Today I understood. The CD features:

1- The movie title song.

2- lots of interactive crap to be accessed once, and then thrown out.

3- bonus cues: excerpts from the original score by David Arnold.

Somehow, I cannot help but think that someone in the whole distribution process was totally confused. I found the James Bond soundtrack at the local HMV music store. When in fact it should have been delivered to the CDROM/Software section of the local CompuSmart (computer store) outlet.

And it all seemed to work so well with Harry Potter 1. The non-US version had the music on one CD, and the useless trash on another.
The Lord of the Rings: FOTR CD had the music, and then an internet link to some poop on a remote website.

Die Another Day one seems to be the opposite. The useless trash first, and if there is any space left, add some score.

Now where do I go to download the original score illegally just so as not to give one single penny to AOHell Time Warner until those losers re-release the score properly?

And on a related note, there was no sign of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (another Warner CD) at any of the stores I went to this morning. Guess it's just Warner screwing up again. Like they do 97% of the time.
So please, do me a favour. Take a 50¢ CDR.
Write "Die Another Day" on it.
Then go break it in front of Warner Music's NY headquarters.
That will make me feel better.

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Originally posted by Dinko:
And on a related note, there was no sign of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (another Warner CD) at any of the stores I went to this morning. Guess it's just Warner screwing up again.

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Interesting. I work at Borders Books and Music and we only got TWO copies of Die Another Day and like 40 copies of Potter.

Weird.

That alone beggars the imagination, but added to that surprise you are also telling us that score was omitted for a bunch of crap that scorefan’s won’t give a rat’s arse about. This is beyond the scope of anything I’ve ever experienced!

This could start a whole new trend of albums that have nothing to do with the film other than the title. It would be as if the film inspired intrepid young rockers and remixers to go out on a limb and just create derivative pieces in the hope that someone will care enough to listen.

This could be a dramatic new direction for soundtracks to take!

My actual point about the Oakenfold thing not being featured was to highlight that they like to promote Bond songs and soundtracks in a certain way, sometimes it's like the score does take backseat in their want to promote the hell out of the title song. I felt that was the what Dinko was trying to highlight in the above little rant.

Music from and Inspired by albums seem to be more common than score albums having songs not in the film, with 007 CDs been one of the odd exceptions.

Dan

[Message edited by Dan Brecher on 11-12-2002]

And, yes, the point was that on this release, it seems that the "original music" not only takes a back seat to the more commercial stuff (Madonna, Oakenfold) but also to the interactive material, which is a new low in commercial soundtracks. Since Bond songs are a tradition, it's hard to criticize the Madonna track. The Oakenfold remix is still the Bond theme and is music, whatever it's merits. But what really annoys me is the amount of interactive junk on the CD. Only a bit more, and there would have been less than 50% music content on the CD, which would not even qualify it as a music disc.
This type of "extra" stuff belongs on a second bonus disc to be included in the same jewel case as the original soundtrack. It should only be on the original soundtrack CD if there is leftover space after all the most important musical cues have been included on the disc.

I could even accept it if it were cheaper to put interactive non-musical content to complete a CD of highly expensive AFM-recorded music. But that does not apply here.

Not every composer wants to have every second of his score released. So maybe that's the amount he decided on, and actually the producer decided to add interactive content to fill the CD up, so that we'd actually get enough for our money.

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Originally posted by Kosh:
do you think there's a remote possibility that the amount of score on the CD was decided by both Arnold and the album producer (if Arnold's not the album producer)? Maybe, and just maybe, heck I dunno, honestly, but maybe that's just the amount of score Arnold wanted to get released.

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Might have though that. But, there is this:
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/score/13a.html

Particularly, this excerpt:

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PAUL TONKS: So what are the chances of a DIE ANOTHER DAY, Volume 2 album?

DAVID ARNOLD: Well, I'm mixing everything in stereo for that. I have everything. I'm hoping that there will be. They're always a bit of a let down because ideally you'd like for it to be heard from start to finish as it's meant to be heard. But it's recorded and paid for, so all we're talking about is manufacturing the thing, which doesn't cost that much. I've run it past Warners to see what the likelihood is in a year's time once all the mileage has been had out of this one. We could do with at least another 40 minutes. There are only a couple of things I wouldn't bother with because they're not of any great consequence musically or dramatically. But there's lots of great stuff I would like out there...

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Unless that whole thing was made up, it's pretty clear that the twits at Warner wanted the album quickly and so Arnold had to do the best he could to mix the music in time.

It all comes down to AOHell Time Warner.

Either:
1) They did not care about how much music they had, as long as they had a CD to put out. So it's their fault of how little score is on the disc.

or
2) They did not care about the music, they just wanted to sell the junk:
- Madonna's Die Another Day Music Video
- The Making of the Video Segment
- Bond Bonus Extras!
- Women of Bond Gallery
- Bond Movie Poster Gallery
- "The James Bond Theme (Bond vs. Oakenfold)" music video
- and much more
So it's still Warner to blame.

Now, unless they have a wunderkind to work on all that, or a whole team of people, I doubt it took less time to produce all that interactive content than to mix a few more tracks for the CD, had Arnold been given the time to record the extra tracks, before the hotheads at Warner and their release date.

Do you really think that these companies care about what we - the score buyers - think? They are just out to make the buck, and they know if they tout a Madonna song and a remix by Oakenfold (who I saw on a magazine when I was in Barnes & Noble the other day), they will appeal to the young buyer market.

Remember, unless you're a score-themed production house (Intrada, Varese, FSM), you don't care about quality or content, music-wise. you just want your money. If a Madonna song makes you money, you put it on the CD.

THEIR PROBLEM:
Selling CDs. They can sell a score CD, the only problem is, they can sell it to us.

OUR PROBLEM:
There aren't enough of us to make the CD profitable. (And often when there are, we're too indecisive about what we feel we should get. "A 40-minute album's fine--No, wait--we want the whole score--on 2 cds!--or at least the extra cue with the chorus--no, only symphonic scores--no, the extended version, the unreleased cue...crap, give us the studio master tapes, and we'll take what we want, and leave the rest...")

Unfortunately, that's not how it works, nor will it ever work that way.

The cost alone is so prohibitive that it would never be profitable - or break even - to release custom CDs for each one of us.

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Originally posted by SplbrgWlms:
Any of you see the Making the Movie special on MTV about DAD? They showed a clip from the movie. It had Bond and Graves in their fencing duel and the music was really good. Not on the soundtrack though. Boy, I can't wait to see the movie... the only problem is of course I will be noticing the cues not on the soundtrack. ARRRGGGHHH!!!

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Except for the MovieMusic company, of course!