The Thing About Soundtrack Collecting.

The banner for Intrada’s Facebook page. They cater to film music collectors, so very few of their titles are available that widely. Or to stream.

Listening to the bonus “Shop Talk with Chris Malone” episode of The Goldsmith Odyssey, I was reminded (again), despite being a by-product of rampantly mainstream media, that my music collection is primarily made up of music written for the screen.

In a sense, it’s just as niche as Māori music.

Chris Malone’s an Australian sound engineer whose work takes in audio restoration. John Barry’s soundtrack album for The Dove is streaming in a horrible-sounding transfer by Harkit Records that sounds like they used a 19th-hand copy. Intrada’s CD reissue sounds much, much better. The point I’m trying to make is that specialty soundtrack labels are mostly working with music from mainstream products.

Not necessarily blockbuster-level like The Towering Inferno (released the same year) - The Dove was produced by Gregory Peck’s company St. George and handled by Paramount, so hardly an indie flick. Ludwig Göransson’s Black Panther score only got a physical release on vinyl. Ditto Lorne Balfe’s Black Widow score (I wish Alexandre Desplat stayed…) via Mondo.

Now you can get them digitally, but very thankfully, Mondo and Waxwork both do vinyl and CD issues for some of their licensed releases like Michael Abels’ Nope, and Bear McCreary’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (yes, theme by Howard Shore as well) so there is some catering to people who want music physically, as opposed to format collectors.

But anyhow… Quite apart from the niche element, there are individual touches. Some collectors store albums strictly by composer, while others do it chronologically.

Thanks to being on the spectrum, it’s not just storing them that’s complicated; listening to them is too. I always feel as if I have to play all my accessible albums in order, which keeps me from just pulling out Roy Budd’s The Wild Geese one day just because…

Maybe I should have embedded Barry before Budd here… Ah well… it’s not often you get Roy Budd before John Barry in musical ramblings these days (or those days).

I’m a little wary about casual listening. Which is frustrating… I know there’s no real reason, but it’s just how my brain’s wired. In the same way, I refuse to listen to new acquisitions in anything but the order I get them — unless they’re presents from family; then they jump the queue.

As you can guess by its position in my pile of albums to listen to, it’ll be weeks before I can play Shirley Walker’s music from Memoirs of an Invisible Man — one of the ones I have on cassette that I decided to get the CD of.

Bruce Smeaton’s Roxanne and the “Action-Collection,” a Varèse Sarabande compilation of music from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies that they released the soundtracks for (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Kindergarten Cop et al.) are both also CD upgrades. Walker’s music is below. I requested it on Mark Kermode’s movie music show on Scala Radio; it couldn’t be played due to being out of print…

And space requirements: I have to take them out of their cases come putting-away time (unless they’re in digipaks or if there’s more than one disc). Otherwise, my collection would be more photogenic. I have to put them in CD wallets… Because of my living space. And blessedly, some of my cassettes don’t need upgrades. When I returned to England from Barbados, I left my LP copy of the Rain Man soundtrack (with 11 minutes of Hans Zimmer’s fine scoring) behind, eventually buying a tape copy…

Perseverance issued a score album reissued and remastered (with a couple of bonus tracks added by) Notefornote Music. Upgrade from an upgrade.

And then there’s one that my little sister warned me about some years back(when I only metaphorically had a thousand soundtracks). The unintended double dip. Fans of Blackpink likely don’t have to worry about accidentally getting multiple copies of their newest album.

Picture taken by the author.

Doubling up accidentally is an occupational hazard. Here are some examples.

This means I somehow got a 3-CD set twice. You’d think you could avoid that. Picture taken by the author.

I bought the original Intrada Silverado expansion twice because I wanted to recreate the “Original Soundtrack Album Available On Geffen Records And Cassettes” that came out in 1985 On my computer. Still, for some reason, my trusty all-in-one Lenovo can’t rip my prized signed copy, and I was/am reluctant to track down a …vintage cassette on eBay or Discogs when I couldn’t get a copy back then.

And yet even And yet after Intrada released their Rambo III score CD, I still got hold of the CD copy of the Scotti Bros. song/score set to replace the now unplayable cassette…

They aren’t kidding about it being Russ Meyer’s Original Motion Picture Soundtracks (which is a mixed bag to listen to and has an incredibly NSFW booklet — Being a childfree singleton has its advantages), unintended double purchases, Danny Elfman’s Sommersby and Michael Small’s Consenting Adults (a movie a) which presciently cast Kevin Spacey as a creep and b) proves Battlefield Earth isn’t the worst thing Forest Whitaker’s been in.

They were cassette upgrades I’d already upgraded. I blame the stroke I had in 2018.