While sitting at home trying to recover my voice or to allow it to get beyond sounding like Froggy from the Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts (primarily by keeping my mouth shut), I have been listening to my favorite gift. For years, I have been torn between two iconic series of film scores by the same composer: Star Wars and Indiana Jones
. John Williams supplied all of the music for the 6 Star Wars films (yes, even the 3 prequel films) and the 4 films featuring the world-traveling archaeologist. Just hearing music from either series is enough for me to want to pop in the DVD and sit back and enjoy but I also like kicking back and listening to a good movie score and picturing the events in my mind. I have had the Star Wars collection of CDs for sometime. However, the music for the Indy films have been rare indeed and even those recordings have lacked in length, until recently (I had a cassette of the Last Crusade soundtrack that featured only 30 minutes of the score). Particularly the score for The Temple of Doom. Williams expertly created scores for each of the films. Raiders, Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull each are much lighter in tone and fun while Temple is full of dark, sinister, blood curdling themes. However, it also features the Cole Porter tune “Anything Goes” sung in Mandarin Chinese and a fun theme for Indy’s young protege, Short Round.
Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection
contains the four scores with previously unreleased tracks along with a fifth disc of ultra rare recordings with a fifteen minute interview with Williams, George Lucas, and the man, Steven Spielberg reminiscing about the creation of the films and the musical motifs throughout each movie. Extremely cool. Now I will post a poll that I know most people who frequent this blog can answer and you must choose, but choose wisely. [poll id=”5″]
Oh, I thought you meant you were listening to a skeleton singing Livin La Vida Loca
I think i ran the batteries out on that?! that was my second favorite gift 😉
I guess I should qualify that between those two options my favorite at the moment is Indy. Mind you, that could change next time I watch Star Wars. 🙂
Of course, he has written many, many more. E.T., Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Jaws, Superman to name just a few of the bigger ones so had you asked which of all was my favorite, I would have to respond with something like “too many choices error in line 200…” 😛
Precisely, Derek. I briefly considered listing them all but thought better of it. That would have been insane (of course, I have been known to be called as such more than once 😀 )
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