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One of my few good memories about programming during the time I worked at a Fox affiliate in the early 1990s is Animaniacs, a Warner Bros.-produced cartoon with plenty of jokes that would fly in under the kids’ radar and give a big belly laugh (or maybe just a knowing smirk) to any adults who happened to be watching with their kids.

God, but I miss that show. With almost as many pop culture references as Mystery Science Theater 3000, and rollicking good fun to boot, Animaniacs is still probably underrated today.

It’s easy to dismiss cartoon music these days as being nothing but an ongoing pastiche of the works of Golden Age toon tunemeister Carl Stalling, but every once in a great while the right show is paired with the right composer, and you get magic. Richard Stone’s work on Animaniacs is an excellent example of this.

Animaniacs Variety Pack is the second Animaniacs album to come down the pike, and it’s also the better of the two, with more of the songs that fans both young and old probably wanted from the first one: the theme songs from Pinky & The Brain and Slappy Squirrel stand out foremost in my mind there. A personal favorite of mine is “Variety Speak”, an affectionately goofy homage to the kind of entertainment-industry lingo which brought us such headlines as the infamous “Hix Nix Stix Pix.” The constant recurrance of “All The Words In The English Language” can be a bit annoying if you’re not in the right frame of mind…but then again, if you weren’t in that frame of mind, I doubt you’d be listening to Animaniacs Variety Pack, now would you?

My one complaint: like the earlier Animaniacs song CD, Variety Pack weighs in at a little under a paltry half-hour. Even with a grand total of barely an hour of music from the series available, I know that more good tunes came out of this show than that.

1. Variety Speak (1:57)
2. The Monkey Song (2:52)
3. All The Words In The English Language, Part 1 (1:01)
4. Pinky And The Brain (1:30)
5. Cheese Roll Call (2:32)
6. Multiplication (1:29)
7. Dot’s Song (0:44)
8. Dot’s Quiet Time (1:39)
9. All The Words In The English Language, Part 2 (1:13)
10. Slappy Squirrel Theme (0:33)
11. Wakkos’s Two-Note Song (2:05)
12. The Presidents (3:20)
13. The Anvil Song (0:50)
14. At The Big Wrap Party Tonight (2:57)
15. All The Words In The English Language, Part 3 (1:00)
16. The Goodbye Song (0:32)

Released by: Kid Rhino
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 26:14

While some fans may still be debating the merits of the first “season” of Doctor Who Audio Adventures starring Paul McGann, I’m sitting here being wowed by the music. Big Finish Productions has seldom let us down on the musical side of things, but what with the eighth incarnation of the wayward Time Lord having appeared in only a big-budget TV movie that featured an ambitious orchestral & synth score, this raised the bar somewhat. And for the most part, Big Finish’s composers in residence stepped up to the plate and delivered.

Alistair Lock’s synth-orchestral score for the first story, Storm Warning, sets a new high water mark for his work. Lock’s scores for the Doctor Who audio plays have seldom been less than exceptional, but the depth and texture of the samples used for the Storm Warning score achieve the aim of picking up where the TV movie’s music left off - it feels big-budget.

The only entry that I routinely skip on the entire two-disc set is Nicholas Brigg’s music for The Sword Of Orion, which he also wrote and directed. Briggs has a habit of scoring the stories he scripts, and while I applaud anyone who wishes to extend their creative vision in such a fashion, I’ve seldom found his musical output to be entirely pleasing to the ear, and sometimes it commits a worse offense: it doesn’t serve the story. I can see and heard what Briggs was trying to do here - using massively echoplexed percussion and brass samples (perhaps too echoplexed), he’s trying to evoke the feel of the famous stock music used in such Cybermen stories as The Tenth Planet and Tomb Of The Cybermen - but purely as a musical experience, it becomes extremely grating. It worked better with dialogue and sound effects to distract from the repetitive nature of the music itself, and the over-reverbed style of production.

One of the biggest surprises for me was Russell Stone’s lovely score for The Stones Of Venice, a moody, offbeat story which required music to match. Stone’s largely piano-based music gives it that, with everything from unnerving suspense music to a jaunty march that appeared in part three (a piece of music which jumped out at me even when I was first listening to the story itself). Of the four McGann stories released in 2001, Stones is the one that benefits the most from its music. The score does just what’s required of it in an all-audio medium, including occasionally taking center stage as narrator.

But my favorite score of the entire collection has to be William Allen’s Minuet In Hell score. Delightfully atypical in that it leans heavily on honest-to-God electric guitar more than synthesized samples, Allen’s score wasn’t exactly favored in that story’s sound mix, an so hearing it sans dialogue and effects is an eye-opener. Allen’s guitar work is excellent, and not unprecedented in Doctor Who (remember the wickedly menacing electric guitar riffs in the series’ final episode?).

Closing the collection is something the fans would’ve lynched Big Finish’s entire staff for had it been omitted, Independence Day composer David Arnold’s creepy new version of the Doctor Who theme, arranged especially for Big Finish’s eighth Doctor audios. Though I’ve grown a bit weary of Arnold’s interpretation of the theme, it’s nice to have a complete collection of every theme music arrangement down through the years. This version tops out at around two minutes, much like the 45 RPM single arrangements of yesteryear.

Music From The Eighth Doctor Audio Adventures is a nice selection of the music from what many fans are regarding as the first real adventures of the McGann version of the Doctor (not everyone’s been thrilled with the BBC’s eighth Doctor novels), attractively packaged and - considering it’s a 2-CD set - budget priced. Big Finish sweetened the pot by issuing a few thousand copies with McGann’s signature on the cover of the booklet - being the most reticent of the surviving Doctors, and not yet having hit the convention circuit, McGann’s autograph is damn near impossible to get on anything. It’ll be interesting to see how they top this after McGann’s six-story stint concludes in 2002.

Disc one:
1. Storm Warning trailer (2:06)
2. The Timeship (3:00)
3. Masters Of The Air (1:26)
4. Aboard The R101 (2:54)
5. Charley Meets The Doctor (1:28)
6. Belly Of The Whale / Something On The Hull (5:18)
7. Chasing Vortisaurs (0:56)
8. Rendezvous At 5,000 Feet (3:30)
9. Greeting The Aliens / Inside The Spaceship (4:07)
10. War Is Declared (2:52)
11. The Final Flight / The Edge Of Destruction (3:00)
12. Charley Joins The Doctor (1:43)
13. Sword Of Orion trailer (1:29)
14. The Truth About Ramsay (1:44)
15. Garazone: Evil And Bazaar (8:53)
16. Mission Of The Vanguard (2:58)
17. Awakenings (3:07)
18. Undercurrents, Airlocks And Revival (5:05)
19. Cyber Pursuits (3:16)
20. Cyber Spooks (5:01)
21. Ion Destruction (1:01)
22. Farewell Deeva (1:39)

Disc two:
1. The Stones Of Venice trailer (1:37)
2. Run Doctor! / Ms. Lavish (2:45)
3. Drugged By The Cultists (2:30)
4. The Holy Of Holies (2:19)
5. Gondolier Attack (2:07)
6. Plots And Dark Powers (2:47)
7. The Death Of Venice (3:28)
8. Estella (1:24)
9. The Ducal Hoofers / Portents (5:40)
10. The Truth / Into The Flames (2:11)
11. You’re My Best Friend (2:51)
12. Minuet In Hell trailer (1:22)
13. Hell Or Malebolgia (1:50)
14. Becky Lee (2:32)
15. The Brigadier / Malebolgian Minuet (4:14)
16. Deeper Into Hell (2:29)
17. Zebediah Doe / Memory Lapse (3:23)
18. Marchosias Arises (4:08)
19. Political Subversion (3:19)
20. Tentative Steps / Becky Lee Finds The Brigadier (4:12)
21. A Trick For Victory (1:59)
22. Private Hell (3:27)
23. An Odd Idea Of Fun (2:56)
24. Theme from Doctor Who - David Arnold’s full version (2:09)

Released by: Big Finish Productions
Release date: 2002
Disc one total running time: 70:21
Disc two total running time: 67:02

This may be the daftest review ever to appear in the many pages of theLogBook.com’s music review section, but here goes. I’ve been carefully avoiding any story spoilers for Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones for something like three years now. I will check out Lucasfilm’s official web site for the movie, but I haven’t been looking for story summaries, spoilers, scripts, or any of that. I was actually honked off at the fairly major spoilers included on the action figure packaging for the new movie. And I debated whether or not to get the soundtrack in advance of the movie.

But if I hadn’t done that, we would’ve missed out on the chance to have this extremely strange chat.

The first track, opening with the traditional Star Wars theme, descends into a repetitive musical motif that spirals downward and then begins again. Remember, I have no idea what’s happening in this scene, so I have no idea how appropriate it is. Nice music, though.

“Love Theme From Attack Of The Clones” is the film’s big romantic statement, and judging by the rest of the disc, seems to serve not only as a theme for the burgeoning relationship between Anakin and Padmè that has been hinted at in the theatrical trailers, but also as a theme for Anakin himself.

“Zam The Assassin and The Chase Through Coruscant” is a lengthy track - over ten minutes’ worth - loaded with action and suspense music. Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the inclusion of wild distorted electric guitar riffs in a few places, which may have some fans up in arms, but not me. It actually sounds kinda cool - it’s not exactly a Force Commander-style remix or anything, but just another voice in the orchestra, and it integrates well. Again, no idea what’s going on in this scene, but a lot of the rumbling action cues remind me a great deal of Williams’ score from Nixon, and that’s not a bad thing. (It’s not as if he’s pulling a James Horner cut-and-paste scoring job on us, either. It’s very different music with a similar stacatto rhythm to it.) Maybe they’re chasing Zam through Coruscant. Guess I’ll find out soon enough, eh?

Other tracks of note include “The Tusken Camp and Homestead”, a track which surprised the heck out of me by jumping full-blast into “Duel Of The Fates” from the soundtrack of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. This is a rare case where I’m pretty sure I do have a good guess as to what happens in this scene, and why that particular motif comes up. And I’m not telling.

“Love Pledge and The Arena” includes some references to such Star Wars chestnuts as the Force theme and something presaging the AT-AT music from The Empire Strikes Back, but the biggest surprise in both this track and “Confrontation With Count Dooku and Finale” is the bold statement of “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)”. I have absolutely no idea what’s happening here, and the fact that this particular theme appears in this movie makes me wonder just what is happening, and whether or not it would’ve been more appropriate to hold it until Episode III. But I can’t really say until I see the movie.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed the Episode II soundtrack as a listening experience alone. Some fans have railed against such things as the electric guitar and the seeming lack of strong thematic material in what’s on this album, but it’s important to remember that this is just the suite album, and a two-disc Ultimate Edition with the complete score is probably about 6-8 months away, as was the case with the Episode I Ultimate Edition set. Don’t fret over the guitars, either. Did you freak out when Williams used sax and steel drums in the original Star Wars? Of course not - not only did we have no precedent for Star Wars music then, but it was novel and appropriate and wouldn’t have been the same without it. And maybe that’s the case here too. On the virtue of the music alone, I like it.

You may think it’s a waste of your time to read an almost-spoiler-free music review of the soundtrack from someone without a clue as to its context in the film, but we’ll give the complete score release a more thorough review with that in mind when it hits the shelves. And I wanted to experiment with reviewing the music with no preconceived notions of whether or not it fits the scene - reviewing the music purely as a listening experience. And for the record, it’s a good experience.

1. Star Wars Main Title and Ambush On Coruscant (3:46)
2. Love Theme From Attack Of The Clones (5:33)
3. Zam The Assassin and The Chase Through Coruscant (11:07)
4. Yoda and The Younglings (3:55)
5. Departing Coruscant (1:44)
6. Anakin And Padmè (3:56)
7. Jango’s Escape (3:48)
8. The Meadow Picnic (4:14)
9. Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit (3:23)
10. Return To Tatooine (6:56)
11. The Tusken Camp and Homestead (5:54)
12. Love Pledge and The Arena (8:29)
13. Confrontation With Count Dooku and Finale (10:46)

Released by: Sony Classical
Release date: 2002
Total running time: 73:31

This album - the band’s fourth and probably last - features just about everything that’s good about dada. The energy and harmonies most prominently featured on Puzzle are back, and so are the catchy melodies, this time with a little bit more electric guitar and production complexity. “Where You’re Going” uses echoing guitar as an anchor in the background, while the percussion, bass and more guitar drive the song. “The Ballad of Earl Grey and Chamomile” features more great guitar work and is a close second as my favorite song on the album. It’s yet another look back at happier times, which might become a clichè if dada didn’t do it so damned well. The background vocals on the chorus do a tremendous job of making you feel the excitement of those better days. “Information Undertow” has some of dada’s most inventive lyrics, and they only seem more apropos four years later, although my appreciation of lines like “I’m everywhere I want to be, nowhere especially” may say more than I want to about my own online habits. Goodbye is a beautiful ballad about the end of a relationship. “Beautiful Turnback Time Machine” is a cool track about what we’d do if we could do it all over again. “This Thing Together”, a song whose optimism may or may not be tempered by the “You know I’ll miss you when you’re gone” chorus, is carried by the vocals but has a great rhythm to it.

1. Information Undertow (3:33)
2. Playboy in Outerspace (4:53)
3. Where You’re Going (3:39)
4. California Gold (5:30)
5. Thins Thing Together (3:48)
6. Sweet Dark Angel (4:10)
7. Goodbye (3:55)
8. Beautiful Turnback Time Machine (4:21)
9. Baby Really Loves Me (4:13)
10. Spinning My Wheels (4:45)
11. Outside (3:08)
12. The Ballad of Earl Grey and Chamomile (3:46)
13. Agent’s Got No Secret (4:22)

Released by: MCA
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 54:11

To the extent that dada has any hits, this is where you’ll find them. The sometimes-cynical sense of humor of “Dizz Knee Land”, with its once-again-pertinent line “I just flipped off President George / I’m going to Dizz Knee Land!”, permeates a few of the other tracks, like “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” and “Posters”. But there is also a solid emotional core to the songwriting. “Timothy” is the story of a boy whose life is so depressing he resorts to fantasy; the accompanying strings might come off as overbearing if they weren’t so well balanced by the understated bass, acoustic guitar and vocals, all of which build in intensity throughout the song. “Surround” is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. At its core, it’s just percussion work and acoustic guitar playing a melody that’s simple yet elevating (with similar lyrics), but it layers other instruments in so well that the resulting harmonies intensify the feeling. Dim captures the sense of desperation of a person who looks back on his life at the end of a relationship and isn’t sure how he got where he is; as he asks, “Can’t this car go any faster / ’cause I can still see where I am,” the drums and electric guitar drive the song forward. I don’t have a DNP list like Earl’s, but if I did, it would be right up there. Suffice to say it’s one of my favorites.

1. Dorina (6:06)
2. Mary Sunshine Rain (4:39)
3. Dog (4:13)
4. Dizz Knee Land (4:06)
5. Surround (3:38)
6. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (4:42)
7. Posters (4:05)
8. Timothy (4:00)
9. Dim (4:21)
10. Who You Are (3:25)
11. Puzzle (6:20)
12. Moon (5:18)

Released by: I.R.S.
Release date: 1992
Total running time: 54:58