After just a cursory listen--more detailed one tomorrow, general impressions are that this is not at the same level as the "Vertigo", "Trouble With Harry", or "Marnie" recordings. But that means only that it is still far above average.

The most immediate thing I noticed was that the strings sounded a bit thin in places (the acoustic seemed drier and not as ambient), but I am not sure if that is the result of a "digital" problem, or if they reduced the orchestra size for some cues.

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to those who don't care much for golden age scores, check it out, you won't regret it.

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well, that goes for MOST of those older scores. Truer words were never written.

Of course, Varese doesn't deserve your patronage. When the Tsunami bootleg came out in mono, Varese complained that it made their release of it in stereo unviable, but then they go ahead and do a poor re-record because they felt THAT had more profit potential.

Not only were they off--they would have made money as most people with the mono boot would still have bought a legit stereo CD--but they showed what a profit-hungry film-score-fan unfriendly an outfit they were (and yes, I could have called them much worse there but didn't).

Royal S Brown and a number of other record producer types or people against boots have used Varese's story to condemn the boot practice, but it's a sham. Varese probably had too much to pay for a legit version in the first place and were shy for starts. This way they could back out and raise ire elsewhere rather than issue something with a low profit margin.

If you're not against bootlegs yourself, I would pick up the Tsunami boot--it's original tracks and they are wonderful even in mono.

NP: The Fall of the Roman Empire (Dimitri Tiomkin)

There are some on this board who are very happy with re-records and have disagreed with me about the merits of re-records I've disliked. It's a case-by-case thing where there are many good re-records. I'm not against the concept of re-recording scores. But you do sum up how I feel when you say if the new version is going to be inferior, why bother, it defeats the purpose. The reason why they bother is money. Not to say they that some producers don't love film music or care about it, but they let things pass and release things that I would go back to work on more. Then they feel proud of their achivements and angry at their critics and refuse to accept any of their criticsms to improve things.

I may not be able to convert you to the following philosophy but I'm going to present it for your consideration.

I am not opposed to pirates and bootleg CDs. They are pricy and there is no quality control and it is illegal activity. However, legitimate record producers, the musician's unions, and the film studios that have and own much of this material have been neglegent of it in the past and are still too profit conscious about it now. This is changing some as FSM and Rhino realize that a few will pay larger prices for this material which makes it feasable to issue a limited edition of it. Nevertheless, life is short, and there are too many scores languishing unheard, unpreserved. The pirates take great risks to get this material and issue it and they do us and culture a big favor in doing so. They don't spend much money getting the material to issue and they can make big dollars through high prices, but they can be fined and jailed for their activities. The worst thing that can happen to legit companies is they go out of business. Which do you consider the worse fate? It's very cheap for the legit corporate groups surrounding film music to spread the word/propaganda that supporting bootleggers hurts you. You don't get legit releases, etc. No. Don't be fooled. Supporting bootleggers hurts them. People have only so much money to spend and if they spend it on boots as opposed to their product, they're the ones out not us. They could be meeting the demand that the bootleggers are supplying but they are afraid of risking the large money it costs to afford a legit release for the thin profit margin. That means they are not really interested in issuing the things bootlegged or else they would be out legitimately already. In some other cases, the owners of the material have no interest at all in re-issuing it and boots are the only way under those circumstances for us to have, hear, and preserve the material. You may not agree as I said, but consider that boots are not the satan's spawn they are sometimes made out to be.

So, give Tsumani the money that could have been Varese's if they weren't such chicken money-grubbers. See that's the reverse arguement for the record producers--if you don't issue it, the bootleggers will, so you might as well do us all a favor and get to it rather than dither. The Marnie boot is one of the best as far as sound is considered, very closely on par with the few cues you have from the Signatures CD.