Basil Poledouris

This is late in coming, but just have to mention my awe for composer Basil Poledouris...and I've only listened to four of his scores! I "discovered" him about a month ago, bit I did know about him before and read about his death on many film music web sites. Why didn't I pick him up sooner? Well, two reasons:

1) I'm an asshole; and

2) As a college student, I have a limited budget and thus cannot buy very many CDs. I only buy a CD if I know I'm going to like it, but therein lies the problem, as the Circuit City guy would say: How do I know if I like it if I haven't listened to it? There's the 30-second samples from iTunes, but they always choose the most boring parts. After listening to Elfman's Batman, I thought it sounded boring. I decided to buy a "hard copy" (CD) and, of course, it's a masterpiece. Thus, I tend to buy CDs from movies I've seen with good scores, or from composers I already like. Poledouris was not on that list (he sure as hell is now), and so I didn't buy any of his scores.

But now...I've seen the light. I've listened to Conan the Barbarian, Starship Troopers, RoboCop, and The Hunt for Red October. Every single one is a gem. Look, I don't want to be a Zimmer basher, some of his scores are guilty pleasures to me,and I think Lion King is an absolute masterpiece. But THIS is the ultimate sound of adrenaline-pumping, soaring, thundering action music! Of course, there's his wonderful quiet stuff like the "Theology" theme from Conan as well. It's too bad he didn't get more projects, or that he died so prematurely.