This is starting to make me feel old. Two of my favorite composers from when I grew up, the first being Michael Kamen and the 2nd being Jerry Goldsmith have passed on. It makes me feel proud to have been a child remember his music during his prime and glory years.
I remember as an older teen first watching Total Recall on VHS one X-mas mornign and hearing that awesome fanfare/main title in the beginning. I remember crying to the old Chinese Guy taking Gizmo away from Billy on a snowy night after saying "You are not ready..." at the end of Gremlins. I remember the big smile I got on my face when I first saw the original Enterprise in drydock with the musical fanfare pouring out of it. I remember Lancelot falling for Guinivere to "Promise Me" and Sean Connery and Loraine Brocco looking over the beautiful tropical rain forests in "Medicine Man".

These are the grand Hollywood moments that were all enhanced emotionally by Goldsmith's scores. I shall truly miss one of the old masters.

I'm listening to my Mulan cd now...

But we have all these friends that can understand our sorrow.

Now that I'm finished listening (or nearly; the Varese Patton recording is the last disc, playing while I type this), there is not a single Goldsmith disc left in my shelf. So I decided, as a kind of tribute, to remove also the DVDs with his scores, and photograph the remaining shelf to show what film music would be like if there had been no Goldsmith. Consider it a kind of tribute:

Left half and right half of shelf.

Also, I put all the discs and DVDs together to make a photo of them before placing them back in the shelf:

Goldsmith Collection
(And it wasn't easy to get Jerry to sit still in the back long enough to take the photo ).

Now that it's been three weeks since Goldsmith's death, I have more or less gotten "used to" the fact that one of my favourite composers is gone. What I still haven't entirely accepted, I think, is that the man who I saw perform his great music so full of energy in London three times is gone as well.