Intrada Soundtrack Forum

I've got to do some advertising here since Dave Grusin is greatly undervalued when considering his immense talents.

Just when I again ask where's the Grusin, Kritzerland once again thankfully comes through with an album.

I saw the film a long time ago, but the only thing I really knew about the score right before this release was the use of "Mountain Dance." With this album, we get all of the original material recorded for the film, including numerous unused cues. It is Grusin in his rich romantic melody mode mixed with his keen sense of fun, jubilant rhythms.



Select Samples:

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Grail: ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (Ron Goodwin)

Grusin's scores have never appealed to me musically or dramatically, except one -- and that's THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. I can make no comparison to FALLING IN LOVE or THE GOONIES since I never watched nor heard either; but LONELY HUNTER is all I can recommend personally.

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Grail: ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (Ron Goodwin)

Falling in Love sounds more like Tootsie. In fact, The Goonies doesn't sound like anything else he has done...

Actually Anakin, this score is far from Tootsie. Stylistically, it it's a boarder version of that score and also is a preview of what he would do on Lucas in 1986 which was an all synthesizer score where as this one mixes both an orchestra and lots of synths. If you listen to the score and particularly the main theme, there's a touch of his great theme to St. Elsewhere thrown in there for good measure.

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is a terrific score and a personal favorite of Grusin's who's re-recorded the theme several times. I also highly recommend his wonderful score to Racing With The Moon (which deserves a reissue without a doubt) in which the film also produced by Paramount like they did Falling In Love, had come out earlier in 1984.

Other Grusin scores that I personally feel that are absolutely worth getting are:

Three Days Of The Condor
Heaven Can't Wait
The Firm
The Yakuza
Mulholland Falls
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Divorce, American Style
Tootsie (of course!)
The Bonfire Of The Vanities
Havana

Hopefully one day we'll see his scores to ...And Justice For All, Absence of Malice, The Champ, On Golden Pond, Milagro Beanfield War (which he won his only Oscar for) and Bobby Deerfield released on CD soon!

Thanks for all the replies, gents!

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Grail: ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (Ron Goodwin)

I'll put in another good word for The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter...might be my favorite Grusin. I don't think The Goonies is bad but I do find it incredibly overrated, and I think it was so sought after (and Varese's 5000 copy issue sold out so fast) purely because of the film's popularity with a certain generation.

Yavar

The Goonies is a fantastic demonstration of what had to be an Amblin action adventure score back in the old days of the 80's. The only thing that could be called "typically Grusin" in this score is the tender "Goonies theme". The rest is pure 80's Spielbergian music.