JERRY GOLDSMITH

Ditto. Don't torture yourself. If you don't like it then you don't like. You don't have to like it just because the rest of the world does. Be different. Be an individual. March to the Beat of Your Own Drum.

-Erik-

Indeed Matt. No one says you have to like it. Why should you? And listening until you like it, is just listening until you think you like but actually don't like, but because of all the pressure you jut want to like.

Skip it! And listen to something else. Much scores that are worth it.

Indeed Bregt, like The Ice Storm?
why favor percussive clangs if you can listen to propulsive brassy action music

I have a theory about TOTAL RECALL.

It's big in the begining, it's mystic in the middle and it's big at the end.

That, is MY theory about TOTAL RECALL.

Just to get off the Total Recall subject for a second. I've been listening to Goldsmith's Wild Rovers on and off ever since I got the score many moons ago on Chapter III and then the expanded treatment on FSM. Since then, the song "The Wild Rover" sung by Ellen Smith (Goldsmith's daughter) has gone down and one of my all time favorites and the theme that came out of that song is one of Goldsmith's all time best. I absolutely LOVE the country twang in Ellen's Smith's voice and the Goldsmith orchestral arrangement underneath the lryics give the song a nice upbeat and playful kick. The sweeping arrangements of the song in the score proper heard during the powerhouse action cues "Wild Horses" and "Bronco Bustin'" are absolutely splendid and give the score that classic, Bernstein western feel. It's the B-motif... or is that the chorus - the "no hill to steep no river to wide" portion - that I love and when performed by sweeping strings it is pure film music gold!

-Erik-

Look no further than Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orcehstra. They recorded the theme for their Great Fantasy Adventure Album and it contains a version of Total Recall with a "proper" ending. But looking back at your post you might already know that because the "ugly anvil sound" must be your description of the Kuznel recording.

-Erik-

What!? One where Monty Python has never been heard of?

We of the old generation know what it's like to favour a Goldsmith say Total Recall score anymore, today themes don't count anymore, rhythm and ideas does

how sad that may be
Total Recall is packed with themes AND ideas

I can't think of a single living composer who can write balls to the walls action with the same degree of intellect and integrity as JG, not a one!

Now there's a Goldsmith score far more likely to land on my favourites list than TOTAL RECALL. I used this extensively for a temp track on my first film, and it goes without saying my composer had a hard time trying to get me to like his music as much as I did this with the resources he had at his disposal.

Where??? (other than the one at the end)
my perceived lack of them is my whole problem with this score. I can tolerate and even enjoy the very unique Goldsmith "sound" (which before I became a film music fan was utterly strange and foreign to my late 90s/early 2000s ears) but only when it is interspersed with those brilliant melodies. But I don't hear them in Total Recall.

Thanks for mentioning that version. Yeah, I have it, and the ending is better, indeed, and yes, there´s that anvil sound I mean, but it´s on every other version I know, too, be it the Prague´s or on Goldsmith´s very own Frontiers album. I think maybe he included that anvil himself on the actual sheets for any future concert play or rerecording, just to include something else instead of the synth sound, but it still doesn´t work for me. That whipping sound has such a different power that the variation just doesn´t feel right.

It´s the same, BTW, with most rerecordings of Anvil of Crom, which should work better, since it is an anvil in the original, but they don´t. There is not one rerecording out there that gets the original sound.

Strangely, the Kunzel album you mentioned has a fantastic version of the Terminator Theme, which also uses that anvil, if I remember correctly, and there, it works brilliantly.

thing is Thor, in Total Recall (and many more goldsmith albums) the melodies are sometimes so intertwined with his textures you don't spot them that easily. But trust me, Goldsmith always writes a couple of themes, and he lets the themes do the talking, with around that the textures. Total Recall may be one of his most intruiging works of all, because you have to search deeper for the melodies due to the textures and rhythmic variations in the score. That is why most of us find it such a godsend, and something you just don't find anymore these anymore

Yes, of course, there IS melody in this score, but it's not the first thing that strikes you. It has other, more abstract qualities that are far more prominent. I'm all for "hiding" melodies behind complex layers of counterpoint or orchestration or whatever (I like a lot of Elfman's latest output, after all), but as I said, that's not for everyone.

That and 'The Mutant' are the two stand out tracks on a brilliant score!