Kilroy Was Here by Styx

Another one in the "stuff it took me nearly 30 years to get around to" category.  Everyone knows "Mr. Roboto," and it's fairly common knowledge that song was part of a larger story, Styx's concept album Kilroy Was Here.  "Mr. Roboto" came out at a time where I was a real stick-in-the-mud.  I couldn't relate to popular music, although I heard plenty of it because everyone around me (ie, my sister and my girlfriend) was constantly playing it.  During that time "Mr. Roboto" was something of a haven for me, a song I could get into because it was obviously about a guy impersonating a robot so he could escape from something.  Now that was cool.  I would have bought the entire album to try and get the rest of the story at the time, but I was spending all my money on Star Wars figures.  But every now and then I'd look at the album and think, I should really check into that.

Fast forward about ten years.  My musical tastes have broadened by about 270 degrees, and I've come to appreciate all those songs from the 80s that I found such an annoyance at the time.  But I still haven't checked out Kilroy Was Here.  My money is now going to every album and remix I can find from bands such as Genesis, Information Society, Pet Shop Boys, and Adamski.  Oh, and Playmates' Star Trek action figure line.  My then-girlfriend has a copy of the album, so she makes me a copy, but it's already several generations down and the copy I get is on a pretty poor quality tape, so although I give the album a try I just can't get into it.  Sometimes reproduction quality does mater.

Jump ahead about another twenty years, to today.  eMusic has the album, I've got the credits, and all the local radio stations are playing "Mr. Roboto" like it just came out last month, so the album's on my mind again.  Kilroy's time has come.

The "story" isn't very linear; I gather that Kilroy is something of a political prisoner, in a world where morality has run wild.  For the real story I had to do some research online.  (Maybe if I had bought the CD or the record album, it would have had liner notes that would have helped?)  Besides "Mr. Roboto," the tracks "Cold War," "High Time," and "Heavy Metal Poisoning" are probably the strongest parts of the story.  Others seem to fit in almost tangentially, such as "Just Get Through This Night," where it seems our hero is pondering the other paths his life might have taken.  And then there's "Don't Let It End," which doesn't really feel like it has anything to do with the rest of the album, but is tied in very nicely in the closing number "Don't Let It End (Reprise)," where it sounds like Kilroy has joined forces with Jonathan Chance to make a stand and bring rock & roll back to the people.  It's more of a concept album than a story album, talking about the oppressive future regime for the length of the album and then finally doing something about it in the last track.  While it may not work as well as Electric Light Orchestra's Time album, as a concept album it works just fine for me.

I get the impression that you either love or hate this album, even among Styx fans.  Now I'm a big fan of synth music (see above mentioned synth bands) and I especially love it when a rock band can get a good balance of guitars and keyboards. That's something this album excels at, so musically it just hit all the right notes for me.  The synths really grabbed me, especially in "Cold War."  I always felt that when a band was all guitars it cheapened the guitar sound; when you have a good keyboard getting a good jam going and then a guitar blares in, it really makes the guitar stand out, and this album is a great example of that.  And tracks like "High Time" really have a theatrical quality to them, which helps sell the concept as well.

And my friend Frank once told me all he had to do was put spaceships in an album and I'd eat it up.  I guess the same pretty much goes for robots.  I expect to be listening to this album a lot this year.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Ron Jones Project

Wow!  Apparently, I'm not alone in feeling that some of Next Gen's best musical scores came from Ron Jones.  As I mentioned in my TNG review last Monday, I discovered Vol. 6 of Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Ron Jones Project when looking up links for "The Icarus Factor" on Amazon.  The fact that it was up to six volumes made me curious about what exactly it was and how many more volumes were out there.  Well, apparently it's only every single music score he made for Star Trek!

The series runs for twelve volumes, covering all the music from Jones's 42 episodes during the shows first four seasons.

And the best part?  You can cherry-pick 'em.  Amazon, iTunes and eMusic all offer each track on all 12 albums as individual downloads. I started out building my own "best of" collection, but I'm discovering the more I hear the more tracks I want to get.  I may wind up with all 12 volumes before I'm done after all.

And I know I'm working against myself here, but I've got to recommend eMusic as the way to go.  eMusic is a monthly subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee and get a certain amount of downloads per month.  They started out doing more independent music, but have gone much more mainstream over the last few years.  The down side (if you're a more casual music listener) is that you are making a monthly commitment; the upside is that it is significantly cheaper.  All the tracks I bought through eMusic cost me $0.49 each as opposed to $0.99 at the other sites; the albums cost $5.99 as opposed to $8.99.  Yeah, yeah, I get a cut from Amazon if you click through using my links and I get nothing from eMusic, but I have to point out the best option when I see it.  I'll never get this monetizing thing right...

So, here's all the links to all the albums.  As I said, in addition to eMusic and Amazon, they're also available on iTunes.  Enjoy!

The Music of DC Comics: 75th Anniversary Collection

This is a great concept.  For DC Comics 75th Anniversary, they've gathered together a collection of music from many of the movies and television shows starring the heroes of the DC Universe.

The album starts off with 7 tracks from various versions of Superman and Superboy, followed by 7 tracks of Batman music, 5 different themes from the Justice League (including the Super Friends), and then more solo themes for the individual heroes such as Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Plastic Man and others.

Now, I figured there would be a lot of notable exceptions.  For example, the Smallville theme song "Save Me" by Remy Zero isn't there, but the end credits theme from seasons 8-10 is, and it's a much more rare piece of music, so that works for me.  And presumably it costs them less than "Save Me" would have.  But I wouldn't have expected staples like the classic TV theme for "Adventures of Superman" to be missing.

Also, very few of these are clean versions.  Now I realize there's probably no surviving isolated audio track from the 1960's Filmation cartoons to pull from, but I would have thought we could have gotten a version of "Lois & Clark" without the sound effects left in.  Often the end theme for the TV series was the same as the opening theme but without the voice overs, so in a lot of cases using those would have made a much better choice.  (Especially with "Legends of the Super Heroes."  I loved that theme music as a kid, and here it's pretty much drowned out here by the voice over and sound effects.)  But these are all pulled from the openings, and after eight or nine tracks in a row of a dramatic voice over, it starts to sound pretty monotonous.

But this collection does have quite a few gems on here; the aforementioned "Smallville Season 8," which is still being used for the end titles and which I never would have been able to appreciate if I hadn't started watching Smillville online; "Green Lantern: First Flight," which I've already gone on record as having really liked, so it's now wonderful to own it; the end titles to the Wonder Woman animated movie; and of course, the classics such as John Williams' "Superman" movie theme, and the Wonder Woman TV theme. 

The Batman TV theme is on here, but it's the album version instead of the TV version, which means its missing the trumpet blasts that were used in the opening "Sock! Pow! Zok!" sequence.  Now that may seem like I'm contradicting myself, but in this case those were musical notes and, to me, an important part of the song.  The Batmobile sound effect at the end of the opening, by contrast, is not.  So they get points for including what they felt was the best version of the song, even though I'm personally disappointed that version never included those notes.

And really, to be fair, I'm sure they felt that by picking all the openings, they were picking the versions everyone wanted to hear; as I've said before, no one plans to put out a disappointing product.  I just think if this was intended to be about The Music of DC Comics, they should have forgone the dialogue and tried for as many fully instrumental versions as they could.

So all in all I can't recommend it as an album, but it is a  good source if you want to cherry pick your favorites from Amazon, eMusic or iTunes.

Tron: Legacy Original Soundtrack - Daft Punk

Despite being heavily into synth music, I've never been a huge Daft Punk fan.  I guess because I felt their music leaned towards trance, and I'm not a big fan of trance-- I'm a big fan of melodies with wild sounds.  Hence my favorite artists have more been along the lines of Information Society, Pet Shop Boys, Adamski, that kind of thing.

But I've always had respect for Daft Punk.  I mean, you've got to respect any band that hires Leiji Matsumoto to do an entire series of music videos!  Not to mention I always enjoyed their music when I saw their videos, starting with "Around the World" back in the 90's.

So when I heard they were doing the music for the new Tron, I was familiar enough with their sound to be very pleased.  This was a move on a par with getting Wendy Carlos for the original, and I could see their trance sound working great with the Tron universe.

And now that the movie and soundtrack have been out for nearly two months and I've gotten to spend a good amount of time with both, I can honestly say that it looks like having not been a Daft Punk fan has actually worked in my favor.  I went into the movie with few expectations of what the music score would sound like beyond having synthesizers.  What I got is the kind of music I love best: a blend of different styles (in this case, synth and orchestral) and recurring themes.  The opening music ("The Grid") grabbed me right out of the gate, I absolutely loved "End of Line" (and in fact all the music from the End of Line Club), and the end titles just blew me away.

After seeing the film a second time, I knew I had to buy this soundtrack.  So I did, and for the next few weeks, I was hearing it in my head no matter what I did.  In the morning when I was moving slow and trying to start my day I'd hear "Outlands" or "Armory" in my mind.  When I was rushing to get something done, I'd hear "Fall."  And when I was excited, well, then I'd really be jamming, so it would be the "End Titles."

I was also pleasantly surprised to hear Jeff Bridges' opening dialogue left in on "The Grid." His son's line, "You got in," and his reply, "That's right, man," are left out; while they're perfect for the movie, leaving them out so it goes "Until one day... I got in" gives it a better flow as a piece of music.  It's the only vocal sample on the entire album, and it works great.

So I was playing this album a lot, and the more I played it, the more I had this itch to see the movie yet again.  Now, I can't tell you the last time I saw a movie in the theaters three times, but I knew I couldn't wait for DVD.  Every piece of music conjured up the stunning images of the film in my head, and it was an itch I had to scratch.  I had to at least see this movie one more time, now knowing the music, so I could really let myself fall into both the visual and audio spectacle of it joined together.

I can't remember the last time that's happened to me.  The last time that I've loved a soundtrack so much that I don't just grab the one or two tracks off of it for a playlist, but really just appreciated it as a complete musical work and can't stop listening to it.  The last time I've loved a soundtrack so much that I've actually gone to see the movie again just to pay attention to how the music flows with the visuals.  That is a remarkable achievement, and Daft Punk has created a remarkable work of art with this album.

Fire Bomber - "Re.FIRE!!"

Well, this shows how far out of the anime scene I've become... this album came out last year, and I didn't even know about it! Pretty bad for a guy who named his kid after one of the characters in it.

Re.FIRE!! was put out to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Macross 7. Story wise, it's a reunion album for the band-- apparently Basara never returned to City 7 after Macross Dynamite 7, so Fire Bomber was no more. But for this reunion album, Basara worked with the old gang virtually to create a new reunion album: hence, Re.FIRE!!, featuring two remakes of classic songs, and -- be still my heart-- ten all-new Fire Bomber songs!

In the real world, I was a little worried. When Macross 7 ended, the band who did Fire Bomber's music, Humming Bird, went on to do theme songs for other anime shows and a bunch of albums of their own. I eagerly went after these albums, but I usually wound up disappointed. It turns out Fire Bomber has two very important elements that Humming Bird doesn't have: keyboards and Chie Kajiura. As much as I love Yoshiki Fukuyama's sound (and he ain't hard on the eyes, either), Humming Bird was definitely not Fire Bomber.

The thing is, the last few Fire Bomber projects started sounding more like Humming Bird than Fire Bomber. Chie Kajiura's voice on Dynamite Fire!! are more backup vocals than duets, for example. (But seeing as how Mylene and Basara spend most of that story apart, it makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose.)

So while I was definitely excited about Re.Fire!!, I also approached it with a little trepidation. After all, I'm not the same guy I was 15 years ago. I guess that's why they say you can't go home again.

The first few songs, "Bullet Soul," "Burning Fire" and "Daimon," seemed to bear that out. Very Basara and guitar heavy with Mylene providing only back-up vocals on the first two tracks. Which is okay in and of itself, as long as it's only part of the album and not the whole thing. But it's kind of a shame because "Daimon" sounds like just the kind of song that Mylene would normally get.

Up next is "Love It -AD 2060-," Mylene's anniversary remake of one of the original Fire Bomber songs. On the one hand, it's an odd choice, since it was never actually used in the anime. On the other hand, it was definitely my all-time favorite Mylene song and possibly even my all-time favorite Fire Bomber song, so I just have to assume someone else liked it enough that they felt it deserved the spotlight too. While the remake is nice, the strings in the original version are completely abandoned here, and so the song loses something very special. I can understand the changes-- I've always said, if you're going to remake a song, then don't just copy it, remake it-- but the melody of the strings should have at least been kept, even if it wasn't done with strings this time. But that's just me-- again, I hold the original so high that I doubt anything would have come close for me.

"Big Bang" has some nice horns in it towards the end. Between that and "Love It -AD 2060-" I was definitely starting to warm up to this album.

The turning point came in the next track, "Ready GO," Mylene's first full-vocal original on the album. It totally swept me away. Bouncy melodies, Chie's voice, airy backgrounds-- this is what Fire Bomber's been missing. This is probably my favorite track on the album.

By this point what I really wanted was a good old fashioned Basara/Mylene duet. And the next track, "Song of Eternity," totally delivered. Both voices featured prominently and playing off each other. It's more of a ballad than their other big duets, but the few English lyrics give it that same feel of love & music having the power to change the universe. Again, absolutely awesome.

By now I'm in the right mood, my fears have been allayed, and I thoroughly enjoy the remaining tracks. "Stardust Highway" is a fun fast-paced Basara song, "Plastics" another Mylene song. "Totsugeki Love Heart -AD 2060-" is the second remake, and much more successful for me than "Love It -AD 2060-" was. "Magic Rhapsody" is a hard-rocking duet in the vein of "Holy Lonely Night." And the album closes out with a Basara ballad, "Waiting for You." And it's easy to picture Basara walking away, his guitar slung across his back, still wandering the galaxy and singing for anyone who will listen.

Giving the album a second listen and knowing what to expect, I found myself getting into the first three tracks a lot more as well. All in all, Re.Fire!! is a wonderful album, a welcome return of the Fire Bomber sound, and a much better "final album" for the band than Dynamite Fire!! or ZZNKQB / Zola - Radio Fire!! Thanks, guys!!

Lonely Soldier Boy II: An Acoustic Album - by Michael Bradley

Being a Robotech fan, I was always jealous of the Japanese anime music industry. If you had a hot show, you got soundtracks, remake albums, image albums, live albums, drama albums... being a Macross 7 fan, I loved that Fire Bomber released Live Fire!! and Acoustic Fire!! and always wished that my favorite anime singer of all time, Yellow Dancer, would get the same treatment.

Well, thank the stars for Michael Bradley, the singing voice of Yellow Dancer. When he discovered that he had a following because of his work on Robotech-- especially among soldiers and their families for the song "Lonely Soldier Boy" -- he started playing the songs at conventions and set to work on a remake album, redoing the Yellow Dancer songs in a more modern-day style. He wanted to put Yellow Dancer on the cover and have it be an official Robotech album, but Harmony Gold's legal department wanted such a huge cut of the album sales that it would have been unprofitable for him. As a result, the album was released simply as Lonely Soldier Boy. It came out early this year, and has been one of my favorite albums of 2008.

When Michael Bradley then announced he was going to follow it up with an all-acoustic album, I was all smiles. At long last, Yellow Dancer was getting the treatment I always thought he deserved. (Err, she deserved. S/he. ...Never mind.)

What I didn't expect was Lonely Soldier Boy II: An Acoustic Album to be what is possibly the best Robotech music album, ever. These arrangements are just breathtaking. In addition to the five songs he did as Yellow Dancer, Michael Bradley has also included acoustic versions of the other songs he worked on for Robotech and Robotech: The Movie. Many of these tracks just leave me speechless. I got that little tingle down my spine that I used to get when I was 16 and these songs were all new.

You can hear samples from both albums (and of course order your own copies) at michaelbradleymusic.com.