Spike: 'Ere, wipe your feet when you enter a person's home! Giles: Yes, careless of me. Tracking mud all over your mud. Spike: I'll admit ... bit of a fixer-upper. Needs a woman's touch. Care to have a crack at it?

© Don Macnaughtan 2004

This bibliography covers some of the huge volume of print and electronic media that have been produced since 1997 on "Buffy" and "Angel." It includes books, articles, essays, primary materials such as scripts and dvds, websites, fiction, games, and many other manifestations of the Buffyverse canon.

Music from Buffy and Angel

BtVS Episode Music Database.
Dusk 'til Dawn Buffy Music Guide.
Buffy Sing-a-Longs
Robert Duncan's Select Cues from Season 7.

CDs

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Movie Soundtrack. (1992) Sony. Audio CD.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Album. (1999) TvT. Audio CD.

"Sarah Michelle Gellar may be saving the world from vampires but her TV show is also helping a few worthy bands get some much needed exposure. Dayton, Ohio's ridiculously prolific Guided by Voices lead things off with the playful "Teenage FBI," a strong distillation of the band's knack for the irrepressible hook. The all-femme Hepburn protest in true "Maggie's Farm" fashion (as in "I ain't gonna work on...") for the quickstepping, bubble-gum punk-pop of "I Quit." Bif Naked's arena anthem "Lucky" is perfect for staring at candles. Garbage are in suitably psychedelic glam shades for "Temptation Waits." Rasputina, the gothic cello ensemble, include the appropriate "Transylvania Concubine." The only misstep is from virtual old-timers the Sundays, who deliver a lazy-day version of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses." But this is made up for with the inclusion of Nerf Herder's "Buffy" theme song and Christophe Beck's instrumental theme music, which round out this all-inclusive collection." --Rob O'Connor
Once More, with Feeling. (2002) Rounder. Audio CD.

""Once More With Feeling" takes place during the early part of the sixth season, which were arguably the darkest days of the series. The episode itself is a pivotal point in the lives of the Scoobies. After her spectacular act of self-sacrifice at the end of season 5, Buffy has been magically resurrected by her friends, who believe they're rescuing her from the torments of a hell dimension. Unfortunately it wasn't Hell they rescued her from - it was Heaven. To spare their feelings, Buffy hasn't told them this. She doesn't really want to be alive, and Spike is the only one who knows. Buffy's death wish attracts her to him and the darkness he represents. Spike is struggling with his own problems, namely his unrequited love for Buffy and his attempts to be good for her sake. Meanwhile, Anya and Xander are about to be married, but having doubts. Giles is wrestling with the necessity of forcing to Buffy stand on her own two feet by leaving Sunnydale and his desire to stay and protect her. Dawn feels ignored and Willow and Tara are struggling with Willow's growing addiction to magic. It's at this point Dawn accidentally summons, Slick, a song-and dance man from Hell. The residents of Sunnydale are suddenly beset with an epidemic compulsion to sing, dance, and reveal their their best-guarded secret fears. Nobody escapes unscathed from the revelations, and the rest of the season is spent dealing with the consequences.

So how does the actual soundtrack stand up? Pretty good, all things considered. There's very little in it that doesn't advance the storyline in some way. Like any musical comedy, the songs range from musical numbers with no life outside of the immediate context to truly moving stand-alone pieces. "Under Your Spell," Tara's song to Willow, is a gem of a love song. "I'll Never Tell," Anya and Xander's dance number, is a witty exposition of the fears typical of the about-to-be married. "Standing [in the way]" could be any parent's song about letting their child go. Buffy's "Walk Through the Fire" and "Something to Sing About." are as good as any musical treatments of depression that I've ever heard. Even singing, the characters remain themselves--"I've Got a Theory/Bunnies", for example, parodies the standard Scoobie approach to demon-hunting. Ironically, the some of the most insightful lyrics are given to Spike. His solo "Rest in Peace" and "Something to Sing About" duet with Buffy, are powerful statements of the characters' feelings which will reverberate through the rest of the series."
Radio Sunnydale [US version]. (2003) Virgin. Audio CD.

"This soundtrack is great when viewed in line with the previous releases. Many of the other reviewers have complained that it focuses only on the latter seasons of BtVS, but then, it didn't need to include the earlier seasons because that's what the 1999 soundtrack album does. Radio Sunnydale wasn't intended to be a replacement for that album, but instead, a continuation.

And it does make up for one stark absence from the first album with it's inclusion of "Ballad for Dead Friends" by Dashboard Prophets, which was the song playing at the Bronze as Darla, Luke and Jesse took over the club to begin The Harvest in the second half of the BtVS premiere episode. Why that song was never included in the first release, we'll never know, but it's absence has been rectified by it's inclusion here.

Other great songs on this release include the BtVS theme as interpreted by The Breeders (the actual theme, as performed by Nerf Herder, appears on the 1999 release), as well as Sarah MacLaughlin's "Prayer of St. Francis" and Aimee Mann's "Pavlov's Bell". And like the 1999 album's inclusion of the Buffy-Angel love theme as a single piece of composed score music, this album contains only one piece of score, but it's a powerful one -- "Final Fight", from the final episode, "Chosen", as Buffy, Faith, Spike and the Potentials enter the Hellmouth to battle the First Evil and the Turok-Han once and for all. By the way, if what you really like is the score music and not the rock songs, check out "Once More With Feeling"; not only does it include every song from the famous musical episode, but several bonus pieces of music from previous scores, including "Hush" and "The Gift".

The only true absence from this album, in my mind, would be the nearly-acoustic version of "Goodbye to You" that Michelle Branch performed at the Bronze at the end of "Tabula Rasa". There's a fully studio-mastered version of the song on Michelle's album "The Spirit Room" as well as a fully acoustic version on her self-released "Broken Bracelet" (that's very rare), but nowhere is the "Tabula Rasa" version available. For whatever reason, press releases about this album stated that it would indeed be included, but it was not."
Radio Sunnydale [UK version]. (2003) Virgin UK. Audio CD.
Angel - Live Fast, Die Never: Music from the Television Series. Rob Kral (2004) Virgin UK. Audio CD.

Full review
"After a long wait, fans of the Angel television series finally get a soundtrack featuring the music from all five seasons of the show. Unlike the various Buffy soundtracks, the Angel soundtrack focuses more on the score music composed by Robert J. Kral. The soundtrack sounds surprisingly 'big' for a television series. The themes and motifs are very grand and theatrical. The soundtrack is given an epic feel with its strong brass and strings led cues and its use of choral voices, which is rather fitting for a series which dealt with the fight against evil and preventing the frequent comings of the apocalypse. Opening the soundtrack is 'The Sanctuary Extended Remix' of the main theme performed by Darling Violetta. Rather than just looping the original theme to make it last longer, the main theme has instead had its various segments extended. Together with an added rock beat and vocals, the main theme is successfully extended to over three minutes. The added vocals may be a little distracting at first to those familiar with the original version, but overall the remix is still in keeping with the original style of the theme."
Music for Elevators. Anthony Stewart Head (2002) Biabd/Beautiful Is. Audio CD.
The Buffy EP. Velvet Chain (1999) Freak/Extreme. Audio CD.

since 1 August 2007