"Doug's Corner"

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		"Doug's Corner"

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"Doug's Corner"

Random ramblings from Intrada's "Grand Poobah."

8/27/08

Thank you for making THE FIRST OLYMPICS an apparent success. It appears to be out-pacing sales of Broughton's other magnum opus TV score THE BLUE AND THE GRAY during the same initial sales period. Given the number of requests we've had over the years for the latter, I didn't expect this.

Fun facts for the curious. Our release of THE FIRST OLYMPICS was originally going to be a single disc mono presentation of the score as per Bruce's personal tape copies. When the complete stereo sessions surfaced, Sony Pictures wanted to see a complete release of everything. Since Bruce wrote his own source cues, this was exciting to us - but it now required a second disc to accommodate the 100-plus minutes of music. Higher than normal music publisher fees kept things scary but we slogged onwards.

At one point we edited everything in picture order. However, the musical architecture just wasn't sympathetic to this. The bulk of the original scoring occurred during the first half of the show while most of the source music (processionals, marches) occurred during the final games. Somehow, our end product seemed musically out of balance. We finally just settled on a division of sorts. (By the way, since I'm a big fan of good marches it took me a while to embrace relegating Bruce's band music to a second disc.)

For those so interested - some of the band music is played with intentionally thin forces and wrong notes attached. You'll even hear an upright (and de-tuned) piano helping provide the requisite turn-of-the-century feel. In balance, other pieces are played to perfection and are quite impressive. Take note of some tour-de-force brass playing on the "Lady Liberty" marches Bruce wrote with nods to Karl King, Henry Fillmore and, of course, John Philip Sousa.

With respect to the final "Producer's 1984 Demo Suite", it was a happy discovery. For years, copies of this suite made the rounds on cassette and appeared to be the only stereo performances. Happily, the masters for these cues turned up and proved to be unique takes, sometimes referred to as "Bruce's Takes" on the actual slates. In some cases Bruce actually made a few instrumental changes and recorded special takes to facilitate the demo needs. In addition, while all of the complete music was recorded onto a four-track format and finally mixed down to the two-track masters we had access to, the special suite selections turned out to be the sole cues actually drawn from full 24-track elements. The resulting sonics and orchestral colors were considerably different from the two-track versions. Since Bruce had intended these seven cues to comprise a special suite that he and the producers could use for demo purposes, it was exciting to be able to find the first generation masters for this special suite as well. In this sense, the suite isn't a reprise of earlier material but a dynamic new take on the music, worthy of preservation all by itself. It makes a great coda to disc two, after all of the band music.

I'm not blind and I've read comments from people wishing we'd tinkered with the retail price or reduced this project to a single disc.

Sadly, the former was dictated by our costs and just wasn't flexible. On the other hand, once we'd discovered the complete session masters, I had no interest in considering the latter.

For those of you purchasing this music by Bruce Broughton - easily the most exciting orchestral composer Hollywood currently ignores - I'm truly grateful to you.

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