Here's an old document from early internet days- Chris (the Greek) from Pittsburg contacted me and sent me a list of De Wolfe cues from a handwritten cue list. It's a nice snapshot from around 2000-2001 time I think, I had a pile of De Wolfe's and was able to correct some errors on the sheet-- ie, 'Neurotic Bird' was impossible to make out but I had already found it so was able to name it properly. Interestingly there are a lot of error- in particular tracks that weren't in the film and I suspect George pencilled them in and changed them or simply wrote the wrong title down.
I bought some records on the back of this only to find no DOTD tracks on them which was bloody annoying.
I recorded tracks on Mini Disc back then and sent them to Chris and he made a rough compilation which ended up being sold for $35 a piece on eBay- this is years before the Trunk CD came out. I was offered lots o cash for the LPs at the time but resisted.
Dawn Library Cues
AT LAST! After 20 years of obscurity, the Dawn of the Dead cue sheets - detailing which De Wolfe library tracks were selected by George Romero for use in the film - have surfaced! Thanks to a few dedicated folks (including Dawn fan Patrick Doody, music supervisor Llyswen Vaughan, De Wolfe's New York manager Mitchel Greenspan, and a fella named John) the mystery is no more. Listed below are the 60 De Wolfe cues licensed for inclusion in Dawn.
The De Wolfe library remains the world's leader in production music; as such, all the cues listed here are still available for license. Rumors of a possible release of these tracks in CD form have circulated, but the odds of this occurring anytime soon look mighty slim; according to Greenspan, the cost of licensing these tracks for such a release would be prohibitive - to put it lightly. "Now you're talking thousands," was his exact quote.
(Note - 10/31/01): On Halloween 2001, I was contacted by De Wolfe collector John, who owns several of the LPs containing Dawn cues; as a result of John's assistance, the information below has been heavily corrected. Read carefully for new info!
A few words on the abbreviations: Unless you're a youngster, you know that LP stands for "Long Playing," as in vinyl records. The coded album designations stand for various divisions of the music company. DW and DWS stand for De Wolfe and De Wolfe Studios, obviously. HMC stands for Hudson Music Company, De Wolfe's repository of jazzy, avant-garde themes. SMC, or Sylvester Music Company, is another such division, primarily involving early synth pieces and other such eccentric bits.
Click on highlighted titles for notes on those titles, or simply read them separately, at the bottom of the page.
Track Title
Source Album
Cantando
HMC/LP 506
Cosmogony Parts 1-4
HMC/LP 507
Symphonia Dramatica Pt. 2
Symphonia Dramatica Pt. 3
Dramaturgy Pt. 1
Caverne de Glace
HMC/LP 509
Desert de Glace
Kadath
So Fantastico
HMC/LP 510
Neurotic Bird
Weird Dream
Mechanical High Jinks
Foody Moody Joody
Trumpet Requiem
SMC/LP 514
Non Vibrato
Volipse
DW/LP 2823
Par Boom de Fond
DW/LP 2857
Ciel de Glace
Stalactites et Stalagmites
Sinistre
DW/LP 2922
Violence
Dynamise 65
Dramatic Moments 1-3
The Gonk
DW/LP 2949
Ragtime Razzmatazz
Cause I'm a Man (vocal)
DW/LP 3040
We Are The Champions
DW/LP 3118
Violence Link #3
DW/LP 3174
Violent Sting #3
Tension Sting #1
Tension Sting #2
Synchropulse
DW/LP 3176
Speed
DW/LP 3180
Once
DW/LP 3196
Queka
DW/LP 3198
Flossie
Horizontal Hold
DW/LP 3268
Indictment
Proud Action
Action Pack
On His Own
DWS/LP 3300
Drama Point III
Clammy Hand
Barrage
Street Incident
Waiting For The Man
The Mask of Death
Dark Forest
Stealth
Motives
DWS/LP 3304
Fugarock
Scary 1
Scary 2
Two Minutes Precisely
DWS/LP 3366
Sun High
Slow Repose
Figments
Moaning of the Wind
DW/LP 8056
Coming of the Saucers
DW/LP 8084
Underworld 1
DW/LP 8174
· Neurotic Bird: Greenspan's "???" is no more. Thanks to John for this tidbit (and many others to follow).
· Par Boom de Fond: French title which translates roughly to "Boom by the Bottom."
· Ciel de Glace: French title meaning "Sky of Ice." The previous two "Glace" tracks - "Caverne de Glace" and "Desert de Glace" - translate to "Cavern of Ice" and "Desert of Ice," respectively. Obviously a theme going on here. (Thanks to John for clearing up the "Desert" title.)
· Stalactites et Stalagmites: French title meaning "Stalactites and Stalagmites." This cue may be the work of noted De Wolfe composer Pierre Arvay.
· The Gonk: Legendary, well-known mall "Muzak" jingle heard over the closing credits. This is the only track easily isolated from the film, despite some sound effects in the mix.
· Ragtime Razzmatazz: John's cleared this mystery up, as well: The syncopated bit of rag heard during Stephen and Peter's visit to the bank.
· Cause I'm a Man: Twangy, country-style tune heard during the posse sequence. Written and performed by Peter Reno, this track was originally released on the De Wolfe LP Electric Banana. Interestingly, the majority of this album - aside from an instrumental version of this song and two versions of a cut called "Free Love," also by Reno - is a collection of tunes by the sixties rock band Pretty Things, who recorded a series of albums under the Electric Banana pseudonym for De Wolfe. Best of all, the vocal version of "Cause I'm a Man" slipped through the cracks and was accidentally included on a German CD release of Pretty Things: Electric Banana. This 1991 disc is fairly rare, but worth the search if you crave this particular song.
· We Are The Champions: Obviously not the song by Queen.
· Action Pack: The rousing, A-Team reminiscent "football march" heard during Peter's big escape to the rooftop. This is one of the few De Wolfe Dawn cues to survive the transition from LP to CD, appearing on a De Wolfe disc of "action music." Thanks to De Wolfe collector Rick Huffman for helping me out with this one!
· Proud Action:Heard as Fran and Peter escape at the finale; most likely the "winding-up" ditty heard as Peter asks Fran, "How much fuel do we have?"
Many of the De Wolfe LPs, having served their purpose years ago for whatever TV show, film or commercial, have become part of someone's vinyl collection...and as such, occasionally pop up for sale or auction. Note the LP code numbers - certain albums contain as many as 7 Dawn tracks. (Album titles coming soon, I hope.)
Also, as De Wolfe's headquarters are in England, many of these cues appeared in British films and TV productions. The harpsichord "mall chase" piece, for instance, appeared in its entirety as the theme of an episode of the UK Thriller series (according to Dawn fan Lon Miller)...and a cue used in the Cannes edit of the film figures prominently in Monty Python and the Holy Grail!
If anyone else out there in Webland finds or hears any more of these albums, please mail me.
The baton was picked up many years later by SeenoEvil:
Project Background Information
For those of you who have never heard about this, this was a project to research & edit the fullest soundtrack possible to the 1979 Extended cut of the George A Romero film Dawn Of The Dead. There are actually three versions of the film, each with a slightly different score; the Theatrical version, the European (AKA Argento) cut, and the Extended (AKA Cannes) cut. All three were mainly scored using edited & mixed tracks from stock library music from the De Wolfe, Rouge, & Hudson catalogues, and up to now, it wasn't general knowledge which out of the thousands of existing cues were used.
A number of the cues could previously be found on official & unofficially released albums (including some sampler CDs released by De Wolfe), although all these albums put together only cover about 25% of the total number of cues used. The fullest soundtrack previously available was a 49 track 2 CD release tailored to the Theatrical version of Dawn Of The Dead called 'The Complete 1978 Soundtrack' running at 1 hour 19 minutes 17 seconds, created by an American fan, Chris Stavrakis (webmaster of LivingDead.com, now defunct) some years ago. He had found a number of the cues and edited the most complete soundtrack he could. Unbeknownst to him, this was pirated, and then became widespread once uploaded onto the internet. In 2004, Trunk Records released a 14 track CD running at 38 minutes 44 seconds, called 'Unreleased Soundtrack Music to the George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead', although this was simply 14 cues which played in full, rather than the edited & mixed form in which they appear in the film. Music specifically written for the film by Italian band Goblin was also used, but is quite different in tone to the library music and has been available as an LP and later CD running at 51 minutes 47 seconds, since the film's theatrical release.
It was only fairly recently that the original library albums became available to the wider public. Up until about 5 years ago, such listing were still being removed by Ebay. Some of the library companies (fortunately not De Wolfe) objected to "just anyone" being able to buy their material as it was never sold commercially. Massive interest forced them to change their stance. Now, many library LPs are held by private collectors, and that's where this project began. On the 12th of April 2009, I made contact with an Ebay user Boogiejuice69, who was selling large collection of assorted library LPs on Ebay. He had already recognised & prominently noted selected Dawn Of The Dead cues on a number of the LPs he was selling, that weren't on any of the released CDs. I decided it would be worthwhile to work with him and others, to make a complete list of every single cue used in all three versions of Dawn Of The Dead.
I decided to take a more technical approach than just trying to find random tracks I liked. I took the Dawn Of The Dead R1 Anchor Bay 'Ultimate Edition' four disc DVD box set, and copied the audio track from each of the three films to my hard drive. I then used Reaper (an audio multi sequencing program) to edit every single piece of music used, into it's own individual sample file. Then I gave each track it's own listing in an index text file. Approaching the project from this angle meant that nothing could be missed, if I still had unidentified tracks left at the end, then I knew hadn't identified everything, and I had a sample of exactly what I was.
While doing this I, was also working the project from the opposite end; making various other online contacts to try and get copies of all the likely tracks & albums I thought I might need. It was only once I had started, that I found that someone else had already attempted much the same sort of project. Chris Stavrakis had posted a cue sheet to his website LivingDead.com around March 2001, giving a supposedly 'complete' list of all 58 cues used. A few months later around October 2001, the Chris was contacted by Library LP collector & avid fan; John Toman, and using his information some entries on the list were removed, some added & some corrected, making a revised list of 67 tracks.
I made contact with both Chris and John, and with their help, and that of other likeminded collectors, I went beyond Chris's earlier work and created a master list which identified the majority of the tracks used in all three versions of Dawn Of The Dead. This final list puts the number of library cues used across the three films (both identified & unidentified) at about 86 (not including any of the 17 released Goblin tracks), although 12 of those 86 cues still remain unidentified. I now know, that there were still some errors in that revised 67 track LivingDead.com list. There were some little mistakes in naming & reference numbers, Some tracks were mistakenly listed, which turned out not to have been used, and others notable tracks were left off the list altogether. That said, the cue sheet did put me far ahead of where I would have been, and due credit goes to Chris Stavrakis, Dawn fan Patrick Doody, Music Supervisor Llyswen Vaughan and the assistance of DeWolfe's New York manager Mitchel Greenspan who collectively assembled it. I did recognize one of the old LivingDead.com's cue sheet tracks; 'Barry Stroller - Speed' as actually having been used in the George A Romero 1973 Dawn pre-cursor; The Crazies, although I haven't taken this any further, but might in the future as I know The Crazies also used many similar unidentified library cues.
Once I had taken the project as far as I could, I assembled all my findings in a listings website, which I hosted on own webspace for a few months, before it was taken up and integrated as a sub-site of HomePageOfTheDead.com, where you can see the cue listings themselves, along with more information about the project.
Using my cue list, along with copies of the newly identified library tracks themselves, kindly given to me buy the collectors I was working with, I spent around 6 weeks mixing a soundtrack to the Extended cut of the film. You can read more about this below. I currently have no plans to make soundtracks for the European or Theatrical version soundtracks, but owning most of the raw source cues, that option is perfectly possible and remains open for the future. Major credit for this project must also go to Boogiejuice69 (Darren), John T, & Chris Stavrakis. Without their input (and large collection of library LPs) this project would not have been possible.
