Project Information

I'm Rob Mclaine, and I created this website to catalogue the research done as part of my Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack project, which itself was an offshoot of an earlier project; the Dawn Of The Dead - The Ultimate Cut.

On the 12th of April 2009, I made contact with someone who was selling large collection of various old library LPs. He had already recognised & listed selected Dawn cues on a number of the LPs he was selling, that weren't on any of the released CDs I had; the Trunk 2004 unreleased library tracks CD, the bootleg 2 CD 'Complete' soundtrack & the Goblin Zombi score. I decided it would be worthwhile to work with him and others, to make a complete list of every single cue used in all three versions of Dawn Of The Dead.

I decided to take a more technical approach than just trying to find random tracks I liked. I took the Anchor Bay ultimate edition four disc DVD box set, and copied the audio track from each of the three films to my hard drive. I then used an audio multisequencing program to edit every single piece of music used, into it's own individual sample file. Then I gave each track it's own listing in an index text file. Approaching the project from this angle meant that nothing could be missed, if I still had unidentified tracks left at the end, then I knew hadn't identified everything, and I had a sample of exactly what I was.

While doing this I, was also working the project from the opposite end; making various other online contacts to try and get copies of all the tracks & albums I knew I might need.

It was only once I had started, that I found that someone else had already done much the same sort of thing. Chris Stavrakis posted a cue sheet to his website LivingDead.com (now defunct) around March of 2001, giving a supposedly complete list of all 58 cues used in Dawn.

You can view the first version of the LivingDead.com cue sheet here

A few months after this first cue sheet was posted around October of 2001, the Chris was contacted by Library LP collector & Dawn fan; John Toman. With his help, some entries on the list were removed, some added & some corrected.

You can view the second/revised version of the LivingDead.com cue sheet here

Having now identified most of the tracks used, I now know that there were some errors in those listings. There were some little mistakes in naming & reference numbers, Some tracks were mistakenly listed, which turned out not to have been used, and others notable tracks were left off the list altogether. That said, the cue sheet did put me far ahead of where I would have been, and due credit goes to the wemaster; Chris Stavrakis, Dawn fan Patrick Doody, Music Supervisor Llyswen Vaughan and the assistance of DeWolfe's New York manager Mitchel Greenspan who collectively assembled it.

In searching though the De Wolfe, Rouge & Hudson LP back catalogue, and to make my life easier, I produced a corrected version of the above second list. This fills in the unknown/missing details & makes some corrections to minor listing mistakes, but essentially the list of named (correctly & incorrectly) tracks is identical.

Here is a corrected version of that second old cue sheet

I did recognize one of the old cue sheet's tracks; 'Barry Stroller - Speed' as actually having been used in the Romero 1973 Dawn pre-cursor; The Crazies, although I haven't taken this any further, but might in the future as I know The Crazies also uses many similar library cues.

Actually my cue list puts the number of library cues used across the three films (identified & unidentified) at nearer 86 (and this does not include any of the 17 released Goblin tracks)

Credits for this project also go to Boogiejuice69 (Darren Stuart), John Toman, Allen Lighthiser, and of course Chris Stavrakis. Without their input (and large collection of library LPs) this project would not have been possible




Download My Project Files

I have posted my working project files, including the MP3 sample clips taken from the Anchor bay DVD box set on a filehosting website for anyone who wants to download them.

You can download them here

Here there are 3 ZIP files. Each one has all the sample tracks as MP3 files, along with a track listing text file, and two winamp playlists; one plays all the tracks, one just plays the unidentified tracks. All three ZIP's are dated, so you can see the last time any of them were updated.





FAQ

Can I get/download/buy these library cues from you?
No. Asides from the issue of piracy being right or wrong, De Wolfe frown very much on free sound samples on blogs and websites, and their lawyers are usually quick off the mark with anything like that. Besides, before now the issue wasn't really the availablity of the library cues, it's knowing exactly which of the thousands of De Wolfe tracks were actually used.

Alongside this research project, I did assemble a proper CD soundtrack, which you can read up on here; Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack. I did try hawking this round and never got so much as a bit of official interest. I've since discovered that the way library tracks work, a company can only release a whole cue, it can't be edited down, nor can it be edited/mixed in with other cues. It has to play in full & un-tampered or they can't get the rights. That means the score I created is basically unrealisable, as some of the cues might only feature for a few seconds in the film. That's probably why the recent Trunk Records score left so much material out, because so many tracks were made up of multiple cues and are unrecognisable when played in full in isolation, so they included only the ones which could play in full and still for the most part be recognised.


Where can I buy the library albums you list / are they available on CD?
None of the full albums I list, have been given a formal CD release to my knowledge. They're are only available as LP/records. A couple of individual tracks can be found on commercially released CD's though (see next question).

You can usually find the LP albums either on Ebay (or other second hand auction/purchase websites) or failing that, try google. There are a number of websites selling various library albums. Be aware that as some of the albums are quite rare, they can be fairly expensive!

It was only fairly recently that the original albums became available to the wider public. Up until about 5 years ago they were still being removed and banned by Ebay. Some of the library companies (fortunately not De Wofle) objected to just anyone being able to buy their material as it was never sold commercially. I think the massive interest forced them to change their stance.


Where can I buy the current release CD's you list?
This is a list of CD's covering all the commercially available cues I know of, although all these albums put together only cover about 25% of the cues on my master cue list. The rest is unavailable unless you buy the original LP albums.






Please used this email address if you want to contact me.