Album Notes

Finally after 22 years of waiting, fans of the movie “No Retreat No Surrender” and “Karate Tiger” can enjoy the original musical score by me via digital download that will include four versions of the main theme song “Hold on to the Vision”. For the movie score collector, I have included the complete music underscore in the three bonus tracks! There is about 30 minutes of original music content on those tracks. Unfortunately for reasons that are not entirely clear to me to this day, the version of “No Retreat No Surrender” that was released in the USA did not include my original score. This music however, does exist in the versions found in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia etc.. Fans have been asking for this music for many years and the difficulty of getting permission from the original film company “Seasonal Films” out of Hong Kong, has been challenging. Fortunately, we now have a co-venture to make this possible.
I want to express my great appreciation to Kevin Chalfant for singing his heart out on the theme as the song would not be the same without his great vocal. A little known fact about this magical theme song is that I hired in 1985 a yet to be discovered guitar player named Joe Satriani (yes, the now internationally known guitar God) who came over to the studio and laced the amazing guitar solo that has become one of the signature elements of the tune, and exemplifies the early sound of the legendary Satriani. Because I had only a short three weeks to complete 93 cues including 4 vocal songs and the theme song, I didn’t have time to get some of the music exactly how I wanted it, so I’ve taken this opportunity to re-perform and re-mix the theme song as well as a few other selected tracks. This wasn’t easy because when I dug out the old master 2-inch analog tapes, they were shedding (meaning they were disintegrating) so badly, they didn’t play at all. After much effort, I then restored these tapes and successfully transferred the original tracks to the digital domain. For the theme song, I used the original vocal track and the Satriani guitar track but replayed many of the keyboard tracks and of course, remixed it. Also, at the time of composing the score, the producers asked me to deliver all of the tracks in “mono”, which is what is embedded in the movie now. But luckily at that time I mixed the theme and other selected cuts in stereo and archived them so I’m including the “original version” of the theme but in stereo. I’m also including a remix that was done by my engineer and friend Ray Pyle in 1987, at the infamous Lion Share recording studios which was home to many hit records including “We are the World” etc. Also, I made a special instrumental/karaoke mix as well for those who might enjoy singing along. The bonus tracks are selected tracks and cues from the original mono score that I re-mastered and stereo-ized to the best of my abilities.
This has been a very long and arduous journey in getting these songs to a place where everyone can finally hear them the way in which they are supposed to be heard. I hope you all enjoy the music. For more information about the music and myself please visit www.frankharrismusic.com