knight rider online

Well, if we don't get them by the beginning of November, I'm going to go ahead and speculate we won't until February next year. Once the holidays start kicking in, people will take vacations, they'll shut down for periods, reduced staff, etc.

Not sure where to post this, so shoving it in a thread close neough.

The one episode of the show not scored by Phillips or Peake, but rather Morton Stevens. ABout half the score:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5TvdklaL0w" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I tried ripping pieces with little talking, and then edited out stuff where possible.

Welp, it's the beginning of November.

All kidding aside, for the record, I thought I would drop in and post the last news I heard from Ron Hitchcock regarding the status of the latest Knight Rider soundtrack releases. Unfortunately, the last I heard was that he was unable to secure funding for production of the albums due to the current economic climate. Ron sounded very frustrated about all this, particularly because I think they had a lot of material prepared for release already. It sounded like the project is on indefinite hold for now.

However, because there is already material prepped I would think that this doesn't necessarily kill the project; once funding becomes more accessible it shouldn't take much work to go the final mile. Of course, I know nothing about how the music industry (licensing, etc.) works, so I'm just assuming here.

I suggested to Ron that they could try an online-only release in the interim if the problem was funding for physical product, but didn't hear back. But then I'm an outsider, so I'll keep a lid on it till I hear further word from the horse's mouth.

It sucks, but from what I know of them, both Ron and Don are stand-up guys and I know they'll do what they can.

Hmm, what about those covered then rock songs for KR like Rebel Yell or Run to you?

Is there any kind of update? I know above it was stated HMR couldn't get the funding to continue, but between then and now, they've updated their site again, and now it says the releases will happen "ASAP".

Impatient to know, I contacted HMR. The reply came today.

Funding is still not secured. The change to "ASAP" is jsut the wording of choice to reflect when the CD's might come. I might have chosen something like "On hold at this time. Check back periodically for updates.", but heck -- I don't have a say.


I'm disappointed, but maybe things will change later on.

Sadly, two/three weeks ago ALL mention of future CD's was removed from their site. I ugess that is that until somebody can help finance it.

It was, however, replaced with this:

Don Peake's Knight Rider theme, and I, Desire: The Vampire - ringtones now available for your iPhone.

That's sad and disappointing. I'm still looking forward to those releases and hope they will be released some day. If I were a rich man...

Hitchcock Media Records is offering a 20% discount for Juy 4th.

The upcoming four new volumes of "Knight Rider" scores were cancelled a few months ago due to lack of funding. I would only hope anybody who was wanting a copy of any of these, would take advantage of the sale, and maybe help them build the funding.

If I were Don Peake, I'd be contacting companies like La-La Land Records or Film Score Monthly (which has already released the remastered Pilot episode score) to see if deals could be worked out. If funding is an issue, I would also make an appeal directly to the Knight Rider fan community asking for donations, as I'm sure many of us would be more than happy to contribute if it meant being able to see some of the best music from the series finally see the light of day. Hitchcock Media seems like a decent enough company as they've provided great releases thus far but maybe it's time to look elsewhere for help.

KFCreator wrote:If I were Don Peake, I'd be contacting companies like La-La Land Records or Film Score Monthly (which has already released the remastered Pilot episode score) to see if deals could be worked out. If funding is an issue, I would also make an appeal directly to the Knight Rider fan community asking for donations, as I'm sure many of us would be more than happy to contribute if it meant being able to see some of the best music from the series finally see the light of day. Hitchcock Media seems like a decent enough company as they've provided great releases thus far but maybe it's time to look elsewhere for help.

Exactly. He could even try to make it through kickstarter. A good campaign advertised here and other fan community sites could be successful.

Besides, does anybody know what does "funding" mean in that particular case? Pressing the CDs is not that expensive, so what is it that makes the new releases impossible to finish? Are there some big licensing fees or what?

There's all kinds of fees. Legal fees, AFM (American Federation of Musicians) re-use fees, fees just to find the tapes in studios vaults, fees to master the music, which at that age require some work (some more than others).

And a myriad of other fees depending on what kind of release they make. Do they hire somebody to write the linear notes? That guy hs to be paid. Did they include a musician's listing? The AFM charges a fee to research that. Maybe a professional to design better artwork? That costs money.
License out songs, like on Volume 2? That costs more money.

A CD release of score from "Knight Rider" could costs upwards of $5,000.00 -- in basic fees (more on top of that by the end), and a small, start-up label with little traffic, even on purchases of "Knight Rider" score CD's, Hitchcock Media Records, doesn't just have that cash around. And remember, it was four or five Volumes that were cancelled. So, over $5,000.00 x 5 = $25,000.00 (and more) just to get them to the fans, who aren't buying up the three Voluems already released fast enough.

Take what La La Land Records said on the subject:

Between artist royalties, mechanical royalties, afm fees, sag fees (for choir), transfer costs, mastering costs, producing costs as well as manufacturing costs a company's out of pocket fees go well into the 10's of thousands on some projects. Other projects, are not as high, but those ones usually are not as much in demand.

By the way, KFCreator, Film Score Monthly has closed shop. They have three or four more CD's coming out, and when those are out, about the end of this year (the next one due in July), they're going the way of Percepto Records.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, tharpdevenport

Thanks for the info. there, thardevenport. That's sad to hear about FSM, they truly put out some great stuff and the CD release of "Knight of the Phoenix" (and a few of other eps. that it included) is hands down the highest-quality release of a Knight Rider soundtrack I've ever seen to this day. I knew that the process of finding, remastering and releasing a soundtrack was costly but never quite realized how much money was involved. I'd be willing to bet that most people don't know that either and probably think that it's way easier for someone like Don Peake to release the scores than it actually is. That's all the more reason why I think Don should partner up with La La Land Records or another company (who does have the resources to contribute towards the project) and also appeal directly to the fans for monetary donations to get this all off the ground. Relying on funding from the releases that have come out so far seems a poor way to go as any money still coming in for people buying those soundtracks will probably only go to recouping the cost of those CDs and not towards anything new. I hope Don can secure funding somehow, it would be an awful shame for him to be sitting on a huge back catalog of great music that we the fans may never hear.

You're welcome. I'm not an expert, but I've icked a lot of this stuff up over the years.

And we should all hope for CD releases, not downloads -- sorry Mr. Peake, it's not good news.

FSM's release sounded better than Hitchcock MEdia Records' simply because FSM had the money and experienced people to master the tapes better, with tricks of their trade, and programs not so affordable to HMR. Peake's scores would sound just as good (unless on an inferior medium) had it been done by a popular label wit hthe money and know-how.

These guys snope around vaults -- when allowed in -- call people hunt, relentlessly hunt down tapes, bake tapes (that are stuck together over time, on certain mediums) in an oven to prepare for mastering; wait patiently for rights issues to be cleared up (indeed, on more than one occassion Intrada Records, for example, said they've had to wait eight years for a CD to finally get released), and put their love and time into a project.


Downloads aren't a great thing. For starters: many releases are limited to availability in the world; certain releases can only be purchased by U.S. customers, for example.
Often you can only pay with credit cards or alternative online sources like PayPal, which, contrary to popular opinion, not everybody uses (and even when they do, they use it for certain things, and not everyday purchases).
You have inferior download qualities, and even if they offer FLAC or some lossless alternative, the costs varies and downloads sometimes fail or miss tracks and then you got to deal with a conglomerate like iTunes -- good luck with that.
Right now, as I recall, the fees for downloaded music as per AFM re-use fees, is lower, meaning the musicians get paid less. But that is subject to change eventually. Once score CD's are downloaded more than pysically bought, the AFM will create special high fees or equivilant fees, for downloads, and then you'll be paying for the same or mroe for a download, often in inferior bitrate, and not get liner notes or anything signed. Never mind there's no re-sale value (the re-sale of downloads, as is being tried now, will fail hard. With a vegeance) and when in a pinch and needing some extra cash, you got budkis.

Oh, and if a hard drive full of music fails, you lose everything. If a CD goes bad or gets scratched to hell, you lose just that one CD.

And we certainly, at least people like myself, don't want to encourage online downloads of scores.


La La Land Records is the best bet. Contact information:
http://www.lalalandrecords.com/info.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


It also makes me wonder about these previous, incomplete scores, where some were missing some great cues. Is it not because of selecting tracks for the CD, but rather they were taking what they could find from Peake's tapes? Meaning they didn't even go into the vaults. My guess. I could be wrong of course.