It was fifty years ago that a certain movie swam up to make people afraid to go in the water and movie execs afraid to not end their blockbusters with a big explosion. Jaws altered the face of cinema in many ways, some great and some not so great, but I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that at least one element of the film is unassailable: that John Williams score (okay, the dialog, acting, and directing are unassailable too).
John Williams had been composing music for film and TV for nearly two decades before he got the Jaws gig, but the score he wrote for that shark movie jetted him into a new sphere of film composers. No longer was he just the guy who wrote the music for I Passed for White and Gidget Goes to Rome. He had now created a piece of music that was as recognizable as anything by Herrmann or Morricone. Soon enough he'd be working with Lucas and on his way to becoming the single most recognizable composer in cinema history.
Even if Williams hadn't scored Star Wars, even if he hadn't gone on to score all those other Spielberg pictures, he'd still created one for the ages with his Jaws score. And I'm not just talking about that famous and infamously simple two-note theme that every clown plays the first time they take a seat in front of a piano's low notes. The entire thing is brimming with bombastic adventure, eerie mystery, and memorable melodies.
For the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws, its original soundtrack has been reissued on vinyl in a couple of formats. The fanciest (i.e.: most expensive) is a "shark infested water" edition, which apparently has actual blue-dyed water trapped inside the vinyl. Frankly, I find the idea of that scarier than Jaws, the film, because I prefer to keep water—however well secured inside of plastic it may be—away from my precious electronic equipment.
Fortunately I received the less fancy, less risky "blood splattered" vinyl edition for this review. This is a translucent blue disc with red splatter all over it. Perfect for any DJ who ever wanted to give the impression of being a shark attack victim without actually having to surrender a limb.
For gimmicky vinyl, this edition is perfectly playable. The music sounds full-bodied with a pleasing sound stage. You might need to give the vinyl a bit of cleaning because I did notice some light noise, the likes of which one here's when there's a bit of debris on the disc. The vinyl is flat, though the spindle hole is ever so slightly off center, with no adverse affect on the music, which is just as bombastic, eerie, and melodic as you remember.
