Ok, you guys have tossed around some terrific posts... and everyone's staying civil! That alone tells me us soundtrack collectors "can learn to just get along".
Some stuff to ponder from my point of view: I definitely understand the concept of film music being subservient to the film itself and not "intended" as a stand alone listening experience... I've written some film music - ok, ham 'n' eggs level music, I admit, but it was still tailored to the needs of the picture. Anyway, I also think that a good composer (remember those?) will write with nods to musicality, architecture, cohesive harmonic structure (atonal writing may not have this), intelligent use of musical ideas and how they relate or evolve into other ideas and whatever. As such, the music can and should be able to say something strictly musical to an audience who may or may not be watching a film, or even be familiar with it. It can succeed on that level. Or fail, too.
It sounds like most people are actually in that hybrid area where a c&c presentation lets us collectors have everything, but we also enjoy either creating our own shorter "albums" or playing whatever the composer, artist or producer had in mind as a concept. We get FIRST BLOOD.
I'm soooo happy that even you fans of c&c (I'm one of them sometimes, too) aren't clamoring for a strict adherence - however - to what the film music editors and dialog dubbing mixers necessarily have to create to service the picture. Goodness knows, we've heard from a few of those folks over the years. BUT - in my opinion, if that was the only way to go, we'd not only have that oft-mentioned PHANTOM MENACE situation but - far worse!! - we'd have no "The Hospital" from PATTON (my favorite cue from the album), written for but sorely missed in the film... none of the knock-out drag-down, ferocious orchestral action music from NARROW MARGIN since the director nixed almost all of it... and as I mentioned in my initial post, no "The Rock" from IN HARM'S WAY (which is my all-time favorite JG track) since Jerry wrote and recorded it while discussions for the finale and end credit sequence were still competely under discussion, only to find it dropped entirely anyway. (Gasp!)
But regarding that last paragraph, if those purists that want exactly what's in the film no matter how clunky an edit may be were actually ruling the planet - we'd have NO recordings of rejected film scores!! You'd never own JG's TIMELINE, ALIEN NATION, Elmer Bernstein's THE SCARLET LETTER, GANGS OF NEW YORK and so on and so forth. None of us would have the faintest idea what Bernard Herrmann wrote for TORN CURTAIN or Alex North wrote for 2001. Man! That's not a solution I'd want to live with.
But something that hasn't come up often is this. I grew up listening to the records. Maybe I was a bit odd, I admit. My friends would get together to go to a junior high school dance and I'd say I need to stay home and catch OMAR KHAYYAM on NBC because it's a Victor Young score I haven't yet heard. Try making friends that way. Anyway, this being the case, I would get a record like THE WAR LORD and play it over and over and over. Would I enjoy a c&c presentation today? Sure, I'm too big a fan of movie music to say no. BUT - I would most likely play the original album more often because a) I grew up with it b) it's easier to get through thirty minutes of music than eighty minutes of music c) any other presentation besides that old original one will be different feeling, unfamiliar, incapable of recreating the nostalgia associated with the original album. And what nerdy old adult doesn't want to recall their innocence and youth?
Which finally, in a sidebar to all of this (but related to that last paragraph) I want to admit how excited I was at first, then how saddened I became to read that the brand new CD offering KINGS GO FORTH and THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION has actually omitted un-necessary tracks from both. Un-necessary to who? I loved the flamenco guitar piece from the former. Loved it. I grew up with it. Ditto KINGS GO FORTH with the repeats and unrelated jazz combo music and all. And as I said above, there's a world of nostalgia for me in those really classic soundtrack albums from that era. In my humble opinion, if you're gonna release a CD targeted heavily at the very people who loved the LP to begin with... just give them that LP counterpart. Ok, maybe add to it... but don't take away from it. Ironically, the same problem happened many years ago when they first appeared on CD from Cloud Nine. Tracks were dropped from KINGS GO FORTH, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY and SOME CAME RUNNING just to squeeze them into available CD space. I didn't smile then, and now I'm still not smiling.
Thanks again guys for chiming in. Discussions like this really contribute to everyone's overall enjoyment of this music, certainly more than any stream of negative "why'd they release that again", "what's with that ugly green stripe on the cover", "there's a pop at 3:07 of track 8", "a clarinet player can be heard breathing during a rest..." and whatever. So thanks!
--Doug