Roy Budd’s jazz-based brand of easy listening livened up numerous under-achieving British films of the 1970s. Not that Get Carter can be so dismissed: its gritty realism and graphic violence are as forceful now as they were 28 years ago, and Budd’s score does not disappoint. The opening theme, with its electronically-filtered harpsichord, vividly evokes the industrial decay of the Tyneside of the period, while the Bachian toccata music of track 19 sets the film’s closing sequence at an effective remove. The musical numbers are skilfully interspersed with relevant dialogue to create an hour-long overview, with the additional tracks, notably the pop psychedelia of ‘Hallucinations’, a welcome bonus. While in no way a substitute for the complete film, the music certainly stands up out of context.
Whether most of Budd’s other scores deserve the same treatment remains to be seen, but the ‘Rebirth of the Budd’ compilation might well suffice for the general collector. Enthusiasts of test-card music and the golden age of ITC series will be well pleased. The booklet-notes mention Budd’s last score, written for the re-release of the 1925 Lon Chaney Phantom of The Opera, all but complete at his death. If tapes exist, it seems a pity not to make his ‘magnum opus’ available at a time when interest is running high. '