Heavy Metal Movie Music

I recently took the leap and purchased a copy of the Heavy Metal 1981 Movie LP off ebay.  It fills out my Heavy Metal Movie music collection greatly.

The LP came with the 45rpm record as well.  I've had the CD copies for years, I used to listen to them in my car.  

The Score LP by Elmer Bernstein, I came across in a resale shop last year.  I was dimly aware it existed, but it was the first time I ever saw one, so I grabbed it.  (Years earlier, I had passed up a copy of the Heavy Metal 1981 Movie on Laserdisc, since I didn't have a laserdisc player.  I later regretted it, just since it was a unique HM artifact, so it was easy to make the decision to get the Score LP.  I never had a laserdisc player, and I maybe I never will, but I have a turntable dammit (it's almost as old as the LPs) so at least I can play these).  The Score LP is nice since it really has the orchestral pieces that played during many of the movie scenes, so in a way it's more reminiscent of the movie itself than the soundtrack.

Since then I'd had my eyes open for the Soundtrack LP in resale shops, but I started to lose patience, so when saw one on the ebay for a pretty good deal, I ordered it.  The cover's a bit worn, but the discs are fine.  I don't mind if any of my Heavy Metal Things show signs of wear after the decades, I sure as heck do.  The 45 was a bonus, and I learned later on the terrific heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com that there were several 45s issued with the movie soundtrack.

There are a number of amusing quirks about these.  Both albums are cutouts, which was the bargain bin back in the day of records stores and radio stations.  The albums were notched near the corners, "cut out" it seems, to indicate they weren't full price.

The 45 has the Devo tune "Working in the Coal Mine" on the A side, and "Planet Earth" on the B side, which was not in the movie.  From www.heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com/musichm.html, it appears there were six 45rpm singles released for the movie.  This one and another have music that was not in the movie.

Unfortunately, and humorously, the Score LP misspells "Taarna" on the back, three times:

It's really too bad, some communication breakdown I suppose.  So many typos in Heavy Metal's history.

The Heavy Metal 2000 movie soundtrack CD came out with the movie.  It came in cassette too, not vinyl apparently.  This CD also came with a HyperCD, with art and interviews and other extras.  The Summer 2000 issue of the Magazine was the "CD" Special, that also came with a HyperCD with much of the same content.

The Heavy Metal 1981 Movie Soundtrack and Score came out with the movie in 1981 in vinyl.  It was also available in cassette and 8-track, released around the same time.  I believe that the 1981 Movie Soundtrack CD appeared around the same time the movie was released publicly, first in 1996 on VHS then in 1999 on DVD, and it's my understanding it took Mr Eastman wrangling the myriad music rights after the many years since the movie first came out.

My opinions of the music, are that they fit the purposes of the movies.  The soundtrack for the 1981 movie wasn't really in my favorite music categories from around then, though Devo was getting close.  The HM2000 movie soundtrack was even less of a fit for my tastes.  But in both cases they did the job.  Really I should think about writing about my opinions about both of the movies, I've got some.

But for now, I got what I wanted in my Heavy Metal Music collection.  And I finally made a post about it.  I'll leave the cassette versions and CD of the soundtracks, and the other 45s from the first movie, to stumble across in a resale shops.