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Nice one @Bez, happy to be of use.

Yep, all of these Euro editions have sweet sleeve art variations! I kinda want the Italian release real bad...


MILAN, France 1981
VIP, Italy 1981
CELINE, Germany 1982

I am thinking of getting all three and framing them in 1 big frame.

The only one which lets the side down is the fairly fugly Swedish release :(

I like the German one best I think

The Italian one actually looks like one of those Castellari or Mattei rip-offs of the actual movie. :)

Great thread as mentioned by others, really fun and interesting read.

I slept with my Varese OG under my pillow last night. Thinking I might check out a copy of the DWRC or Silva Screen in the near future.

ChrisMcQueen007 wrote:The Italian one actually looks like one of those Castellari or Mattei rip-offs of the actual movie. :)

Great thread as mentioned by others, really fun and interesting read.

Every time I see the Italian poster/LP sleeve...

just snagged a pristine copy of the german pressing, excited to have amore faithful recording on the platter. Still love my DWRC copy though, but good to have both.

I just went to discogs to see if I could snag an Italian copy of EFNY found a few for 9-10 euros was excited until I saw the price for shipping. 20 euros and half of them won't ship outside of the EU. I always forgot how expensive shipping out of Italy is. I might snag a French copy as it seems to be the cheapest I can find.

Did the Celine / German pressings of EFNY come with an insert?

Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but the seller emailed me to tell me he had noticed a small mark when he was cleaning it and didn’t want me to be concerned since he had originally listed it as archive quality and if that was alright (given the meticulousness of his listing and tone in the emails I’m sure it’s perfectly fine haha) and he also mentioned that it came with 2 catalogues, which given the slight language barrier I imagine meant inserts. It’ll probably get here in a week or so, I’ll report back but it looks like I’ve got quite the minty fresh copy coming

COMPARISON CORNER #2:
by Skødjö
-------------

THEY LIVE
Music Composed and Performed by John Carpenter
in association with Alan Howarth

Continuing a theme, and because of what was revealed from the side-by-side I did with the previous Carpenter/Howarth score I compared, I'm going to plow straight ahead with They Live and will plan to follow with comparisons of both Halloween and The Fog soon (now those should be interesting!)

I only have two vinyl editions of They Live to compare, as well as the movie on Blu as a base-line. And again, I'm only going to direct compare the main title track ('Coming to LA') for the purposes of a detailed cross comparison that may or may not suggest further differences across the rest of the score - I guess that's for us all to find out! (I did skim through and A/B a few other tracks, and they pretty much sounded the same fwiw.)

1. Enigma Records (1988, 7733671)
Against the movie version, it's immediately clear that the soundtrack release is a different (lower) pitch - by only a micro-tone, but quite distinctly. In every other way that I can discern, however, it appears that the music which we hear in the film is what we get on the record. Hurray, great start! This LP is 30 years old, and is super quiet and very full sounding. I like it.

2. Death Waltz Recording Co. (2019, DW130)
Formaldehyde Face variant (Reverse Purple and Blue Splatter)
The track listing is virtually the same, with the exception that the first two cues on Side A have been switched - 'A Message' now plays before 'Coming to LA' on the DWRC release.
The same version of the title track here, again slightly lower pitch. The only discernible difference is that the DW mastering is slightly quieter/less punchy than the Enigma. But it's also a nice quiet pressing, and sounds great.
As I haven't seen anything stating that this is a new master, I guess we can assume it's the same as the previous DW reissue?

---------------

So to sum up: I'm fairly confident in stating it seems that all vinyl releases of the score are taken from the actual recordings/mixes heard in the movie (praise be!) with minimal (if any) discernible tweaks. If you don't already have a copy, considering how wonderful and bananas the packaging is on the new DW reissue, I'd say that's the one to go for unless OGs are particularly your thing. I do love the sleeve on the Enigma personally, and am happy to have both in the collection. Of course, there's also the previous DW edition though I myself was never especially crazy about Gary Pullin's minimalist take on the sleeve art for that one.

This thread....ocd nightmare. At least with Halloween we know there’s a lot going on, but oh man I’m worried about the fog haha.

You know what mate... I think we should be afraid! ;)

Isn't it funny how different pressings are cut at different speeds. And you'd never ever know until you A/B two copies on quartz locked decks.

I once had two 70s copies of Zeppelin III that were so different one would be nearly two full minutes ahead of the other by the end of the side. And no one would believe me! I even did it twice swapping the records to make sure one deck wasn't playing faster than the other.

texasvinyl wrote:Isn't it funny how different pressings are cut at different speeds. And you'd never ever know until you A/B two copies on quartz locked decks.

I once had two 70s copies of Zeppelin III that were so different one would be nearly two full minutes ahead of the other by the end of the side. And no one would believe me! I even did it twice swapping the records to make sure one deck wasn't playing faster than the other.

To quote our good pal @Hatter ...

"This thread....ocd nightmare"

Of course, it's also possible that the Blu is sped up I guess?? Jesus heck.

(Backs away from the pitiless monster he blindly created...)

Keep going... imho, this is the best new thread on the forum in a while.

I'm still down for the Frizzi set, just need some more free time here soon.

deafmetal wrote:Keep going... imho, this is the best new thread on the forum in a while.

I'm still down for the Frizzi set, just need some more free time here soon.

Roger wilco! And very much look forward to a Frizzi episode, in your own time signor :)

Excellent work @ScoJo! Thank you!

Whatever you do, don't compare any of John Williams or Jerry Goldsmiths original scores from the 70 or 80's to their accompanying movies. Most all were rerecorded for a vinyl release. At that time it was very uncommon to use the movie session recordings. Both composers were well known for combining ques and rearranging the music to make a better listening experience. I really don't think it was until the late 90's that expanded editions started happening and movie session masters started to be used. We probably owe that to the CD format that allowed for more time and labels like Intrada, Varese Sarabande, and the likes, that took advantage of it and started to give us those wonderful expanded editions.

Tim, you make a really good point, and perhaps some of the "rearrangement" ire is misplaced considering the time period involved. While it might be difficult to compare something like Howarth adding a 4/4 percussion hit to the Halloween theme to Williams or Goldsmith re-recording their ideals "suites", perhaps it's not actually that far off the mark.

It is a good point Tim, although using the examples of Williams and Goldsmith (two of the most prolific, high profile, in demand composers of that time) skews the argument a bit. I'm pretty sure that for most other film composers, their work (and the budget for music recording/mixing) finishes with the work that they do on the movie, and a very high percentage of OST releases are the music cues heard in the film mix. I might be wrong about this, but that's certainly my instinct. I'll do a bit of research and listening to back up this pre-supposition! :)

For the record (full transparency going forward on this thread) I absolutely can't stand re-recordings of film scores - I feel like my associations with the film are being messed with. I absolutely want the cues that I heard in the film, if possible. The only time I'm ever interested is when for whatever reason the original recordings are lost/damaged, and re-recording is all we can have. (I remember this coming up a few times back on the DFC, where I had to bite my tongue about things like the travesty squeaky-clean-digital-modern re-recording release of Anton Karas' iconic music from The Third Man!!!)

@Scojo, you could very well be correct. I look forward to hearing/reading the results of your research. :)

ScoJo wrote:It is a good point Tim, although using the examples of Williams and Goldsmith (two of the most prolific, high profile, in demand composers of that time) skews the argument a bit. I'm pretty sure that for most other film composers, their work (and the budget for music recording/mixing) finishes with the work that they do on the movie, and a very high percentage of OST releases are the music cues heard in the film mix. I might be wrong about this, but that's certainly my instinct. I'll do a bit of research and listening to back up this pre-supposition! :)

For the record (full transparency going forward on this thread) I absolutely can't stand re-recordings of film scores - I feel like my associations with the film are being messed with. I absolutely want the cues that I heard in the film, if possible. The only time I'm ever interested is when for whatever reason the original recordings are lost/damaged, and re-recording is all we can have. (I remember this coming up a few times back on the DFC, where I had to bite my tongue about things like the travesty squeaky-clean-digital-modern re-recording release of Anton Karas' iconic music from The Third Man!!!)

I’m with you 100%, in fact, it’s not just the original cues I want, I want EVERY cue.