Space 1999
This my friends, is a cautionary tale for you all.
First some history. There are 2 types of people in the world Star Trek fans, and Star Wars fans. Which am I? Trick question! I am Space 1999!
In 1975, this show of flared bell bottom pants and campy acting captured my imagination and I was hooked. It felt like a great alternative to the Star Trek obsessed kids I went to school with. I didn’t know any of the actors and the entire premise of the show was ridiculous. An explosion on the moon sends it out of orbit and into space away from Earth. Into a galaxy far far… wait, I mean into the final frontier… no, that’s not it. Anyway, this was the alternative space show on after school and I dug it, big time.
The sequences that were supposed to be in space were filmed in slow motion but it was apparent that it was filmed at regular speed, but slowed down to LOOK like it was reduced gravity. This was no CGI masterpiece. It was a concept show.
It is possible I may have ordered the complete 17 DVD series from China at some point in my life. I was a fan.
Which brings me back to the album at hand.
I was at a soccer tournament with my son and had scoped out a nearby record store and between games we ran over there. I guaranteed my son, who is not a lover of record shopping, that I would be quick. I found a couple things and was essentially in the last bin I was going to look in when I found “Space 1999 – The Exciting New Hit TV Series Album”. I snagged it out of pure nostalgia and paid a whopping 8 bucks and change for it.
This is what I hoped it would contain. The theme song for the show.
Sadly, as you have probably surmised. It did not.
What it did have, was three stories, essentially like old time radio stories, about adventures of the characters of Space 1999. I’m not even sure that the stories were READ by the actual characters themselves. Turns out I should have paid more attention to the label of the record.
Yeah. Peter Pan records. A company that specialized in records for kids.
The Discogs page on this record: https://www.discogs.com/No-Artist-Space-1999/release/6197076
Really? 50 people want this?! Average rating 4.33 out of 5? Come on.
I forced myself to listen to this all the way through, which wasn’t easy… to verify the condition (no skips) but I am on the fence about actually keeping it. I will never listen to this again. Keeping it now would be an act of pure nostalgia even I may not be able to justify.
Interestingly, Space 1999 was made into a movie (or was constructed from 3 episodes) and release in Italy. They had Ennio Morricone do the soundtrack. Yes that Ennio. This was the guy that did the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western soundtracks that everyone loves. I think when I was a kid I had a compilation album of these songs. My dad and I used to watch these together and they have always stuck with me. At any rate, Ennio evidently went a different way musically with this album. You can pick up the double album from Light In The Attic:
https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3565-space-1999-original-motion-picture-soundtrack
but you may want to read the review of it first to know what you are getting yourself into. Atonal? Space Jazz? As cool as it seems at the outset, meaning it’s music and not a story produced for children, I probably will not be ordering this.
I may not even keep the DVD’s, these days you can find all the episodes on YouTube.
I’ll get you started:
The Aural Retentive 