Star Trek: First Contact (Newly Expanded Edition)
Though it really shouldn’t have been surprising after the recent glut of remastered soundtracks from the Kirk-era Star Trek movie franchise, the sudden announcement of a complete and remastered Star Trek: First Contact soundtrack took many by surprise. It came from a label that had been dormant for years – GNP Crescendo had a seemingly absolute lock on all Star Trek soundtrack releases throughout the 1990s – and it was the first remastered soundtrack from the shorter big-screen run of the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew.
Of course, First Contact was the first (and arguably only) undisputed success among the TNG-era films, and marked the return of Jerry Goldsmith to the Star Trek film franchise, so it’s an obvious starting point for the TNG movie soundtrack remasters. (Three TNG-era movies’ soundtracks remain to be remastered and expanded, and two of them – Generations and Insurrection – were previously released by Crescendo, making it almost certain that Crescendo will be releasing the expanded editions.)
The original 1996 soundtrack release of First Contact was hampered by two factors: the punishing cost of licensing more than 40 minutes of music recorded by a union orchestra for a soundtrack release, and a somewhat arbitrary decision to slant the original soundtrack heavily in favor of music by Jerry Goldsmith. Almost a quarter of the movie was actually scored by Joel Goldsmith, who would later make his mark on the genre by scoring the vast majority of the Stargate TV franchise, due to Jerry Goldsmith’s busy schedule. The liner notes even point out that executive producer Rick Berman and director/co-star Jonathan “Riker” Frakes greeted this development by pointing out that they’d paid for Jerry Goldsmith to score their movie. As it so happens, the elder Goldsmith played a thundering action cue that impressed everyone in the room – and then revealed that his son had written it. But that didn’t mean that Joel’s music would find its way onto the original soundtrack release: the same silly argument cropped up. The CD cover said “music by Jerry Goldsmith,” and album producer Neil Norman was determined to deliver on that. The payoff there is that Joel Goldsmith was responsible for the music to the one scene in the movie that everyone bought a ticket to see, the first warp flight by Zefram Cochrane. That was, without a doubt, First Contact‘s money shot. I remember seeing the movie in the theater the first time with my friend Mark, who said “Holy shit!” out loud when the Phoenix deployed its warp engines from its Titan missile casing. It was built up as the movie’s “holy shit!” moment from the word go, and it got “holy shit!” music from the junior Goldsmith – which Crescendo then proceeded to omit from the album on the ground that the cue wasn’t composed by Jerry Goldsmith.
That cue, “Flight Of The Phoenix”, has been… obtainable, for the lack of a better way to put it, as part of a bootleg First Contact score that’s been circulating since the Napster days. However, this single-disc release has been remastered by the same team responsible for the previous Trek movie score remasters, and it’s never sounded this good. With all due respect to the now-departed “dean of movie music,” as Trek TV composer Dennis McCarthy once called him, “Flight Of The Phoenix” is the highlight of the restored full-length soundtrack, just as it was in the movie itself. It’s ironic that arguably the most iconic piece of music in a score attributed to Jerry Goldsmith was composed by his son. Stargate fans will also want to check out Joel’s cues here as a precursor to the up-and-coming composer’s body of work for that franchise (SG-1 was about a year away from premiering at the time of First Contact‘s release).
For those who, like the label circa 1996, are more interested in Goldsmith Sr.’s work, there are unreleased cues by him as well. One of the more intriguing ones is “Borg Montage”, a brief, menacing cue covering several shot Borg-related interludes aboard the Enterprise-E, culminating in a hapless security team wandering into a dimly-lit space which is then illuminated by the laser sights of several approaching Borg. There are two versions of this cue – one used in the movie, and a significantly different one with a more martial approach – and both are vintage Goldsmith with a big brassy flourish at the end.
If you want Steppenwolf or Roy Orbison this time around, there are other sources for those tracks, and in the intervening years they’ve almost certainly been remastered too.
The return of Crescendo Records to the soundtrack arena, especially with the full release of First Contact in hand, is a welcome one, especially when some of the soundtrack specialty labels are calling it a day in the current economy (Film Score Monthly) or beginning to split their release schedules between classic remasters and brand new releases (Intrada). The liner notes booklet – both the printed one with the disc and the downloadable PDF “booklet” (more like one giant, unending vertical strip, possibly representing the first-ever soundtrack liner notes wall 
scroll) – looks like it just woke up from ’96, however. The cover layout also shows no attempt to mesh with the general cover design that’s been established for the other Star Trek movie score remasters to date, so maybe a visual rethink might be in order before Crescendo turns out another remastered Trek soundtrack. In the end, though, it’s the music that matters, and this release delivers an increase in both sound quality and quantity. Hopefully it delivers enough sales to Crescendo’s doorstep to merit upgraded releases of Generations and Insurrection.
… Read more
- Main Title / Locutus (4:18)
- How Many Ships (0:31)
- Battle Watch (1:13)
- Red Alert (2:16)
- Temporal Wake (2:11)
- Shields Down (1:48)
- The Phoenix (1:04)
- They’re Here (0:28)
- 39.1 Degrees Celsius (4:48)
- Search For The Borg (1:53)
- Retreat (4:01)
- No Success (1:33)
- Borg Montage (1:03)
- Welcome Aboard (2:43)
- Stimulation (1:08)
- Smorgasborg (1:30)
- Getting Ready (1:36)
- Fully Functional (3:22)
- The Dish (7:09)
- Objection Noted (1:57)
- Not Again (2:44)
- Evacuate (2:24)
- New Orders / All The Time (3:52)
- Flight Of The Phoenix (6:23)
- First Contact (6:03)
- End Credits (5:32)
- The Phoenix [alternate] (1:10)
- Borg Montage [alternate] (1:20)
- Main Title [alternate] (2:54)
Released by: GNP Crescendo Records
Release date: 2012
Total running time: 78:54
In the post-Sgt. Pepper 1960s, many an up-and-coming British band longed to be the next Beatles, and with record labels hitching their wagons to the musical “British invasion” of America, there was certainly no shortage of success stories. Some bands, however, by choice or by fate, remained strictly local concerns – and such was the case with the Idle Race, a Birmingham group that rose from the ashes of a previous local band, Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders, after Sheridan left the band and a young guitarist named Jeff Lynne joined up. Even while the band was still actively recording and playing live, Idle Race won critical acclaim (including from the Beatles themselves, who invited the band to sit in on some sessions for the White Album)…and sold so few records that the band might’ve vanished into local history but for one of its members’ later success. Back To The Story is a 2-CD set that collects all three of the albums recorded by the Idle Race – two with Lynne in the driver’s seat (including his first credit as producer), and one recorded after his departure.
By modern standards, The Birthday Party is barely an EP, not even weighing in at half an hour, but the songs are layered enough to merit repeat listening. Where there’s lyrical whimsy, it’s almost too much at times, with “I Like My Toys” and “Sitting In My Tree” sticking out in that regard; depending on your mood, it’ll either be a little too saccharine, or endearingly childlike. It’s in numbers like “Follow Me Follow” and especially “The Lady Who Said She Could Fly” that the real potential of the group is exposed, and they’re a revelation – decent rock numbers with a nice string arrangement woven into and around the Idle Race’s basic rhythm section. The songs leave a huge impression – honestly, why they haven’t been covered is a total mystery to me – and they show that the group’s young lead vocalist (and self-appointed rookie producer) Jeff Lynne had some very clear ideas about what he’d do with a studio and a band at his disposal. Despite overtures (ha!) from his friend Roy Wood to join The Move, Lynne stubbornly stuck it out with the Idle Race for another album.
That album was the self-titled The Idle Race, and while Lynne’s songwriting and production are still front and center, somehow the second album doesn’t just reach out and grab me the same way that The Birthday Party does. In a few places, Lynne is reaching too far for the kind of Beatlesque affectations that many critics accuse him of being about for his whole career. If you thought Lynne was trying too hard to set up shop on the Fab Four’s turf during his ELO career, stay right away from The Idle Race here. There is one bona fide gorgeous Lynne classic on here in the form of “Follow Me Follow”, which just about makes the whole album worthwhile. “Come With Me”, “Sea Of Dreams” and “Going Home” are a nice triple-act right at the beginning of the album…but all this means is that The Idle Race has an extremely soft center. The second CD kicks off with a selection of non-album singles and B-sides, which are also a mixed bag; I thought I’d get a big kick out of hearing Lynne cover his buddy Roy Wood’s “(Here We Go ‘Round) The Lemon Tree”, originally performed by the Move (and with Roy Wood sitting in on this cover version), but while it’s a faithful enough rendition musically, the production touches are a bit much – this is Lynne at an age where he was getting a big charge out of being The Producer, and he was throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at the job, whether the song called for it or not. There’s a really good cover of “In The Summertime”, dating from the band’s brief post-Lynne era, but it differentiates itself so very little from the original that you might as well stick to Mungo Jerry.
In any case, Jeff Lynne did ultimately join the Move and, with Wood, later formed ELO; his Idle Race cohorts released a third album, Time Is…, which sounds absolutely nothing like Lynne-era Idle Race. Roger Spencer and the other members of the group steered things into a more mainstream psychedelic rock vein, and while there are some nice tunes to be found on the group’s swan song, you have to keep in mind that this is solid 1969/1970 material a year or two past its sell-by date. These songs slid right under the radar because music had moved on – Led Zeppelin was in full force, and even the Move was busting out mind-blowers like “Open Up Said The World At The Door”.
Usually when you think of the genres “psychedelic” and “Christian”, it’s not in the same sentence. However, that’s exactly what the band Yum Yum Children was trying to accomplish. Recorded in 1996, this album sounds like a slab of lost 70’s rock just recently getting unearthed for the first time.
Spun off from the popular syndicated action series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess was – at least at first – an attempt to tell a somewhat more serious story in some of the same settings. Hercules and Xena might run into each other and share the odd adventure, but generally Xena would be up against not only mythical foes and malevolent gods, but her own dark side and just a little bit more angst per weekly episode than Hercules had to endure. Having already established a very Korngoldian style for Hercules, composer Joseph LoDuca (of whom more in a bit) decided to give Xena a somewhat different sound. The result is a very interesting soundtrack from the show’s first season.
It was clear during the recording of New Adventures in Hi-Fi that an era of R.E.M. history was coming to a close. The band’s tenth studio album was their fifth and final record of their initial contract with Warner Bros.; their relationship with longtime manager Jefferson Holt was deteriorating; and perhaps most importantly (at the time), longtime collaborator Scott Litt had announced that this would be his last time in the producer’s chair. The biggest milestone, however, was only clear in retrospect. A year after the album’s release, drummer Bill Berry retired, making New Adventures the last album written and performed by the original lineup of Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe. Fortunately, they turned out one of their finest efforts, a stirring album that serves to highlight the band’s diversity.
Another blast of raw energy from the other C&C music factory, Frank Klepacki’s music from the immensely popular Red Alert PC strategy game brings into sharp focus the elements that made his music from Command & Conquer such a compelling listen even away from the computer. Gone are most of the soundbytes within the music (the chilling refrain of film-footage “sieg heil” samples in “Hell March” being an exception), Klepacki brings in da funk in full force. “Mud” is perhaps the best example of what he achieves with the music from this game: funky, atmospheric, moody, and rhythmic, without relying on a hit-you-over-the-head-with-it, four-beats-to-the-measure techno beat at all times. 
Serving as a bit of a musical mission statement for Afro-Celt Sound System, their debut effort starts off with two numbers which are still among their strongest: “Saor / Free” and “Whirl-y-Reel 1”. “Sure-As-Not / Sure-As-Knot” wears a bit as it throws in samples of children chanting in its second half, though admittedly that’s just my taste speaking there. The two “Whirl-y-Reel” cuts are a preview of the fast-paced, dense percussion dance tracks that will become the Afro-Celts’ 
You know, I’ll be the first to fess up that I’m not exactly a Thistle & Shamrock Listener (not that it’s a bad show, and not that I don’t like the music). And I’m a little wary of the mania for all things Celtic that has pervaded the underbelly of pop culture for the past decade or so, despite the fact that I’m able to trace my own lineage straight back to Ireland. Something about everyone embracing this culture just because it’s “in” bugs me – and many of the supposedly Celtic musical acts out there aren’t peddling the sound of old Eire, but rather of Enya, whose sound I associate with new age music more than I do anything that sounds distinctly Celtic. But I’ll expound on this soapbox more later. With all my griping, you’re probably wondering why in the world I even bothered with this CD.
An unusual venture for Petty and company, this album consists of music from a 1996 movie which was little more than an attempt to launch Jennifer Aniston of Friends fame onto the big screen. But, perhaps a little like the soundtrack from 1980’s Xanadu, this is a case where the soundtrack was the only notable thing about the movie.