Spaced Out
Spock on the Record – by Corliss Buenavida
Riding vinyl and listening to vinyl. Can it get any better?
I’m out on my upper deck at the Toronto homestead on a hot summer night staring up at the stars wondering if Mr. Spock might be peering down at this somewhat green orb. Okay, it’s dark on this part of the planet right now but he can see all the light pollution here and further around the sphere it’s still light – so there!
I’m enjoying a night float in my EBF (Emergency Beer Float) with a Muskoka Cream Ale in hand. I just finished watching the Toronto Blue Jays reclaim a 4 game lead over the New York Yankees featuring a fine outing from Chris Bassett giving up only three hits although all three were blasts from the Bronx bats. NY’s big downfall, possibly induced by aggressive base running from the Jays, was error ridden defence.
Now happily in my float, my music of choice - and don’t ask me why this came to mind but once it was on my mind there was no steering away from it - is a very unusual album from April of 1967.
Get ready for it….
Leonard Nimoy presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space
Yep, some marketing genius thought of a way to take advantage of the popularity of the TV show Star Trek and its characters, or more precisely the actor who played the half human, half Vulcan, First Officer / Science Officer, Spock, aboard the starship USS Enterprise and this product was created. I think my brother got the album as a Christmas gift way back when it came out but I absconded it from his collection more than 30 years ago and there is no way he is getting it back now – unless he asks. It has since been digitized into my collection so I can listen on most any device but I still get to enjoy (or not) the vinyl skips, and there are plenty. We must have played the crap out of this long play disc at some point. Maybe it was my drug laden university years so I can shift the blame for the crackles and scratches to roommates and visitors who didn’t care for this type of prized possession as I did!
Anyway, here I am looking up at Spock’s playground attempting to evaluate the tracks which have been gathered for this collection. These are my takeaways…
Naturally the album opens with ‘Theme from Star Trek’ composed by Alexander Courage for the now classic science fiction television series. This instrumental version is juiced up and well worth a listen! Remember, it’s from the sixties and they put every bit of that vibe into this opening number. It starts with fast paced drumming and a cool bass line perfect for a discotheque with mini dress clad go-go dancers in elevated cages. Then a sharp organ lead is added over top making a 12 second intro to replace what would be Captain Kirk’s ‘Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before’ monologue prior to jumping into the iconic theme sound.
In this version, for the first few bars, the female “faux Latin” lyric vocals are replaced by a tremolo treated guitar with the organ slipping into the background before a, similar to the TV version, soprano operatic set of voices join in which are in turn countered by a horn section in their pauses. A ten second stutter step drum and echo filled bridge leads to a second verse more akin to the original song with orchestrated strings replacing the tremolo which returns for the third verse before the organ joins back in to fade out the track. Done in 2 minutes - gotta love it!
I know there is some sample worthy material in there but it is just so obscure the DJs and mix masters haven’t heard it yet.
Next comes a spoken word track, Alien, written for the character Spock emphasizing his similarities and differences from being a human. A bold kettle drum leads us into Nimoy speaking strongly over some background orchestration joined by a variety of spacey sounds. He speaks about his birth place ‘so far away that we cannot comprehend.’ Suddenly, that all stops and a sad violin becomes the background for his story about that distant place once being his home and how he would miss it if he was able to feel emotion – I need a tissue. It’s all a bit of a stretch Mr. Spock, fast forward to the next track please.
Where Is Love; a brief angelic intro and then Nimoy is singing, barely, one of the songs from the 1960 English stage musical Oliver! Perhaps it was selected as the title lyric plays on the theme from the previous track of the emotionless Vulcan. Who knows? Thankfully you only need to endure 2 minutes of this mush.
This is followed by another groovy instrumental from the hip sixties albeit with a slight name change, Music To Watch Space Girls By. The version on this album holds very true to Music To Watch Girls By, popularised by Bob Crewe mere weeks earlier, attesting to how quickly these tracks were slapped together to get this vinyl to market. Again some spacey soprano vocals and sound effects are mingled in.
Yet another instrumental follows, Beyond Antares, which is co-credited to Wilbur Hatch, a composer who worked closely with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and Star Trek Show Runner, Gene Coon. I suspect this was a case of, “Do you have any songs available with a light airy feel we can add to our album,” kind of thing as the Arnaz gang were instrumental in getting the first season of Star Trek on the air.
Over top of the basic track, which once again contains the heavenly vocals and a harp is an intriguing synthesizer lead, possibly a Moog which had just been created a couple of years earlier. This may have been background music in a Star Trek episode.
Closing out Side One is another spoken word entry from Spock, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Earth. It is a whimsical number, done in a light tongue in cheek manner over a simple lilting track in which he uses common phrases about the Earth and stars and twists the perspective to someone from another planet. This is the only track Nimoy gets a writing credit for, shared with Fred Hertz. Slightly amusing and somewhat painful.
For some reason Side Two opens with the theme from Mission Impossible which was another TV program from that era. Coincidentally, Leonard Nimoy would join the cast 2 years later for Seasons Four and Five as a character named Paris.
Definitely filler but if you like the song, you’ll like this version.
Next is another singing effort by Leonard, Lost In The Stars, which is from a 1949 musical of the same name written by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill. I don’t have anything good to say about it unless you are trying to get to sleep or I do this review as if it is a comedy album; next.
Where No Man Has Gone Before is an another instrumental extended version of the Star Trek theme from Alexander Courage which opens almost exactly like the TV show version but without Kirk’s monologue over top. Thirty-eight seconds in a synthesizer plays a gentle slower version of the melody with, of course, the ethereal choir getting added in a little later. Meh.
On a side note; without Courage's knowledge, Gene Roddenberry who created Star Trek, wrote lyrics to the theme – not in the expectation that they would ever be sung, or indeed ever be made publicly available, but so that he could be officially registered as the lyricist of the theme and hence claim half the performance royalties.
You Are Not Alone, has perhaps Nimoy singing at his best, which isn’t great but I’ll give him C+ for effort. Just when you think it is more sleepy music you realize the lyrics are actually quite poignantly speaking about life on other planets. What would happen if these aliens visit, will we teach them war and hate?
The album finishes with another spoken word track backed by ominous music which is perhaps the only lyric based track worth hearing. A Visit to a Sad Planet has Spock creating a First Officer’s Log with the Stardate 2434. During a routine voyage in the Milky Way galaxy the crew encounter a planet in disarray. After beaming down to the surface Spock finds a survivor of a holocaust which has destroyed almost everything. With his dying words he tells Spock about how the planet was once beautiful but the inhabitants wanted more and in their greed they destroyed their own world. He said the planet was called…Earth.
This writing was very forward thinking yet prominent in the peace, love and understanding hippie culture of the time. Unfortunately we didn’t do much about it then and we are doing less in many ways now, to the point where I feel his Stardate might actually arrive 400 years earlier. Maybe this influenced me to join Pollution Probe as a kid and later the Green Parties of Ontario and Canada?
But enough about how we are increasingly killing each other and more about the fun you can have listening to this album. I rate it as a must listen from start to finish at least once in your life, even just as a lark. Repeat listens are only required for the go-go dancer numbers and the final, A Visit to A Sad Planet which is well done and stands up today as a testament to the ills of human society.
The Music From Outer Space has concluded, my beer is done and so this float comes to an end.
I can’t say I saw the Starship Enterprise up there, probably just a few years too early for his visit to this sad planet. I did see some distant stars, a few airplanes on landing approach and two satellites pass by and I was able to reminisce a little too.
I hope you get a chance to hear this pseudo gem of an album!
Have a good float earthlings,
Corliss
beerfloat.calm = beerfloat.net not beerfloat.com
