As promised in an earlier column, here’s a list of other Star Trek TV scores I’d like to see released, Farscape Classics-style, if anyone was doing 1-2 releases per year. … Read more
I had the occasion to respond to an e-mail from a reader of the site this week who was inquiring about any possible news of new Star Trek TV soundtrack releases, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a really good idea. The worst we can get is a “no, not gonna happen.” Feel free to pass the URL for this entry along to your Trek-music-hungry friends. Here’s an excerpt from my reply to the e-mail.
… Read moreTo make matters even more complicated, there’s the current status of Trek (not exactly the most favorite Paramount property ever under the current regime at Paramount/Viacom/CBS) and the status of the label that used to do virtually all of the Trek TV soundtrack releases. Quite a few of the staff at GNP Crescendo seem to have defected in the past few years to a newer indie label, La La Land Records, which does not have the Star Trek license; Crescendo no longer has the license to pursue new soundtrack releases, from what I understand, so we’re stuck between a studio that doesn’t give even the tiniest fraction of a flip about Star Trek right now, and no label in place to release stuff even if they could license it.
My best advice for right now is to write a nice e-mail or letter to La La Land Records and try to stir up some interest in a possible series of Star Trek episode score CDs, very much like their current “Farscape Classics” series, which gather every cue from two individual episodes on a single CD. (I’ve gotten the first one of those Farscape CDs, and I have to say, they’re really nice.) With the 20th anniversary of TNG coming next year, I’d like to think that maybe we could put a bug in their ear about this idea and start getting some TNG episode scores released – I’d personally love to have Q Who, Skin Of Evil, The Child, Peak Performance, 11001001, Datalore, and The Emissary on CD…and that’s just from a cursory glance of the first two seasons.
Give ’em a shout at www.lalalandrecords.com – the worst they can do is say no.
I sat down today for a nice long session of Dune 2000 on the PC, something I haven’t played in about a year. Didn’t get online or anything, just played a local multiplayer skirmish against several computer opponents and maxed out everyone’s budget and tech and went at it for a while. With a twist. I love the music from Dune 2000, but I tend to play long, drawn out ground battles of bloody attrition…and the 11 or 12 tracks of music tend to start looping after a while. So I turned off the in-game music and loaded up Winamp with a huge playlist of appropriate soundtracks, but nothing blazingly obvious (i.e. anything with, say, the Star Wars or various Star Trek themes), set Winamp going and alt-tabbed back to the game. The effect was impressive – there were a few times where the music really seemed to dovetail almost scarily with what was going on with the game. When the “Sub Chase” music from The Abyss soundtrack kicked in, I thought, “Wow, somebody’s in trouble.” Turns out I was in trouble! They were in my base, killin’ my dudes! (Eerily enough, as I was in their base, killin’ their dudes, and effectively wiping one of my three enemies off the map, something operatic came up and had the same effect as, oh, say, Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”) I began setting up my usual endgame – and this also works in multiplayer, so pay attention – of setting up a second base on a land mass near the most powerful enemy’s base, building a repair pad there, and then airlifting a ton of tanks and other mobile units there fresh off the factory floor. Now, none of them really need repairs, but airlifting the lot of them to that repair pad puts your tanks on the enemy’s doorstep before they have time to get a massive ground defense rolling back into your path. (Better yet, while all this is going on, it’s a grand idea to sneak an engineer into their base and take over their repair pad, so you can start airlifting mobile units right into Grand Central Station.) Sadly, my buffer runneth under shortly thereafter, so that battle was forfeited – I guess the game plus Winamp may have been asking a little too much of the machine. I’m definitely going to give it another try though.
I’d really forgotten how much I love that game. I still think it’s the pinnacle of RTS design and playability. (Just keep in mind, the same folks, now under a different name, are making Star Wars: Empire At War.)… Read more
I’ve been gobbling up soundtrack CDs lately. The new Chronicles Of Narnia soundtrack is good stuff, and I had forgotten how good the orchestral score (i.e. “the stuff Queen didn’t do”) to Flash Gordon was in places. Yes, that Flash Gordon. That CD has become very very hard to find – it was a composer promo pressed for Howard Blake by the now-defunct SuperTracks, and also includes Blake’s music for Amityville 3-D (while I’ll admit I have yet to listen to, and have never seen). I snatched up a copy for a reasonable price this month (merry Christmas to me!), and I’m very pleased. Other recent acquisitions: Firefly, Stargate Atlantis, Planet Of The Apes (TV series), Stargate SG-1 Season 1…
Picking up on a trend?
I’ve asked this question many a time before, and I still haven’t found an answer. And I really want to know, psychologically, aesthetically, what it is that connects science fiction fans to soundtrack music so much. Is it an appreciation for the orchestra? When a couple of my favorites of the past 6-7 years have included the new Battlestar Galactica and the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade, both of them very unconventional musically, I don’t think that’s necessarily it. So what is it? Are the composers’ imaginations unleashed by the subject matter to create more thrilling soundscapes than usual?
I don’t just own science fiction movie and TV and game soundtracks exclusively, but let’s tune in to reality FM: science fiction scores probably comprise at least 90% of my extensive soundtrack collection. And the scary thing is, I can’t even tell you why that is.
Talk to me, people. There’s a graduate paper in musicology just waiting to happen here.… Read more
