23 hours ago, MikeH said:


Agreed! It is very fascinating to discuss JW’s transitional period. For me Jaws has a timeless quality that makes it feel less 70’s JW than Family Plot, Black Sunday, and even Jaws 2. But there are moments like the horn writing at the beginning of Out to Sea (Jaws) that just scream mid-70’s Williams to me. I love it. 
 

This Lost in Space cue from 1965 feels like a precursor to a lot of the moody interior scoring from the disaster pictures: 

 


 

If I’m not mistaken, both Earthquake and The Towering Inferno were the first film scores he wrote after Barbara passed in March of ‘74. Earthquake was released mid-November and Inferno the end of December. JW has said that her passing marked a significant change in his life and how he approached his work from there on out. 
 

 

 

There’s so much individuality in his 70’s scores, and I’d definitely say it’s my favorite decade of his. There’s just a roughness to them that appeals to me more than the sometimes overly-polished and smoothly orchestrated scores that we’ll get in the 80’s and 90’s. 

Agreed in turn. Thanks for the insightful comment, I wasn't keeping up with JW/Fan during those years so I missed this great clip.

I'm ashamed to admit I bought the big LiS box set when it came out and haven't touched it due to a ordering/listening backlog that discourages me from taking on bigger listens (the Star Trek TOS box took me years as well). But yes, in general JW's contribution lent that show far more gravity than it had otherwise earned. The jeopardy seemed real!

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I am interested in the source music cues from Earthquake and wondered if either @Jay or @TownerFan or anyone else might know the answers to a couple of questions I have.

 

There are quite a few source music cues in the film, for example in the supermarket where Jody (Marjoe Gortner) works and especially in the bar scene where Lew Slade hangs out with Rosa, Miles and others (I hear four distinct pieces in those scenes).  There are also a couple of guitar cues later in the film, heard when the survivors are sheltering in Wilson Plaza and are entertained by Walter Matthau's drunkard.  Most if not all of them sound to me very much like they were penned by John Williams, but it does not look like they are included on the new CD as far as I can tell from the track list.

 

If they are by John Williams (and I believe they are) and are not included, was this because Williams did not want them on the album (as was the case with the source music from Superman, IIRC) or because the elements did not survive or because of space limitations or some other reason?  Apologies if this is explained in the liner notes, but I assume there is a reason why most of the source music from The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno is included in their respective albums whereas most of the source music for Earthquake is not included (apart from - and I am guessing again here - Lunch With Remy and Something For Rosa).  The film version of Miles' Pool Hall sounds quite different from the album version too but only the album version is represented as far as I can tell.

 

P.S. I am only interested in the Williams source music; I already have the CD of Dee Barton's music for High Plains Drifter and if I need the Hare Krishna mantra, I can just go up Oxford Street and whip my phone out.

 

:dance:

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4 hours ago, Luke Skywalker said:

It's depressing to know we will have to double dip all those scores in the future...

Maybe LLL will bundle all the missing source music in one single release?

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I am happy to say I don't have any particular craving for most of John Williams written source music. The actual complete scores are perfectly enough for me.

 

Except for the missing shawm cue. Never forget!

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12 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

In general Williams doesn't like his source music included on these, it seems. If you'll recall, he only allowed the Superman source music out on the Superman II/III set from LLL, not the Superman set proper. And I suspect that Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno have their source music included because it was already released by FSM in the past before Williams got involved in these specialty label releases, and leaving it off now would 1) make this release miss stuff that had been on a previous release, and 2) not actually accomplish much beyond annoying people at having to own both, because those pieces are already "out there" on a commercial release. Earthquake is in a different situation because the album recording came out on CD before this big soundtrack specialty label boom, and the film recording had never been released before. There is no earlier edition of the score with a definitive presentation of the source music to compete against. So in this case Williams might have "had his way" more, no doubt helped by the fact that including more Earthquake source music would have required a second disc for the score, just for that alone.

 

Yavar


Thankfully this new edition of Inferno has six additional pieces of source music included. The FSM release only had the song and the Morning After instrumental. 

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