I'm surprised nobody has been discussing the Bond music. What albums would you recommend?

My go to basics are:
"The Best of Bond... James Bond" - 14 primary title songs performed by the original artists. High quality, very recognizable.

"The James Bond Collection" (City of Prague Philharmonic) - a four "disk" set (54 songs) all instrumental, excellent quality, great as background music (no distracting instrumentals). (this might now be being sold as "The Ultimate James Bond Collection" with five additional tracks)

"On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (soundtrack) - mostly instrumental, my favorite movie.

There seem to be a number of "Bond Music" releases that are fairly low quality interpretations.

Good question. For me, the best albums carry you back to the world of the film. I'm not a big fan of the later David Arnold scores. Too many of the tracks are generic action music--you can tell someone is chasing someone, but little more. I felt that Thomas Newman's SKYFALL score had more flavor to it, as well as working in elements of the Bond theme in an interesting way.

I nominate as worth a listen:

The Man with the Golden Gun: very evocative of the Asian setting.

Diamonds are Forever, especially the extended version: that big, lush Vegas sound.

I expect my choices will surprise some people. The Dr. No album is also interesting, quite atypical for a Bond album.

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Serge Gorodish

(As Doc Brown would say: The way I see it, if you're going to [do whatever it is that you're doing now], why not do it with a little style?)

http://countryoftheblind.blogspot.com

If you want to stretch to other music that isn't actually Bond, I'd suggest Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. In particular "Oriental Eyes" (from the Album "Blow Your Own Horn").

Thanks Serge, I'm going to have to listen to the actual soundtrack albums more and perhaps buy a few of them.

Ah, yes, I'm familiar with Herb Alpert (brings back very old memories), though I have yet to check out "Oriental Eyes." Of course, he played the theme to the Charles K. Feldman version of CASINO ROYALE. Another excellent Bond song from that unfortunate Bond movie is "The Look of Love"--and Alpert has an excellent version.

Elsewhere I mentioned that the theme from this summer's "Spy" is an excellent non-Bond "Bond theme".

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Serge Gorodish

(As Doc Brown would say: The way I see it, if you're going to [do whatever it is that you're doing now], why not do it with a little style?)

http://countryoftheblind.blogspot.com

Another song to consider is Madonna's "Beautiful Killer".

It is too bad that our old music discussions became a victim to the cyber attack on BJB. It is nice to see the board becoming alive again : - )

I recently went through some of the full soundtracks and made my own playlist:
Goldfinger
Diamonds are Forever
License to Kill
Goldeneye
The World is not Enough
Die another Day
You Know my Name
CR - Blunt Instrument
CR - I'm the money
CR - The names Bond.. JB
Skyfall - Brave new world, Komodo Dragon, Tennyson, Breadcrumbs, Welcome to Scotland, She's mine, the Moors

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The most interesting people in the world are those who know everything, and those who know absolutely nothing.

spartanRK - thanks, that reminds me I should pick up a copy of the Skyfall soundtrack.

Loss of old discussions simply provides the opportunity for new discussions. {smile}

Dame Shirley Bassey has an album from 2009 called "The Performance" with a track called "No Good About Goodbye" that I've heard was meant to be the theme to QoS- you can hear an identical musical cue from "Time to Get Out" from the QoS soundtrack that could easily have led into Dame Shirley's piece. The lyrics even evoke Bond's grief over Vesper. Personally I find it far, far superior to the atonal, nightmarish "Another Way to Die" which is only eclipsed by "Die Another Die" as worst theme song in the series- IMHO!

wow... nice suggestion. Oriental eyes is spot on

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The most interesting people in the world are those who know everything, and those who know absolutely nothing.

I'm glad you like it spartanRK.

Of course you can't overlook "Secret Agent Man" (I enjoy Bruce Willis's remake).

I don't know if they still have it, but there used to be a pretty good Bond/spy playlist or collection that I have now. Lots of stuff from all over the place - from Shirley Bassey and the Bond themes to other spy themes to songs that mention 007 (including a ska piece by Desmond Dekker that I enjoy a lot).

And I also just realized that I created a Spotify playlist out of it. If you're on that service, here you go:

https://play.spotify.com/user/123347848 ... xoK2PzyrxK

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

Thanks Jamie, although it looks like I'll have to create a Spotify account to see the list.

That is how it works, yes.

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Jamie Fellrath

"This time I have got the gadgets, and i know how to use them"

This wouldn't be the first time the Bond soundtrack has been highly recommended by either Paul Kyriazi's book or this forum. Check out this article from bondlifestyle.com if you haven't already:

http://www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/artic ... ing-boring

The first thing mentioned is getting a soundtrack. I have a playlist of my own, featuring mostly smooth jazz and R&B favorites. I didn't really put anything from the Bond movies themselves on my playlist, but I do have some of the artists who have done songs for the Bond films on my playlist. I did, however, download the "Diamonds Are Forever" soundtrack and play the song from the scene where Bond meets Tiffany Case for the first time when I checked into my room at the Hotel Tropicana in Vegas during my transfer leave (which was, like Bond said, "quite comfortable." )

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Weren't you a blonde when I came in?

I've always thought that Licence to Kill (by Gladys Knight) was very underrated. The movie wasn't my favorite, but the song is terrific.