I was the right age for the first Star Wars film (or 'part four for anyone under
30). I was nine years old when it came out with a hardcore love for all things
horror and sci-fi that had been hardwired by late night weekend double bills of
Universal horrors, 50's sci-fi movies midweek week, horror comics, fantasy
magazines and Dennis Gifford books. All these and more flashed my hard drive
from when I was old enough to read, and with the Star Wars hype machine grinding
it's way through 1977 like the Iron Mole that took Peter Cushing and Doug
McClure to the earth's core the year before (see? I loved my sci-fi), it was
kind of inevitable I'd be caught up in its wake.
Posters, models, figurines,
plastic lightsabres, comics, games, bubblegum cards, stickers and any number of
other tie-in products with a 'Star Wars' logo slapped on it - I think I had the
lot. Everything but the film itself in fact; what's generally forgotten is that
even though it came out in America over the summer of 1977, UK fans had to wait
until after Christmas to see it, and then it was a London only release. The rest
of us hicks in the sticks had to wait until the following year for our
provincial cinemas to screen it, and six months is a very long time when you're
nine years old. But wait we had to - in 1977 there was no internet, no illegal
downloads, no blu ray, no DVD and no videos; it was the cinema or nothing, and
if you missed it there for whatever reason, well that was just tough. A long
time ago in a world far, far away indeed.
So until then us fans had to
just make do in the meantime with all that merchandise and our imaginations. And
what better way to fire those imaginations while playing with all that stuff
than by humming John Williams' now iconic main theme over the top of our games?
This was available too on the official soundtrack which came as a double album
and was not cheap. And so no doubt buoyed by those ubiquitous seventies
compilations that promised any number of popular chart hits (as performed by
faceless session players) for half the price of a normal album, certain clued up
individuals with an eye for a quick buck cashed in on the craze with releases of
their own for fans on a budget Like this one, hotter out of the traps in 1977
than the film (or even that official soundtrack) itself.
With 'Rogue One'
still doing good business as I type, what immediately springs to mind when
holding this is the question 'how the hell did they get away with it'? If an
entrepreneur tried to put out something similar as a cash in on 'Rogue One' now
then Lucasfilm and/or Disney would shut that shit down faster than you could say
'copyright infringement'. I don't know if squaring off the Star Wars logo on the
cover was enough to put the lawyers off the scent in 1977 (though I doubt it
was), but I'm guessing the team behind this probably felt that small concession
to intellectual property pushed their luck as far as they dared, and from the
garish pizza planet cover in to the non-specific close up of an eye and some
bared teeth on the back cover, there's no other reference to the source material
it plagiarises at all apart from the track titles.
"This lethal weapon is
said to affect the cerebral system, or to put it in earthly jargon, to blow your
mind. You will embark on a spectacular, music filled journey into space, to a
galaxy millions of light years from your own planet, Earth. Your senses will be
stretched to the outermost realms of the imagination as the music pounds through
your brains. You will become totally involved in the Star Wars and you will be
powerless to stop it" - so runs the carefully non George Lucas world referencing
back cover blurb and for sheer bloody cheek this deserves full marks. 'Star
Wars Main Theme', 'Ben's Death', 'Princess Leia's Theme', 'Cantina Band', 'Tie
Fighter Attack' - all titles are exactly replicated from the official release
and cherry picked to boil them down to a single disc, though in place of John
Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra we have Bruce Baxter conducting The
Sonic All Stars.
That sounds futuristic enough on paper, but in
actuality the 'All Stars' sound remarkably like one man in a garden shed trying
to make the present sound like the future by squeezing every last drop out of
technology out of a Botempi home organ. As a case in point, where the main theme
should be heroic and sweeping, an empire defeating blast of pomp and grandeur,
Bruce's take is as thin and tinny as C3PO's leg. Whining and droning in equal
measure like an angry wasp, this version could have been lifted straight off the
soundtrack of an 8 bit Nintendo Entertainment System game, or else a universe
where the Millennium Falcon has all the power of a Hillman Imp. There's nothing
heroic sounding about any of it really and it sets the tone of the whole album
to come.
Throughout, the main motifs and riffs of William's original
score are recognisable, but they're prone to breaking down without warning into
an empty whoosh of galactic winds and squawky 'laser gun' effects whilst Baxter
takes time out to input a new 'Disco Beat #3' setting as a click track to play
the next section over. The end product has the feel of a one man band, one take
live recording with very little overdubs or post production work. Cheap and
cheerful, if you will, with its only aim being to get something 'Star Wars' onto
the market pronto to hoover up some of that cash that was going begging.
There's no doubt there's something quite charming about the whole ramshackle
affair, and there's a certain novelty value in harking back to a time when you
could get away with something like this. But like most novelties, it wears thin
fairly quickly and this isn't something that's going to bear too many repeated
listens. Not by me anyway.
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