Customer Reviews

The Original Music From Dark Shadows (Television Series Soundtrack - Deluxe Edition)

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Listening to this soundtrack is quite a lot like coming home! I remember as a kid, running home after school to watch the television show Dark Shadows (1966-71) with my sister. She bought this album, in record form, and here it is again in CD form. As an added bonus, the album has two extras: a 27-minute radio interview (with Jonathan Frid (who played Barnabas Collins), Grayson Hall (Julia Hoffman), Roger Davis (Peter Bradford), Humbert Allen Astredo (Nicholas Blair), Robert Rodan (Adam) and Donald Briscoe (Tom Jennings and others)), and a 12-minute radio interview with David Selby (Quentin Collins).

This is a great album with a lot of memories attached. For me, the big question is, would I enjoy just listening to this album for itself, or is it just mood music? The answer is that these tunes are all quite nice, and I enjoyed listening to this album over and over again. I must say, though, that if you are going to do this, you might want to program your player to skip the interviews.

So, overall I thought that this is a great album, and a great buy. I highly recommend it!

This is a GREAT CD! The classic, eery music that set so much of the atmosphere on Dark Shadows is here! A HUGE bonus is the narration tracks done by Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins) and David Selby (Quentin Collins) - I Barnabas, I'll Be With You Always, and of course the classic Shadows of the Night narration of Quentin's Theme to name a few. As if it couldn't get better, they add some great bonus material at the end, two radio interviews with the cast! Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins), Grayson Hall (Dr. Julia Hoffman), Humbert Allen Astredo (Nicholas Blair), Roger Davis (Jeff Clark/Peter Bradford), Don Briscoe (Chris and Tom Jennings), and Robert Rodan (Adam) are interviewed in the first from 1968, and the second is exclusively with David Selby (Quentin Collins) from 1969. Both interviews are the final two tracks on the CD.

If you are a DS fan, you MUST have this album. Tons of classic themes, great narrations, and wonderful bonus interviews are what you'll get. I also recommend the Dark Shadows 30th Anniversary soundtrack, and the House of Dark Shadows / Night of Dark Shadows soundtrack. Dark Shadows lives on!

This special reissue of Original Music from DARK SHADOWS is a welcome edition to recent releases of past film scores from many successful TV series. The "OPENING THEME:DARK SHADOWS/COLLINWOOD" are nothing less than classic. Take notice of - "I'LL BE WITH YOU, ALWAYS", "MEDITATIONS", "WHEN I AM DEAD", "EPITAPH", "I, BARNABAS" with narration from Jonathan Frid is both enjoyable and entertaining. Tracks 1-16 Original Music from DARK SHADOWS, then we have Tracks 17-18 bonus material containing Radio Interviews (1968) with Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Roger Davis, Humbert Allen Astredo, Robert Rodan, Donald Briscoe and David Selby in (1969) Radio Interview is a collectors dream. There is a following which have formed various fan clubs that continually meet and talk about the series. This collection contains material which any collector would be proud to own.

Total Time: 76:11 on 18 Tracks/Varese Sarabande - 302 066 066 2 (1999)

One of the most notable aspects of this re-release of "The Original Music From Dark Shadows" is its apt demonstration of how the "Dark Shadows" fan community has changed over the past three decades. To have released the music tracks unabridged would have been inconceivable back in 1969, though in choosing not to do so, the producers actually manage to create a far more faithful evocation of the show than any subsequent album.

Arranged into charming suites and backed with appropriately dour narration by Jonathan Frid, doubtless children in the 1960s feasted upon its range of mini episodes, each far more eloquent than the actual series itself. The closing "Our revels now are ended speech", taken from "The Tempest" suceeds in summing up the quaint little phenomenon of "Dark Shadows" perfectly, beautifully spoken by Frid.

Perhaps this release has gained something quite unique during the intervening years. Jonathan Frid's flawless reading of Christina Rossetti's classic verse probably evokes a "Dark Shadows" warmly preserved in a thick layer of nostalgia rather than the one that greets today's viewers.

The editing of the tracks, the artifical stereo and the narration will probably offend a number of purists, but for those willing to enjoy the album on its own merits, it provides an enticing journey into a world of tempestuous forces and overbearing darkness that the unforgiving weight of flawed videotape evidence has long since eroded.

Featuring an eclectic overview of Robert Cobert's haunting music, campy excesses intact, and enhanced by the bonus radio material, The "Dark Shadows Deluxe Edition" deserves a place on every fan's shelf.

If you grew up sneaking over to the neighbors' house to watch "Dark Shadows," this one's for you. From the instantly recognizable opening theme(s) to the familiar suspenseful background music, this CD is a guilty pleasure from beginning to end. Beautifully remastered, it sounds way better than it did on TV. You can almost see Angelique mixing up a potion, groovy 60's couples dancing at the Blue Whale and the perpetual thunderstorms over Collinsport. The spookiet part, however, is the radio program featuring many now-dead (?) stars of the show at the end of the record. Lotsa fun!

This is right up there with the old LOST IN SPACE music, by the then-named "Johnny" Williams. Robert Cobert is very gifted, and the 60s were a special time for good, original soundtracks.

This cd brings back so many memories of Dark Shadows and the wonderful music by Robert Cobert. His music enhanced the magic and charm of the show.I have the LP and cd versions of this and they are great! The deluxe edition is fun because of the radio interviews...This is a definite MUST for any Dark Shadows fans. I treasure my copies!

I had forgotten this album until recently. I too owned an original vinyl copy. I used to watch the program everyday after school. I remember the first episode I saw, and it might have been the actual first episode, in 1964 when I was about six years old. Dark Shadows captivated me right up through high school. Recently though, I had a flashback kind of experience. A passing school bus and the feel of the day reminded me of childhood. I searched Amazon and found this listing. I played the opening theme. It was exactly 3:00PM EST. The feeling was extremely surreal. For a moment, the music transported me to a different time. A time when things I thought about might have been a little lighter, but a time in which the Shadows were always Dark!

I own an original pressing of this - bought when it was first issued, and for me, the best parts are a the recitations by Jonathan Frid, particularly "Prospero's Breaking of the Spell" ("Our revels now are ended, these our actors, as I foretold are all spirits and have melted into air. Into thin air..)and the very sensual "I, Barnabas. Robt. Cobert's composition stand by themselves in the world of soundtracks.

As a kid, I had one of the first copies released of the Phillips LP. I have waited a long time for this album to be mastered for CD. Songs from the TV show, this LP was and still is the highest charting soundtrack from a TV show. Quentin's Theme has had over 1,000,000 radio airplays!! There is a little bit of everything on this soundtrack including a song that by itself could have been a hit "#1 At The Blue Whale". If you are a fan of the show, you will LOVE this CD.