Music from Emmanuelle in Soho

[PJL]

Hello everyone.



OK, Emmanuelle in Soho represents a low point in British cinema, but as a film music fan I still find the score, by Barry Kirsch, to be interesting and very pleasant.



There is a song in the film, possibly called 'Don't Let Go' (judging from the lyrics), and this song has also appeared in episodes of Minder (series 2 episode 13 - "A lot of Bull and a pat on the Back") and The Sweeney. It is a disco-type track and usually accompanies on-screen scenes of a sleazy striptease routine. It is never credited when used, which leads me to think that it may be a library music track. It is unclear as to whether it was written by Barry Kirsch or not as again no reference is made to it in the credits for Emmanuelle in Soho.



Does anyone know the song I am referring to, and can anybody please shed some light on it? I would love to obtain a recording of it but my own research has drawn a complete blank.



Many thanks.



Cheers,



Peter

[DocRobertPepper]

Do you know which Sweeney episode it is in?

[PJL]

name='DocRobertPepper' date='21 July 2010 - 07:38 PM' timestamp='1279741133' post='454783']

Do you know which Sweeney episode it is in?

Hi Doc,



Off hand unfortunately not - I have the series on DVD but it's been some time since I've watched them all. I do however recall it appearing in some strip-cub type scene (I guess that's most episodes then!!!).

[hoggers]

Hi Peter



Barry owns his own production company these days - BKP



You can email him direct at barry@bkpmusic.com



Good luck



Hoggers

[Remy]

name='PJL' timestamp='1279738918' post='454768']

Hello everyone.



OK, Emmanuelle in Soho represents a low point in British cinema, but as a film music fan I still find the score, by Barry Kirsch, to be interesting and very pleasant.



There is a song in the film, possibly called 'Don't Let Go' (judging from the lyrics), and this song has also appeared in episodes of Minder (series 2 episode 13 - "A lot of Bull and a pat on the Back") and The Sweeney. It is a disco-type track and usually accompanies on-screen scenes of a sleazy striptease routine. It is never credited when used, which leads me to think that it may be a library music track. It is unclear as to whether it was written by Barry Kirsch or not as again no reference is made to it in the credits for Emmanuelle in Soho.



Does anyone know the song I am referring to, and can anybody please shed some light on it? I would love to obtain a recording of it but my own research has drawn a complete blank.



Many thanks.



Cheers,



Peter

Hi Peter,



Yes, I can confirm that the track is 'Don't Let Go'. After hearing it in Minder about 10 years ago

I attempted to try and find out what the track was called and where I could find it but was unsuccessful. Last year I

re-heard the exact same track in Last Chance Harvey (film starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson)

in a wedding reception scene but again the song wasn't credited. This reignited my interest in tracking it down and with the help of Google and a lot of patience I found that the song was originally in Creepshow. Ed Harris boogies to this tune. The song has only been released on vinyl as an unofficial library music LP and was never meant to be heard by or sold to the general public. The library music company that licences the track is dewolfe.



Someone had made an MP3 of the track and I managed to download it last year. Only a few days ago I was on the dewolfe

website and I found the track as a 99p download and it had been re-mastered so vastly superior to my original

LP to mp3 transfer download.



The track really is delightful. You can hear a sample and download it in full from dewolfe's website. Link below:



Don't Let Go at dewolfe's website



Hope that helps!



EDIT: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMF0bqFiISQ[/media]

[Gerald Lovell]

Sorry to go off-thread somewhat, but the topic reminded me of a television comedy sketch programme I saw many years ago, when they did a quiz show in which the specialist round was "porno films":-



QUIZMASTER: Which porno film does this music come from?



[Cheesy music excerpt is heard]



CONTESTANT: All of them.



QUIZMASTER: Correct!

[Steve Crook]

name='PJL' timestamp='1279738918' post='454768']

Hello everyone.



OK, Emmanuelle in Soho represents a low point in British cinema, but as a film music fan I still find the score, by Barry Kirsch, to be interesting and very pleasant.



There is a song in the film, possibly called 'Don't Let Go' (judging from the lyrics), and this song has also appeared in episodes of Minder (series 2 episode 13 - "A lot of Bull and a pat on the Back")

Are you sure it was that episode of Mminder? Or that it was Emmanuelle in Soho?

That episode was first broadcast in 1980. Emmanuelle in Soho wasn't released until 1981



Steve

[Remy]

name='Steve Crook' timestamp='1281026605' post='460675']

Are you sure it was that episode of Mminder? Or that it was Emmanuelle in Soho?

That episode was first broadcast in 1980. Emmanuelle in Soho wasn't released until 1981



Steve

And to add to the confusion Creepshow was released in 1982.



Details of when the song was composed or by whom are non existant on the web. It'd be interesting

to know which epiosde of The Sweeney the song was used in. I have all the episodes but trying to find

it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. I've not got or seen Emmanuelle in Soho so can't

comment on this.



It was definitely the Minder episode A Lot of Bull and a Pat on the Back which featured

the song. It's used in a montage of sequences when Debbie strips in a Soho club and when

Arthur is trying on clothes in a Moss Bros shop in preperation for his sojourn to the countryside.

[Steve Crook]

name='Remy' timestamp='1281027622' post='460682']

It was definitely the Minder episode A Lot of Bull and a Pat on the Back which featured

the song. It's used in a montage of sequences when Debbie strips in a Soho club and when

Arthur is trying on clothes in a Moss Bros shop in preperation for his sojourn to the countryside.

I thought the OP was saying that a clip from Emmanuelle in Soho was seen in Minder and the song was in that. But reading it again I see how they could have meant that it was just that the song was heard in the Minder episode



Steve

[PJL]

Many thanks to everyone, and especially Remy, for your replies.



Yes it is the song that appears in Minder and The Sweeney rather than a clip from Emmanuelle in Soho - sorry if I didn't make that clear in my original post. Sorry I can't remember either which episode of The Sweeney it appears in (but it's there somewhere), but it's definitely in the Minder episode I quoted (albeit heavily edited).



What a shame that it appears to be unavailable on CD. I think it's a great song, and it has stuck in my memeory ever since I saw Emmanuelle in Soho at the cinema some thirty years ago. Of course in those days, long before the internet, it was virtually impossible to obtain any information on film scores or songs. Enquiries at record shops were usually met with a blank puzzled stare from a 17 year old female assistant, who would go on to ask me "when was it in the charts?"! Enough said!



Many thanks to everyone again for your interest and help.



ATB,



Peter

[PJL]

Just an update on 'Don't Let Go' in case anyone is interested.



I downloaded it the other day from deWolfe and it's just great - unbelievable that I've finally got a copy after around 30 years of having to wait! Many thanks again to you Remy - without your help I'm sure I would never have located it. Incidentally, I did come close (without knowing it) some time ago when, because of my suspicion that it was a library track, I did a search for it on the deWolfe site proper (not the online shop, which I was completely unaware of). However, the search yielded '0' matches. Strange, perhaps one has to search for the album title (which of course I don't know) rather than an individual track title.



As I said, I first became aware of the song when I saw Emmanuelle in Soho when I was around 20 years old (in 1981 some time). I saw this with a friend when, basically we had nothing better to do (being on holiday from university), so we thought we'd pop in to this seedy back-street cinema club - you know, the sought of thing you do at that age for a laugh and which seemed terribly 'risque' at the time! I'd always had a strong interest in film music and I already had a reasonable collection on vinyl. The song lept out at me when I heard it - straight away I thought "I must have that!". Frustratingly the credits made no reference to the song at all - so where to start looking? There was hardly likely to be a soundtrack album for the film - in those days even many mainstream Hollywood movies did not have a soundtrack release (still waiting for Airport '77!). Trawling all the local record shops looking at disco/pop records yielded no results, and I became increasingly fed up with the blank stares from assistants who seemed to think that the only music that existed was that in the charts at the time.



At this point I more or less gave up, and I just made a mental note to myself to keep an eye out for it. Life marched on, until one day, sitting at home enjoying Minder on a Friday (or was it Saturday?) night with my parents, I was enexpectedly treated to the song (or at least part of it) again. I eagerly scanned the end credits for any morsel of information, but again, nothing. A 'phone call to Euston Films likewise yielded nothing but a bewildered employee on the other end of the 'phone.



That was pretty much that, and would probably have been the end of it except that my interest in the song was rekindled when I heard it again last year after buying the Minder DVD box set. Searches on the internet followed, along with enquiries to specialist soundtrack dealers who also stock library discs, but agin no luck. When I found out that Odeon Entertainment had just released Emmannuelle in Soho on DVD as part of their Best of British series (I suppose they couldn't really have a Worst of British series!) I snapped it up just to get the song (honest!). It's not complete, but is the fullest version I've heard in a film/TV programme.



Anyway the rest is history and I now have the MP3 recording. Courtesy of Struan at deWolfe I've found that the song was composed by Frank MacDonald and Chris Rae who were part of the 'Biddu Orchestra', a funky '70's outfit who composed and played the theme to 'The Stud' as well. The singer was a session singer and no details of her are known. The song was never on CD, and only one vinyl copy survives at the deWolfe office. It's therefore something of a rarity.



Hope all this may be of some interest, it at least goes to show that perseverance can pay off, even if it does take 30 years!





ATB,



Peter

[Retrotek]

I have the LP- it's a Rouge library from 1978 called 'Discos Like These'. Probably pops up on Ebay but the Creepshow connection has likely upped the price.