Guess What I Found on iTunes!!

[dreamshark]

Intergalactic Touring Band! This little-known gem from 1977 should be in every SF Fan's music library. It's a Tommy-like "rock opera" - one of those strange amalgams of rock 'n' roll and orchestral music meant to be performed in a huge auditorium. I don't usually like live concerts much, but what I wouldn't give to see this one live!

It starts with a full overture and a couple of highly orchestrated pieces reminiscent of the Moody Blues) before hitting the 4-song generation ship story. This wonderful sequence starts with Starship Jingle ("They're building a starship, a starship, a starship..."). Then comes Heartbreaker, wherein the first Earthlike planet the pilgrims find turns out to be uninhabitable, followed by 10 generations of wandering in Reaching Out ("Our guidance control lies broken, dismembered. Our ship has forgotten, but we have remembered, remembered, remembered...") And then, in First Landing they finally get there ("Home, home, journey's end! Green grass under our feet. Burn the ships! Burn the ships!"). It's hard to listen to this song without tearing up. In the recording you can hear the live audience going nuts, singing along and dancing in the aisles.

Long out of print, ITB has apparently been reissued at last on CD, available on Amazon for the jaw-dropping price of $30.99! But for a mere $9.99 you can download the album from iTunes.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Nifty! I have the album, and digitized Starship Jingle a long time ago. Nice to hear there are good versions available. The liner notes tell more about the story, placing the songs in perspective.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

One of the ones I'm probably going to transfer from vinyl when I finally get around to that, yes. Though not really a candidate for buying on CD -- at lest not at $31!

[sraun]

Hmm - that may be enough to actually get me to open an iTunes account. I have the album, haven't been able to listen to it for years for one reason or another.

iTunes is fun

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Even if you never buy a single thing from iTunes, it's a nice little piece of software. I've been using it for all my music management, almost entirely with music ripped in from my own CDs. Sometimes I use the iTunes database just to look something up: find out who recorded the song and when, that sort of thing. And every now and again I buy something.

Re: iTunes is fun

[sraun]

My ... appreciation of popular / folk / indie music is sufficiently idosyncratic that iTunes tends not to be a good match for me. There is very little single, duo, or small group vocal music that I really like - I like classical music, and I like big choral works. I am not, as far as I can tell, iTunes target audience. I'm sufficiently far away that the couple of times I've looked at them in the past, the program, store, and database have driven me nuts. The fact that they will not let you browse their catalog without creating an account and signing in is 2.5 strikes against them in the first place, so it didn't take much the last couple of times for me to throw up my hands and go away.