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Spider-man’s musical roots

January 19 2008

Since I’m on a Spider-man binge this month, I’d thought I would talk about the two spidey albums from the 70s.

Spider-man Albums

The 70s were an interesting time for Marvel, as a company Marvel essentially accepted just about every merchandise and media deal available to them. Which either provided the public with gold (The Mego toy range) or stinkers that haunt the company to this day (the Captain America tv movies), these albums are somewhere in the middle.

As a quick preface, I first discovered the existence of both of these when I was 10 years old in the adverts of old comics. Since then I’ve been trying to track these down and finally through the wonder of the internet I can listen to both of these..uh..gems.

I’ll start off with the Spider-man rockcomic. Sporting a wonderfully marker coloured John Romita cover, this album is essentially a Spider-man disney movie, a radio show style narrative with a few songs dotted here and there.
The story is basically Spider-man against the Kingpin, with some Italian muzak framing his sequences, being 1972 the villain choice was no doubt influenced by the success of the Godfather that year.

Honestly, it’s pretty forgettable, the songs aint great and the story for the most part, boring. The one amusing sequence is Dr.Strange’s bloodthirsty guest appearance, where he sends the Kingpin to hell, to spend time with the devil (Nice unintentional foreshadowing of his future nemesis though).

Second up is Spider-man : Rock Reflections of a Superhero, this beauty is about 10 times better than the rockcomic. Full of lovely tracks like “Gwendolyn” that are reminiscent of 50-60s bubblegum pop and broken up cool narration by Stan Lee, it’s almost like a U (or G-Rated) Tarantino soundtrack.
The albums is lots of fun and wrapped in a fantastic cover drawn by John Romita and painted by the wonderful Nick Cardy.

If you want to track these down, Spider-man : Beyond the Grave – A Rockcomic is available from itunes and Spider-man : Rock Reflections of a Superhero is available DRM-Free from eMusic and the Amazon MP3 store.

Filed under comics, music

James McEwan

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KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park

September 7 2007

Sweet lords of awesomeness, this is a nice find. As a connoisseur of frankly terrible films, you can imagine how happy I was to discover this little gem of a folly…kinda makes it obvious why Hanna-Barbera didn’t carry on down the live action route.


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Filed under music, retro, video

James McEwan

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Blood Red Sandman

May 16 2006

lordi.jpg

Am I the only one who thinks it’s fucking awesome that Lordi is in the eurovision song contest?

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James McEwan

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Mercury Prize Nominees

July 19 2005

(via nme.com)

  • Bloc Party – ‘Silent Alarm’
  • Hard-Fi –’Stars Of CCTV’
  • Kaiser Chiefs – ‘Employment’
  • MIA – ‘Arular’
  • The Magic Numbers – ‘The Magic Numbers’
  • Coldplay – ‘X&Y’
  • The Go! Team – ‘Thunder, Lightning Strike’
  • Antony And The Johnsons – ‘I Am A Bird Now’
  • KT Tunstall – ‘Eye To The Telescope’
  • Maximo Park – ‘A Certain Trigger’
  • Seth Lakeman – ‘Kitty Jay’
  • Polar Bear – ‘Held On The Tips Of Fingers’

Tough choice this year, Bloc Party and Maximo Park would be the stand outs for me right now, however I’ve been listening to a lot of The Go! Team lately and they’re really superb.

I’m gonna ignore that Kaiser Cheifs are the odds on favourite.

Filed under music

James McEwan

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