> I am just wondering if I am the only soundtrack collector who will only
> listen to the original studio recordings as used in the film and will
> adamently avoid the plethora of rerecordings such as the many albums that
> Christian has recently been reviewing. I am not sure what it is about the
> soundtrack community and how many seem to tolerate all of these
> rerecordings with obvious differences in timing and arrangement. They
> never sound as good as the version that was used to the desired effect in
> the film.
> Why can we not have the original OST versions in compilation albums? If we
> were to purchase a Best of the Beatles and got home to discover it was a
> cover group I am sure most would want their money back. And yet even great
> compiliations of John Williams, Alan Silvestri and James Horner will
> contain rerecorded versions from concerts rather than the OST. I know the
> reason is economic -clearance was maybe too expensive.
> What I have ended up doing is creating my own compilation albums from OSTs
> in my collection. These no beating the original...
I see what you mean, but I think you're missing some of the point. These rerecordings are obviously not meant to fit the film, but are rather meant solely to be listened to, so its not necessary for the conductor to follow every tempo perfectly or to insist upon making each musical gesture exactly the same. In that way, the conductor (and the players) are able to be much more musical in some instances, and there are times where I believe certain rerecordings have more passion and energy than the originals do. Your comparison to the Beatles cover, I think is a little off the point here because even the Beatles didn't perform the same songs the exact same ways every time, no one does. This is more akin to classical music, where you will hear that Simon Rattle and Leonard Bernstein interpret Mahler's 5th symphony differently, but both are incredible and fantastic to listen to. You don't want to go to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and hear that they're not performing Beethoven 3 because New York already did it. At this point its not about being faithful its about being musical and inventing one's own interpretation.
As for making a little extra money... well there's no problem with that eh? 
