Remember when Varèse Sarabande was THE soundtrack label?
In what I hate to call “the good old days,” Varèse Sarabande was a name I was reasonably excited to see in a movie advert — especially when Robert Townson associated with them.
The soundtrack output was constant enough that the label produced compilation albums in the 1990s of their then-recent output (see below). They were a blessing if you couldn’t get all the releases. Hollywood Soundstage: Big Movie Hits Vol. 1 had (among others) Total Recall, Back To The Future Part III, Driving Miss Daisy, Die Hard 2, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and Beaches (not with “Wind Beneath My Wings” with the “Friendship” theme from Georges Delerue’s score — from a London rerecording for a compilation album.
Imagine if they still ruled the soundtrack world. Argylle, Lisa Frankenstein, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, The First Omen, Abigail, The Fall Guy, Kingdom of the Planet of Apes, and IF could all have had soundtrack releases from them. Varèse Sarabande occasionally has new releases like Scream VI, but it pales alongside all their reissues and expansions of their back catalog, come CD Club time.
I can’t complain about a 2-CD expansion of the likes of Back To The Future Part III (which was the very first pure uncut Varèse Sarabande soundtrack album I ever bought, by which I mean a US import cassette (which I think I bought from the now extinct Oxford Street Virgin Megastore), as opposed to being licenced through the label’s then-European distributor Colosseum Schallplatten GmbH.
Death Becomes Her got its Deluxe Edition expansion this year; if Ricochet gets the Deluxe Edition treatment (a big if, given that it’s a Warner Bros. Discovery property), will Ice-T’s end credits rap be included?
With the label beating the drum for the first wide vinyl release of Driving Miss Daisy — by which they probably mean the first US release. It did get a European vinyl release. The end credits plugged the soundtrack release for the movie that took home a richly undeserved Best Picture Oscar for its year, noting that it was on Varèse Sarabande CDs and cassettes (no mention of LPs.
Intrada and La-La Land don’t do merch but they’ve never really lost sight of what makes them beloved in film music fan circles. The year after Varèse Sarabande originally handled Driving Miss Daisy they had the US rights to the soundtrack for Ghost (Milan Records had the source of “Unchained Melody” getting to #1 in the UK again outside the US), did the albums for Miller’s Crossing, Henry & June, Predator 2, Presumed Innocent, Stanley & Iris (embedded below as the movie wasn’t nearly as big as Presumed Innocent), Total Recall, The Grifters, Memphis Belle, RoboCop 2, Kindergarten Cop, and Die Hard 2: Die Harder — which isn’t too shabby.
It’s also quite a way from colored vinyl reissues of selected titles to tapping into a collectors’ market. Speaking of which, my slow writing pace led to the label announcing a 25th anniversary vinyl reissue of Don Davis’ barnstorming score for The Matrix. They released a 30m score album back in 1999, on the heels of their release of the complete score via their CD Club line, after a Deluxe Edition expansion… which, in keeping with their Deluxe Editions of RoboCop and Stargate, wasn’t very expansive. Intrada’s RoboCop and La-La Land’s Stargate are the ones to get.
Sometimes, with new and unimproved artwork (that last one’s also infected some of their Deluxe Editions Pleasantville and Serenity in particular). It is probably not a coincidence that Varèse Sarabande’s downfall (sic) coincides with their becoming well… corporate, while the other soundtrack labels like Quartet Records, Intrada (thank you for your service Douglass Fake), Music Box and Buysoundtrax/Dragon’s Domain and Silva Screen, MovieScore Media, Caldera, and La-La Land are indie labels. (But ones that BBC Four and BBC Sounds do documentaries on.)
