NP: Philip Glass: "La Belle et la Bete" (Nonesuch)

Baxter's Theremin recordings of the '40s and his Moog Synthesizer work were also obviously very influential, the former especially so in the sci-fi scores of the '50s (Dimitri Tiomkin was introduced to Samuel Hoffman by Les Baxter).

Aroung the same time, the synthesizers used in "WarGames" (yet another Broderick movie), were incredibly effective, highlighting the technological overtones, (synthesizers chanting "war war war" in the climax) before giving in to traditional instrumental/symphonic ending, led with harmonica.

You're idea of someone recording Baxter's Poe scores is great. Why not send a note to Lukas Kendall at www.filmscoremonthly.com and give him you opinion. They do a lot of this kind of release. Maybe we can influence them toward a Baxter Film Score CD. Also, for more information about Baxter, look at www.lesbaxter.com which is run by his daughter and is a beautifully produced site.

The score emerges as more or less THE prototype for all the big symphonic action/adventure scores that would emerge in the '70s, '80s and '90s, adding a more modernistic stylistic touch, yet retaining the melodious nature of Steiner, Tiomkin, Victor Young, Korngold, Newman, Herrmann and the like. John Williams was heavily influenced by Baxter and was often a keyboard player on many Baxter pop and film recordings.

Baxter was one of respected film music writer Tony Thomas' favorites. Thomas even finaced the release of several small scale Baxter scores on his Citadel label.

If the spectacular multi-channel original recordings of Baxter's Corman/Poe Scores (especially the incredible FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and PIT AND THE PENDULUM) and the complete MASTER OF THE WORLD recordings could be located in MGM's vaults (MGM now owns the AIP library) a major re-evaluation of this remarkable composer's work would surely by undertaken. These tapes are probably still intact since recent laser disc releases of several lesser AIP films have had isolated music tracks.

Yall's aint heard nothin' 'till ya heard these, jo...

I'm not too fond of the Macross Plus music though. It sounded a bit "generic" to me.

I have been very busy dealing with some problems generated by a letter I wrote that was published in the Film Score Monthly site that had to deal with Les Baxter's BLACK SUNDAY score. The letter was addressed to Lukas Kendall, the editor of Film Score Monthly, but he mistakenly posted it on the Friday site (it is still visible there), and it has generated a lot of hate mail toward me. So, trying to run damage control on that problem has been occupying my time in the last few days.

I think the idea of us trying to get some of Baxter's scores out on CD is a wonderful idea. I agree with you, MASTER OF THE WORLD is truly one of the greatest scores ever! Have you ever seen the whole film or just heard the soundtrack album? The album only contains about 1/3 of the whole, wonderful score, and some of the best music is missing. I'll get back to you in a few days when I have this other problem smoothed out (hopefully, anyway).

GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS is a terrific score also. Have you noticed the similarity of "Goliath's March" to the song "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from MULAN? Listen to the percussion section that opens the MULAN song and compare it to the two wild percussion passages during GOLIATH'S finale, they're virtually identical, and the Disney song is very similar, melodically to GOLIATH'S theme!