Thank you for your orders from the Paul Scannell CD collection! The sale is going like gangbusters. We still have around 40% of it and here’s a list of our current inventory. The spreadsheet is easier to sort, and use www.fsmcds.com to purchase items.
Having done this a few times now, it’s always interesting selling a collection because the selections reflect the taste and life of the owner. I asked Paul if he would share a bit about himself, and here is what he wrote:
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I was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1947. I grew up with my two brothers, one older and one younger, and our baby sister. My father worked in the Civil Service while my mother looked after the house and family. We didn’t have TV or a record player because my parents didn’t want our education to suffer from such distractions. But at Christmas my mother would hire a TV and record player for the duration of the school holidays. My first contact with film music came about when my baby sister gave me a Christmas present of the EP version of Jerome Moross’ score for The Big Country.
Having graduated from the Dublin Hotel School in 1968, I found myself working in hotels in London from 1971-1975. One of my first acquisitions was a hi-fi system which I purchased from Selfridges, the well-known store on Oxford Street. When collecting the unit I realised that I didn’t have any records and I hurriedly purchased a couple of LPs including The Great Escape, The Big Country, The Magnificent Seven and that was how I became hooked on film music.
My work schedule afforded me the opportunity to indulge in soundtrack scavenging hunts around the streets of London on Saturdays, acquiring LPs from a variety of vinyl retailers (CDs had not made an inroad at that time). By this time, I had become aware of some of the specialist soundtrack dealers including 58 Dean St which was then under the management of the redoubtable Derek Breager, ably assisted by ‘the twins.’ I can’t remember their first names but wonder whether they shared a surname of Mascheter (or similar?). [Philip and Martin Masheter -lk] I think James Fitzpatrick (later of Tadlow) took charge at 58 Dean St after Derek died. James had previously worked with a record chain called ‘Harlequin’ which operated a few stores in London.
I was in London at the time of the great Woolworths sale when I picked up many soundtracks for £0.29 including scores by Addison, Bernstein, Goldsmith, Kaper, Rosenthal, and others. I recall finding a mono copy of The Sand Pebbles for £0.72! And a copy of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Twisted Nerve on the Polydor label, also for a mere £0.72! Those were the days!
I had also become aware of UK based mail order outfits such as Magpie, Movie Boulevard, amongst others. And then I discovered US based sellers such as Footlight, A1 Records Finders and several others.
And of course there was George Ginn, the legendary proprietor of ‘The Record Album’ in Brighton with whom I established an ongoing relationship and from whom I purchased many rarities through the 1970s and 1980s. George retired in 2018 after spending 56 years running his specialist soundtrack shop and sadly passed away in 2023 at the ripe old age of 96.
One of my proudest moments was when I persuaded my bank manager, circa 1974, to provide a loan of £100 for the express purpose of purchasing some second-hand soundtracks from a certain John Yap who had placed an advertisement in a film-related magazine. John of course went on to found ‘That’s Entertainment’ and produced many soundtracks during the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1975 I re-located to Galway on the west coast of Ireland when I joined the Hotel School faculty of the newly formed Galway Regional Technical College. I have resided in Galway ever since. My LP collection, which by then amounted to 500+ LPs, was ferried across the Irish Sea in my girlfriend’s small car.
My soundtrack purchasing was now confined to mail order purchases, mostly through George Ginn, and supplemented by visits to HMV, Tower Records, during occasional trips to Dublin or London.
[As a by-product of my work in the Hotel School I had developed an interest in Multimedia and became adept at creating PowerPoint presentations that often-featured music…not any old kind of music… selected tracks from my soundtrack collection! I regularly created PowerPoint tributes for special occasions, e.g. retiring colleagues or for Christmas Party nights at my local bridge club or for AGMs of the boating club to which I belonged. I really enjoyed those sessions, but the preparation was time-consuming! When PowerPoint became too restricted in terms of functionality, especially re: incorporating music, I turned to Video Editing. I have owned a licensed copy of every release of Video (Sony) Vegas from version 4 to the current version 22!]
By the mid-1980s I had made the switch to CDs. And the internet had arrived and with it came various Film-music/Soundtrack forums including FILMUS-L and Rec.Music.Movies. And then emerged Film Score Monthly with the energetic and enthusiastic Lukas Kendall at the helm. And the whole scene had exploded with a plethora of specialist soundtrack companies such as Intrada, Varèse Sarabande, SAE amongst others followed by the European outfits such as Quartet Records, Music Box Records and others.
I got married in 1981 and although my wife could not be described as a soundtrack aficionado she does enjoy live concerts of film music, especially John Williams, and we travel regularly to concerts in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London. Next one up is Williams / Zimmer on 22nd February at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. She has been more than tolerant over the years regarding my soundtrack collecting.
And I think it was around this time (early 1980s) that I lost it! I became a soundtrack collector junky… I spent hours on eBay amassing hundreds of items that I simply never had time to play. And I was also purchasing lots of new releases from the specialist companies.
I retired in 2006… and I bought a 37ft cruiser (“Arthur”) and for about 12 years I spent a lot of time on my boat, initially on the River Shannon, and then subsequently on the South-West coast of Ireland. In 2018 I completed a circumnavigation of Ireland with a close friend. It took us three months but that included several stops due to inclement weather. And film music accompanied us every step of the way! The boat was equipped with two CD players and a good speaker system. Arthur’s 2018 circumnavigation of Ireland—this is a link to 19 short videos of our circumnavigation. Each video has a duration of up to 10 minutes and the clips are peppered with film music!
Meanwhile, back home the CD collection had grown out of hand and was approaching 4000+ discs. There were discs everywhere in the house and when I ran out of shelving space in my office, I used large plastic storage boxes that each held approx. 130 CDs. Needless to say, I was not earning brownie points with the boss! When we moved into our new house in 1996 my cd collection didn’t even fill one wall in my office. Ten years later it spanned three walls with the vinyl collection filling the fourth wall! And by 2020 the overflow, housed in large storage boxes, was dispersed throughout several other rooms in the house! Not a good recipe for matrimonial harmony!
And then, in July 2023 I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable but manageable form of blood cancer. My medical team worked wonders and have restored me to a reasonable healthy state. But I began to wonder as to what would happen to my CD collection in the event of my passing on. My family has no interest in film music, or my collection, and I didn’t want to contemplate the possibility of them having to cope with disposing of it. And that brought me to FSMCDS! I made contact with Lukas, gave him my story and he agreed to take the entire collection. Packaging and shipping was a nightmare but eventually circa 4800 CDs duly arrived at Lukas’ front door in early January 2025.
The collection is quite extensive and features many rare items collected over time. By nature I was a follower of the classic composers of the Golden /Silver Ages but I also collected output from some of the newer generation of composers.
So now, my home is without my collection of CD soundtracks (I’m back in favour with the boss!) BUT fortunately the sound of film music still permeates the house thanks to the collection of vinyl that I built up in the early years!
I’m especially glad that my collection will be dispersed amongst the community of true film music fans that spans the world.
Finally, I hope that you enjoy any of the discs that you might acquire and spare me an occasional thought as you listen to your new purchase(s).
Paul J Scannell (PaulScan) My photography website.
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Many thanks to Paul for the essay and for his CDs! I’ve enjoyed working with him the past few months as we sorted out the logistics of getting a pallet of CDs across the Atlantic. It was more complicated than I realized but we pulled it off!