RIP John Barry (Composer)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12321610

Composer John Barry has died.

Wow, it's so horrible to write those words :(

Like many here I'm sure, I fell in love with Barry's music for The Black Hole and it has since remained my favourite score written by him and probably one of my top 5 favourite scores ever.

The man invented spy music with his work on the 007 movies and has inspired countless musicians and composers and has also enriched the lives of those who loved his work.

An incredibly talented man and whose death deeply saddens me.

RIP John, thank you for the music, your legacy will live on.

Was going to say he died in 1979 while working on the empire strikes back, but that is not the composer barry but the art department and set designer John Barry.

I've just updated the subject heading to avoid any confusion.

Cheers.

Very sad news!

I had the "Diamonds are Forever" Soundtrack on today, and did not even know.

Bingowings said:

Further to the conversation strand instigated by Warbler recently, his score for The Black Hole was one of the handful of elements that made that film so much more interesting than it might have been (other elements dragged it down to below what it might have been).

Indeed!

As I mentioned in my original post, it's my fav Barry score and one of my fav scores in general.

For a kids sci-fi fantasy film, the music combined with the imagery gives it such a wonderful gothic flavour.

The score is screaming out for a complete release, or a remastered 2CD complete score/original album presentation.

steb74 said:

The score is screaming out for a complete release, or a remastered 2CD complete score/original album presentation.

Hopefully it'll happen one day, but from what I heard, the original digital masters were created with equipment that made them incompatible with today's digital technology (or something like that).  Perhaps someone will eventually find another source (say, an analog recording that's been hidden away all these years), clean it up, remaster it, and release a new CD (just like they apparently did with the version that's now on iTunes *spit*).  I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I've also heard about this 'incompatibility' issue, which to be honest, I can't help but feel is complete nonsense especially in this day and age ......unless it was literally recorded on the U.S.S. Cygnus!

The iTunes version is a disgrace and certainly doesn't sound as good as the 'Mask boot', this score deserves much better treatment.

Hopefully in the not too distant future, one of the specialist labels will be in a position to do something about it.

The total running time of the missing cues isn't that much but I really feel they would help to flesh out the score and to break up a little of the repetitiveness.

Anyway, fingers crossed!

TheBoost said:

MJPollard said:

Hopefully it'll happen one day, but from what I heard, the original digital masters were created with equipment that made them incompatible with today's digital technology (or something like that). 

 To quote a line Darth Vader never said... "How can that be?"

I wondered that myself, but then, I'm just repeating what I heard.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt; too many people seem hard-wired to see conspiracies in every little thing, but fortunately I'm not quite there yet. :-)

MJPollard said:

I wondered that myself, but then, I'm just repeating what I heard.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt; too many people seem hard-wired to see conspiracies in every little thing, but fortunately I'm not quite there yet. :-)

Or are you....?

Murry Sparkles said:

R.I.P. John Barry, for me Dances With Wolves was one of the greatest movie soundtracks of the nineties.

Couldn't agree more.  Brilliant soundtrack.