Hook - 30th Anniversary Double Vinyl from Mondo Records 2021

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

No worries, I'm certain Perseverance Records will license the remastered OST and issue it on CD.

[Luke Skywalker 1,939]

I fear something of the extent is what mike is fearing

[Brundlefly 2,393]

1 hour ago, crumbs said:

What if Sony are refusing to licence the score to LLL? Is the release assembled but stuck in approvals, and they're struggling to get vocalists to sign off on the songs? Are elements still missing and Mike's worried about how to assemble everything?

One thing is for certain: They went into the whole Hook matter again, i.e. they did some research or tried to get the elements/licenses, because they seem to know something we don't know. And what they know isn't promising.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

I'm sure Silva will do a rerecording, transcribed directly from the film.

[crumbs 14,869]

24 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

One thing is for certain: They went into the whole Hook matter again, i.e. they did some research or tried to get the elements/licenses, because they seem to know something we don't know. And what they know isn't promising.

 

It's hard not to get the impression that something was planned but something else has gone wrong, yeah.

 

Also the possibility those missing elements (that necessitated film stems for the 2011 expansion) still haven't been located or are lost (as speculated). Would love to know how a pristine bootleg ended up with much of that missing material. Surely the two are related?

[bollemanneke 3,593]

And I'd love to know how one can just lose a JW tape in the 90s. Why is it so difficult to find? It's not like it was publicly for sale or something.

[Richard P 4,189]

4 hours ago, crumbs said:

 

It's hard not to get the impression that something was planned but something else has gone wrong, yeah.

 

Also the possibility those missing elements (that necessitated film stems for the 2011 expansion) still haven't been located or are lost (as speculated). Would love to know how a pristine bootleg ended up with much of that missing material. Surely the two are related?

 

I can't remember whether I read this somewhere, but what if the bootleg material turned out somehow to be the only source of missing material, and Sony won't let them do an official release using non-official materials. (or only available in lossy or something). I can see that being legally problematic.

 

4 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

And I'd love to know how one can just lose a JW tape in the 90s. Why is it so difficult to find? It's not like it was publicly for sale or something.

 

Sounds like elements get misplaced or put in the wrong box all the time. Just because 'it's John Williams' doesn't mean it can't suffer that fate too. We should ask exactly the same about why Ghostbusters 2's elements are half missing, despite it being a huge movie.

[crumbs 14,869]

That was the rumour yeah, but I have no idea where it started. 

 

Supposedly LLL were sent those files in advance of the 2011 release (because someone caught wind of elements being missing), but Sony forbid them from using them due to a company policy about bootlegged material (so they had to revert to the film stems).

 

Almost too wild to be true.

[Richard P 4,189]

Can't say I blame Sony for that theoretical stance. Would you approve an official release if it were based on files that some collector shouldn't have possessed in the first place, and where you could have to explain at some point where the elements came from?

 

It's not like someone discovering an old videotape of some long lost TV episode, and that being used for a release - in that instance, the owner has legitimately recorded off the TV.

[bollemanneke 3,593]

Or Sony could just go along with it and properly archive their stuff?

[Luke Skywalker 1,939]

The bootlegged material is still propriety of sony…. And really the film stems were not 100% lossless irrc

[Holko 10,231]

58 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

Would you approve an official release if it were based on files that some collector shouldn't have possessed in the first place

How else would you do it if that collector was the only one to archive those files even you didn't bother to?

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

Sony Classical already has a history of sourcing from collectors when masters have been damaged.

 

But of course, those weren't bootlegs.

[Richard P 4,189]

But have they sourced stuff that's officially released, just with damaged masters? Or actual bootleg material?

[Luke Skywalker 1,939]

bootleg material is robbed from the owner...so the owner has the right to claim it?

[King Mark 3,713]

just make a hybrid album LLL/bootleg...expansion problem solved

[Manakin Skywalker 5,296]

The thing is that the stems do have a tiny bit of frequency cutoff, but no artifacting. The bootleg on the other hand is filled with artifacting due to only surfacing as MP3's. If absolutely necessary, I guess it wouldn't be too bad, but definitely far from preferable. Not something I personally would want to spend money on anyway.

[bollemanneke 3,593]

2 hours ago, King Mark said:

just make a hybrid album LLL/bootleg...expansion problem solved

I can't, I've officially banned bootlegs from my personal library, so I need LLL to do it properly for me.

[JohnnyD 1,325]

Just face facts. A remastered and expanded release will be coming from the Maestro by the end of this year; it just won’t be Hook.

[Richard P 4,189]

59 minutes ago, bollemanneke said:

I can't, I've officially banned bootlegs from my personal library, so I need LLL to do it properly for me.

 

If LLL can't do it because the missing material only survives in bootleg form (again, this is theoretical only), there's nothing you can do about that, and no amount of whining about Sony failing to archive stuff is going to help...

[King Mark 3,713]

I'll never feel a shred of guilt for including some bootlegged material in my collection.

[Brando 2,159]

Well

[Gurkensalat 350]

We do not know which aspect Mike is doubting: that it comes in 2021 (may be postponed to 2022), that it will contain the songs etc. It does not mean that NOTHING is in preparation at the moment.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

As I said, we're probably getting the remastered OST on CD.

[crumbs 14,869]

16 minutes ago, Gurkensalat said:

We do not know which aspect Mike is doubting: that it comes in 2021 (may be postponed to 2022), that it will contain the songs etc. It does not mean that NOTHING is in preparation at the moment.

 

I think we're all just worried that Mike is worried about something, because that's not reassuring (and Mike has always struck me as a very calm, cool, collected guy). 

 

Who knew that 3 little words could cause so much anxiety. 

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

Mike is losing it, just like Shawn.

[crumbs 14,869]

11 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Mike is losing it, just like Shawn.

 

Shawm was the more clever pun here. 

 

Missed opportunity. 

[bollemanneke 3,593]

11 hours ago, Richard Penna said:

 

If LLL can't do it because the missing material only survives in bootleg form (again, this is theoretical only), there's nothing you can do about that, and no amount of whining about Sony failing to archive stuff is going to help...

But whining is so great.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

It's tight.

[1977 1,746]

On 03/10/2021 at 11:37 AM, May the Force be with You said:

 

 

 

On 03/10/2021 at 2:15 PM, Jurassic Shark said:

I'm sure Silva will do a rerecording, transcribed directly from the film.

 

 

Has anyone ever made a stab at evening out those volume fluctuations on the film stems?

[Richard P 4,189]

On 04/10/2021 at 8:57 AM, Gurkensalat said:

We do not know which aspect Mike is doubting: that it comes in 2021 (may be postponed to 2022), that it will contain the songs etc. It does not mean that NOTHING is in preparation at the moment.

 

I feel the idea that LLL is working on a super-deluxe package with all the songs and unused stuff is a scenario dreamt up by JWFan. As soon as we discover that *something* exists connected with the score or JW's contribution, it's added to the 'dream' wish list, and becomes less and less likely to happen.

 

On a completely unrelated note, I will start demanding that Sony ransacks its vaults for better Ghostbusters 2 elements in a few years     

 

(I'm half joking...  ) 

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

He's probably doubting we'll get anything else than the remastered OST.

[Jay 39,424]

- The OST album had to be finalized before they had actually finished recording the score (which is why the climax of the score isn't on the album - it hadn't been recorded yet)

 

- Therefore, a copy of the final recording session day's cues never went to Sony Music like the main scoring session cues had.  Why would they, the album work was done.

 

- The 90s bootlegs missing the same set of cues that weren't available for the OST album, therefore makes perfect sense; Dubs of those cues only went from the recording stage right to the team mixing the final film, and that's it.  No copies sent to Sony Music, just less copies of these cues out there in the world in general.

 

- 20 years later, LLL gets a license from Sony Pictures and Sony Music to expand the score, and Didier is hired to produce it.  He's a Sony Music guy.  He has his team put together an album primarily sourced from the tape at Sony Music, which as indicated is missing the cues from that final recording day.  For whatever reason, the only thing he gets from Sony Pictures is the film's music stem.  Maybe the music stem was already digitized so didn't cost anything while the unedited session recordings would have required someone to pay for a transfer, maybe he didn't ask the right person, maybe he just didn't care or know enough about how things work, I have no clue.  I'd speculate he started the project assuming the primary source had the whole score, only realized later that it didn't, and only at that point got the music stem, which was good enough for him.  But who knows - we'll never have any more insight into his process than what he shared here.

 

- Meanwhile, another leak turns up coincidentally around the same time, that has a good take of most cues from the score, including those ones from that final day.  This means it came from a source unrelated to Sony Music; could be a source at Sony Pictures {maybe they've begun digitizing every tape in their vaults on their own dime?}, could be a source from the recording stage {maybe someone involved in the recording in 1991 kept a backup copy that he recently digitized and shared with a friend?}, who knows.  This new leak was sent to LLL before the album was released.  Whether LLL decided not to use it, or they were on board with using it but Didier decided not to use it, is unknown.  Maybe someone decided not to use it because it was only available in 320kbps mp3s and therefore had compression artifacts.  Maybe Didier didn't want to pay his team to open up the master and redo a bunch of tracks.  Maybe he has a personal issue with using elements sourced from fans.  Maybe Sony Music has an issue with elements sourced from fans.  I have no idea why the leak wasn't used, but any one of those is a good enough reason if you ask me.  The proper thing to have done when the main source turned out to not have every cue would have been to get the missing cues from the proper source at Sony Pictures (which would have negated the need for the leak entirely), even if it meant delaying the album, but that decision was not made at the time.  So we got what we got.

 

- Another 10 years later.  Mike Matessino rebuilds and remasters the OST album for Mondo.  Since the 2011 transfers of that Sony Music tape sound great, are in high res, and contain everything that was on the OST album, there'd be no need to use anything else.  So the Mondo album existing gives no insight into whether work on a proper expansion is already in the works, or will be in the works eventually.  It's just a separate thing.  But let's all hope a proper expansion done by a competent producer will happen, and happen soon!

[JohnnyD 1,325]

46 minutes ago, Jay said:

- The OST album had to be finalized before they had actually finished recording the score (which is why the climax of the score isn't on the album - it hadn't been recorded yet)

 

- Therefore, a copy of the final recording session day's cues never went to Sony Music like the main scoring session cues had.  Why would they, the album work was done.

 

- The 90s bootlegs missing the same set of cues that weren't available for the OST album, therefore makes perfect sense; Dubs of those cues only went from the recording stage right to the team mixing the final film, and that's it.  No copies sent to Sony Music, just less copies of these cues out there in the world in general.

 

- 20 years later, LLL gets a license from Sony Pictures and Sony Music to expand the score, and Didier is hired to produce it.  He's a Sony Music guy.  He has his team cobble together an album primarily sourced from the tape at Sony Music, which as indicated is missing the cues from that final recording day.  For whatever reason, the only thing he gets from Sony Pictures is the film's music stem.  Maybe the music stem was already digitized so didn't cost anything while the unedited session recordings would have required someone to pay for a transfer, maybe he didn't ask the right person, maybe he just didn't care or know enough about how things work, I have no clue.  I'd speculate he started the project assuming the primary source had the whole score, only realized later that it didn't and only then got the music stem, and that was good enough for him.  But who knows - we'll never have any more insight into his process than what he shared here.

 

- Meanwhile, another leak turns up coincidentally around the same time, that has a goodie take of most cues from the score, including those ones from that final day that had never been sent to Sony Music.  This means it came from a source unrelated to Sony Music; could be a source at Sony Pictures {maybe they've begun digitizing every tape in their vaults on their own dime?}, could be a source from the recording stage {maybe someone involved in the recording in 1991 kept a backup copy he recently digitized and shared with a friend?}, who knows.  This new leak was sent to LLL before the album was released.  Whether LLL decided not to use it, or they were on board with using it but Didier decided not to use it, is unknown.  Maybe someone decided not to use it because it was only available in 320kbps mp3s and therefore had compression artifacts.  Maybe Didier didn't want to pay his team to open up the master and redo a bunch of tracks.  Maybe he has a personal issue with using elements sourced from fans.  Maybe Sony Music has an issue with elements sourced from fans.  I have no idea why the leak wasn't used, but any one of those is a good enough reason if you ask me.  The proper thing to have done when the main source turned out to not have every cue would have been to get the missing cues from the proper source at Sony Pictures (which would have negated the need for the leak entirely), even if it meant delaying the album, but that decision was not made at the time.  So we got what we got.

 

- Another 10 years later.  Mike Matessino rebuilds and remasters the OST album for Mondo.  Since the 2011 transfers of that Sony Music tape sound great, are in high res, and contain everything that was on the OST album, there'd be no need to use anything else.  So the Mondo album existing gives no insight into whether work on a proper expansion is already in the works, or will be in the works eventually.  It's just a separate thing.  But let's all hope a proper expansion done by a competent producer will happen, and happen soon!

That explains the situation perfectly; thank you.

 

Again, I say this:

On 03/10/2021 at 5:17 PM, JohnnyD said:

Just face facts. A remastered and expanded release will be coming from the Maestro by the end of this year; it just won’t be Hook.

 

[Jay 39,424]

On 03/10/2021 at 5:17 PM, JohnnyD said:

A remastered and expanded release will be coming from the Maestro by the end of this year

 

Says who?

[Dr. Rick 1,202]

Well, I certainly don't have any insider info, but looking at the trends there's been a JW BF release more often than not in the last decade.  Fingers crossed!

[Brando 2,159]

 

Quote

I spent a summer vacation with one of my nephews, Michael Geyre, a musician and composer in his own right, deciphering the cues, identifying them, and compiling them into a sequencing that attempted to closely match the film itself – which we were watching over and over again.

This sort of baffles me. I get that not all the time are cues assembled in chronological order, but some of his decisions, such as certain cues being attached to others that aren't in order is confusing. But that's just me. I like chronological and complete scores but I can't complain all the time. Fingers crossed though.

[Jay 39,424]

Here's the cadence of the past 12 years

 

2010

1. 01-21: Black Sunday (1977)
2. 04-20: The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
3. 08-17: Space Camp (1986)
4. 08-27: TV Omnibus Volume 1 (includes "The Bronze Locust" episode of "The Eleventh Hour") (1963)
5. 11-22: Family Plot (1976)
6. 11-26 (Black Friday): Home Alone (1990)

2011

1. 08-22: Not With My Wife, You Don’t! Vol. 2—Original Soundtrack(1966)
2. 09-27: 1941 (1979)
3. 10-10: Midway (1978)
4. 11-03: Nightwatch (1965) / Killer By Night (1972)

2012

1. 03-27: Hook (1991)
2. 05-22: Jane Eyre (1971)
3. 09-12: The Long Goodbye (1973)
4. 12-04 (Black Friday): Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (1992)

2013

1. 02-26: The Fury (1978)
2. 05-09: Heidi (1968)
3. 05-21: Rosewood (1997)
4. 07-01: The Missouri Breaks (1976)
5. 10-15: Fitzwilly (1967)

2014

1. 06-24: The Empire of the Sun (1987)
2. 12-02: Space Camp (1986) - reissue of 2010 set

2015

1. 02-24: 1941 (1979) - reissue of 2011 set
2. 06-16: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
3. 06-19: The Long Goodbye (1973) - reissue of 2012 set
4. 10-06: Lost In Space (1965-1968)
5. 11-03: Jaws 2 (1978)
6. 11-17: Jaws (1975)
7. 12-01 (Black Friday): Home Alone (1990)
8. 12-11: Tom Sawyer (1973)

2016

1. 11-29 (Black Friday): Jurassic Park (1993) / The Lost World (1997)

2017

1. 03-13: Stanley & Iris (1990) / Pete N Tillie (1972)
2. 09-12: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
3. 11-28 (Black Friday): Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

2018

1. 06-18: The Cowboys (1972)
2. 08-28: Saving Private Ryan (1998)
3. 10-22: Dracula (1979)
4. 11-27 (Black Friday): Land of the Giants (1968)
5. 11-27 (Black Friday): Schindler's List (1993)
6. 11-27 (Black Friday): Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone / Chamber of Secrets / Prisoner of Azkaban (2001/2002/2004)

2019

1. 02-15: Superman: The Movie (1978)
2. 06-03: Monsignor (1982)
3. 10-17: Minority Report (2002)
4. 12-03 (Black Friday): The Poseidon Adventure (1972) / Earthquake (1974) / The Towering Inferno (1974)

2020

1. 03-03: Far and Away (1992)
2. 05-05: The River (1984)
3. 10-06: War of the Worlds (2005)

2021

1. 03-16: The Time Tunnel - Vol. 1 (1966)
2. 06-07: Images (1972)
3. 06-22: Always (1989)
4. 06-22: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - reissue of 2015 set
5. 08-10: The Eiger Sanction (1975)
6. 08-17: The Time Tunnel - Vol. 2 (1966)

 

That's 7 years with a Black Friday title out of 12 opportunities... more than I thougt!

[Marian Schedenig 9,042]

30 minutes ago, Jay said:

That's 7 years with a Black Friday title out of 12 opportunities... more than I thougt!

 

7 or 8. Unless you know for a fact that there won't be one this year, which I don't think is what you're saying.

[Dr. Rick 1,202]

So 7 out of the last 11 for sure.  8 out of 12 would make a nice even 2 out of 3 ratio 😂

Plus there were 6 non-BF releases in November and December!

[ZackR 95]

On 03/10/2021 at 11:16 AM, Richard Penna said:

Can't say I blame Sony for that theoretical stance. Would you approve an official release if it were based on files that some collector shouldn't have possessed in the first place, and where you could have to explain at some point where the elements came from?

 

It's not like someone discovering an old videotape of some long lost TV episode, and that being used for a release - in that instance, the owner has legitimately recorded off the TV.

I would blame them. If were the rights owner (Sony), I wouldn't care what the source was. I might be annoyed it had gotten out or been taken or whatever, but at the end of the day, the material belongs to Sony. They would obviously have every right to use it and the fact that someone might have possessed it illegally doesn't make the material itself any less valid. I wouldn't make some moralistic stand as if I'm sticking it to bootleggers/leakers by not using the material in my authorized release. Regardless, as Jay said, for whatever reason, the decision was made not to include it..

 

Even though we can cobble together a good experience with the sources available to us, a proper (ie, Matessino produced) version of Hook is right under Star Wars and Indy for me at this point. Hook is a Top 10 score for me from any composer. It's very special to me personally I hope it gets the presentation and preservation it deserves.

[bollemanneke 3,593]

Why on earth would you asssemble an OST before you finish recording? Surely people would have been happy to wait for the OST a bit. I'm guessing the masses couldn't care less about a two-week delay.

[Jurassic Shark 13,158]

If the OST isn't available when the film is released, people forget to buy it...

[Marian Schedenig 9,042]

if the OST isn't available when the film is released, it might not be released at all if it's no longer relevant for marketing.

[Taikomochi 1,222]

I’m not really sure what people think the soundtrack would have been like if they waited. It was already 75+ minutes. I don’t think Williams would have put more of the Ultimate War than what was on the original album as it would have lopsided the narrative on the album to have 15-25 min of climactic action. What is on the original album is a good presentation if you don’t know what’s missing. It works well as a climax. 

[bollemanneke 3,593]

But it has We Don't Wanna Grow Up, so, you know...

[Taikomochi 1,222]

I’d rather have more UW than that song, but I am speaking from the perspective of the persnickety album producer that Williams is. If he put that song on the album, he wanted it there. I don’t think he’d have sacrificed it for more action material he’d surely find redundant when the original UW has a strong internal narrative of its own that stands without the rest of the material.

[Jay 39,424]

15 hours ago, ZackR said:

I would blame them. If were the rights owner (Sony), I wouldn't care what the source was. I might be annoyed it had gotten out or been taken or whatever, but at the end of the day, the material belongs to Sony. They would obviously have every right to use it and the fact that someone might have possessed it illegally doesn't make the material itself any less valid. I wouldn't make some moralistic stand as if I'm sticking it to bootleggers/leakers by not using the material in my authorized release. Regardless, as Jay said, for whatever reason, the decision was made not to include it..

 

I think the only reason to use something from a fan is when it truly cannot be found anywhere else, and the fan's material is the only known source.  But that can't be the case with Hook.  There is no reason whatsoever to think that Sony Pictures doesn't have all of the original 1st gen tapes in their vaults.  I think we simply have a case where Didier did not get them, and just stuck with the material they had at Sony Music.  If the project could had been done by Mike instead of Didier, I'm sure more usual procedures would have been followed and he would have gotten everything Sony Pictures has and used that.  And the only reason we'd be talking about the leak was for its clean openings and endings and that's about it.

 

15 hours ago, ZackR said:

Even though we can cobble together a good experience with the sources available to us, a proper (ie, Matessino produced) version of Hook is right under Star Wars and Indy for me at this point. Hook is a Top 10 score for me from any composer. It's very special to me personally I hope it gets the presentation and preservation it deserves.

 

Right there with you buddy.  It's kinda funny, that for me, even though expansions of the Star Wars scores, Indiana Jones scores, and Hook already exist, I personally would love to have proper MM versions of all of those more than all the JW scores that have never been expanded.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely want all those too, but I've been dreaming of truly definitive Hook, SW, and IJ since I was a kid and know I will play them all a heck of a lot when they finally happen

[Doo_liss 6,421]

4 hours ago, Taikomochi said:

I’d rather have more UW than that song, but I am speaking from the perspective of the persnickety album producer that Williams is. If he put that song on the album, he wanted it there. I don’t think he’d have sacrificed it for more action material he’d surely find redundant when the original UW has a strong internal narrative of its own that stands without the rest of the material.

Isn't it possible he would just have done a different edit/arrangement, sort of like the Indy 4 Jungle Chase album edit that focuses more on the end?

[Taikomochi 1,222]

I guess that’s possible, but I doubt it would be better than what we got. The Jungle Chase edit is not a good one…