Taarna Has Her Day

Lukas here. This was a fun day in that we could unveil one of the "Holy Grails" of collecting: Heavy Metal by Elmer Bernstein. For years, this was a treasured LP; we have released not only the album, but the whole thing. But as this was a great LP that Elmer produced, the tracks are sequenced in such a way that you can program just the LP sequence, or the entire thing. It was recorded in England so there are no AFM union issues and the release is not a limited edition. The CD represents a good year's worth of negotiations on the part of Rhino, Elektra, Sony, the estate of Elmer Bernstein (who provided the masters) and other concerned parties...the album rights went through several hands and we are very grateful to everyone involved who took time to research their end of it and get back to us. I don't know why people thought this CD would never get done...it was just a hard road to climb due to the way the film was financed and distributed and the album released on Elektra in 1981. But really, Elmer's manager and attorney had researched it around six years ago when Elmer himself intended to release it on this Amber Records label (before his illness) -- they did most of the groundwork here, and very generously forwarded all of their research. I can't say enough about how wonderful the Bernstein estate continues to be as far as having a great attitude towards his legacy and putting their money and resources behind these efforts.

After the Superman rigamarole of months of leaks, pre-announcements, updates, etc. we thought there was maybe a little fatigue on the part of collectors waiting for these things to come out, so we have dropped Heavy Metal into the marketplace with just a photo of our warrior friend Taarna to publicize it. I think it's worth remembering that soundtrack collecting ought to be fun, and one of the things that used to be fun was going to the record store and finding some amazing item that you never knew existed that you wanted to devour there in the store. That rarely happens anymore, so this is probably the closest we'll come.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that this score is absolutely fantastic. When you troll the studio vaults like we do, you come across a lot of interesting and worthy items but sometimes you've got damaged elements, an obscure title, something that is more of a curio than a blockbuster. And we're devoted to those. But once in a while it's great -- as with Superman -- to have something that needs little introduction. Although my favorite message board post today was over at moviemusic where somebody asked (paraphrasing here) "What's the fuss about this score?" and put underneath it, "Just listened to the sound clips...Never mind. Ordered!" A special thanks to Paul MacLean and Al Kaplan who have written some great liner notes for us. Taarna would say thanks, if she ever talked.