Intrada Soundtrack Forum

The 80's kids Topic !



To all the goonies around here...
I know we're considered by old timers like some strange people loving strange stuff from a strange period. So here's a thread for us alone and our love of the 80's scores.
Tell what 80's soundtrack is coming out, which one you're listening to, put your memories, your feelings, your reviews about 80's scores. Anything.

I'll begin with a classic :



The Terminator (Brad Fiedel), 1984.

State of the art 80's electronic music, The Terminator score is a stunning abstract musical experience. Of course the main theme remains melodic and has become truly iconic ! Brad Fiedel has managed to present it both as a powerful dark tune and a truly moving love theme, which is already impressive enough. But beyond that, the mecanical aspect of the music responds perfectly to the dark mood of the movie and its subject. The music itself is an unstoppable atonal terminator, pure noise for some, meaningful for others.

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I´VE COME HERE TO DRINK COCONUTS AND *censour*...AND I´M ALL OUT OF COCONUTS...

I´m a dirt merchant and a figure of your imagination

I hope it won't become a Little Rascals Vs Goonies topic but I agree with you on the main points CocoNut Joe ! ^^
Here's an album to conciliate both rascals and goonies...
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!



Ghostbusters (Elmer Bernstein), 1984.

Elmer Bernstein exploded in The Ten Commandments and became a legend of the west in the 60's, but he certainly knew a fantastic revival in the 80's, beginning with Airplane! and Heavy Metal. His main contribution to the era is for sure the score he wrote for Ghostbusters in the middle of the decade. For this specific movie, Elmer used the old ghosts tricks (the ondes martenot) and the classic haunted houses sound, mixed to a thundering orchestra and a contemporary 80's pop sound ! This gave birth to a unique sound, totally 80's and as epic as eerie and funny !
I recently noticed that the upcoming video game (wich is a sequel to the movies) was using Elmer's original music, one more proof (if it was needed) that Elmer's music has stood the test of time...

Great topic and thanks for starting it Anakin
I'm sure I'll be visiting this one quite often!

Personally, I started out enjoying more electronic stuff, pop, the stuff mainstreamers listened to back then gradually drifted into orchestral music, and now I find I like all of it - gotta have my Goblin & Tangerine Dream along with my Friedhofer & Waxman, since at any given moment it all fills some need for me! I am glad I didn't grow up in the new Zimmer age tho

What's cool about the eighties is the juxtaposition of the old school romantic style mixed with the beginnings of electronica and '80s style pop/rock.

GHOSTBUSTERS is a perfect example with Elmer Bernstein's classic score and good '80s pop songs.

RETURN OF THE JEDI and Lapti Nek

THE GOONIES
THE LOST BOYS
Each with interestingly memorable pop albums and yet to receive score albums.

HOWARD THE DUCK
Great Barry score and some cool Thomas Dolby material plus some Sylvester Levay goodness.

Jerry Goldsmith,
in a class all by himself,
experimenting with electronics:
RUNAWAY, ALIEN NATION, GREMLINS, HOOSIERS & THE LONELY GUY
and keeping it complex: FIRST BLOOD, INNERSPACE, PSYCHO II & KING SOLOMON'S MINES

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Alan Silvestri in his prime backed by Huey Lewis in his prime.

PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE
Danny Elfman bursts onto the scoring scene
with Hans Zimmer and RAIN MAN not far behind.

Blue Thunder along with Conan The Barbarian were both very influential on me as a kid. They got my heart racing and transported me to other worlds were I would personally do battle with evil soldiers and duel with heavily armed choppers.

Great stuff.

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The 80s was when I started getting into film music. At the time I griped about the terrible state of things -- Return of the Jedi being a one-LP release, Ghostbusters and Gremlins being full of songs and little score, Goldsmith's Legend being rejected and proliferation of synth scores, etc.

But as someone once said, nobody ever realizes when they're living in a golden age. Despite the poor presentation of some scores on record (and some bad film music as well), the 80s nevertheless had an unbelievable number of great film scores. These are just a few of them...

Tess
Altered States
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Clash of the Titans
Heavy Metal
Heartbeeps
Quest for Fire
Conan The Barbarian
Blade Runner
Star Trek II
ET
First Blood
Poltergeist
The Road Warrior
Tron
Hammett
The Dark Crystal
Return of the Jedi
Twilight Zone: The Movie
Krull
Gremlins
Ghostbusters
Red Dawn
The Cotton Club
The Company of Wolves
Lifeforce
Legend
Witness
Silverado
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Amazing Stories
The Last Place on Earth
Ran
Revolution
Young Sherlock Holmes
Enemy Mine
Highlander
The Mission
Hoosiers
RoboCop
Cherry 2000
The Witches of Eastwick
The Living Daylights
The Land Before Time
High Spirits
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Star Trek V
Both Indiana Jones sequels

And this is by no means a complete list. I submit that there haven't been as many great scores in the past two decades combined as in the 80s alone.

And on top of all those great scores we also got to watch John Williams on TV every Sunday night during the summer months!

The 80's were for sure a paradoxal period, not only because of this dichotomy between the quality of scores and the lack of albums. The movies of that area combined a very dark vision of the world to a great sense of innocence and optimism. I've got a great example of that...



Cloak & Dagger (Brian May), 1984.

I've been watching lately the great movie Cloak & Dagger, where a young playful innocent boy (played by Henry Thomas) is plunged into a dark real conspiracy against government plot and even has to kill a man at one point. This was a terrific adventure movie but the harsh reflection of the paradoxal time it was made in as well.
The score composed by Brian May is once again a great example of big orchestral adventure scoring of that time that never saw the light of day on CD ! I hope someone is cooking this one right now !

Unbelievably, I forgot to include these on my list of 80s scores...

Masada
Dragonslayer
Body Heat
Night Crossing
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brainstorm
Greystoke
The Last Starfighter
Brazil
Agnes of God
Poltergeist II
The Black Cauldron
Lionheart
Extreme Prejudice
A Summer Story

I didn't have the chance of watching Explorers on the big screen, but I do have fond memories of watching it on video tape ! What a great movie it is, and Jerry Goldsmith wrote one of his most beautiful themes to depict the dreams of those "space goonies".



But the first time I went to the theaters to watch a non animated movie was for Innerspace and I loved it ! Jerry Goldsmith was definitely by our sides during our childhood, like a careful father who taught us the wonders of film music...

Bloody kids!

Besides Goldsmith's scores and the Indiana Jones music, a big fav of mine was Williams' Spacecamp.



A review I read for it on the net many years ago called it his farewell score to the music he composed during the 70s and early 80s and I have to agree.