Are you Ready for Life in Inner Space?

More sci-fi Halloween goodies, starting with a very strange item by Bert Tenzer. See if you can guess what it's all about before the announcer explains everything at the end. I wasn't able to, but it's really pretty obvious. I must have been snoozing.

And we have two tracks by me--Stairway to Godzilla, from 2006 (one of my many Stairway to Heaven variations), and The Flying Saucers Are Gone, my own 2004 attempt at a "break-in" novelty. That's me as NPR's Noah Motion. (Get it? No Emotion. Ha, ha, ha!) This is my second shortening of the original file--in all, about 40 edits and two or three track overlaps.

Track overlaps are hard to explain. They're like quick sound-on-sound dissolves (to avoid awkward jumps).

Antoine de Treville's Journey into Space has nothing to do with Frank Weir's recording of the TV theme by that title. Different piece altogether, though nearly as memorable. From a Crown label LP I should've kept but didn't. But at least I ripped this terrific track.

Omicron Visists Earth is a fun children's side from 1957--my copy is slightly warped, but my Stanton cartridge can track nearly anything. The voices are clearly those of Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), even though this is clearly impossible. It's not clear what we're to conclude from all this.

And we have Henry Mancini's Disco arrangement of the theme from Star Trek. An amazing arranger, that guy.

Click here: Are You Ready for Life in Inner Space?

SLAYLIST

Are You Ready for Life in Inner Space?--Bert Tenzer, 1964.

Journey Into Space--Antoine de Treville.

Omicron Visits Earth, Parts 1 and 2--Rege Cordic and Company, 1957.

Stairway to Godzilla (Hartsfeld)--Lee Hartsfeld, 2006.

The Flying Saucers Have Gone (Hartsfeld)--Lee Hartsfeld, 2004, 2007.

Theme from Star Trek--Henry Mancini and His Orch., 1978.


Lee

Inbox fun

"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to stop 'PayPal' and 'eBay' and 'Wachvia Bank,' whoever they are. This CD will become obsolete in five minutes. Good luck, Jim."

Last night, it was "PayPal" informing me that someone had broken into my account, or something like that. Could I please update my information using the enclosed link? Suuuuure, no problem.

Now it's "Wachvia (sic) Bank" telling me about irregular activity on my check card. "For your protection, we have deactivate (sic) your check card. You must verify this activity before you can continue using your card."

So nice of them to have "deactivate" my check card. And to have misspelled their "own" name in the address line.

I remember when I got my first "eBay" phish-mail--it seems my "eBay" account had been suspended. My initial reaction was, "What? Is this possible?" Luckily, it occurred to me to go directly to the site and My eBay. No mention of any suspension, of course. "Ah, a scam," I concluded.

Stay out of my pond, "eBay," "PayPal," and "Wachvia Bank." This pond is closed to phishing.

Amazingly, Google gives me no matches for "closed to phishing." No way I'm the first person to come up with that obvious pun. I'll be darned.

Thrift store score

It wasn't a big score, but some cool stuff showed up. Read the text and see the pictures here.

When you get there, be sure to let me know that I sent you. (Wait a minute....)



Lee

Halloween at MY(P)WHAE, Part 3--Sci-Fi Halloween!

So... we have two more selections from Ferde Grofe's Rocketship X-M score (1950). And we have Columbia Pictures' 78-rpm "Theatre Lobby Record" for the Japanese sci-fi classic, The H-Man (1958). AND two cool versions of Charles Grean's The Thing--one by Danny Kaye, and the other a square dance rendition! There's also Gustav Holst conducting his very own Mercury (from The Planets) from my copy of the 1926 78, and Mantovani's own Poem to the Moon (a 78, again). And Annette Funicello's That Crazy Place in Outer Space (in its reissued form as That Crazy Place from Outer Space). We've even got the theme from TV's It's About Time (not the soundtrack version, but close enough). Along with all these, there are other things.

I've always wanted to type "Along with all these, etc."

Good news--I figured out how to do individual-file downloads on these (for those not in the mood to zip). My confusion stemmed from the fact that clicking on the download (+) link produces a tiny box containing the word "Download." Turns out this is a menu. A menu which consists of one choice. I didn't recognize it as a menu because of its size and because, well, it only contains one option.

In other words, clicking on the + sign to the right of each file brings up a one-command menu. Click inside the menu, and then the File Download box comes up.

What I love about this set-up is that Box could have connected the user to the File Download box directly. Why the extra step of the menu, when there's only one option, anyway?

Oh, well--it works. And that's how.

And... I just tried to download the entire folder. Five tries later, the File Download box came up. So, things are working. I won't have to migrate the files, after all.

To the sci-fi Halloween sounds:

Click here to reach Sci-Fi Halloween!

SLAYLIST

Theme from The Bat (L. Forbes)--The Ventures, 1964.
Forbidden Planet (Rose)--David Rose and His Orch., 1956.
Moon Man (Bacharach-David)--Gloria Lambert, w. Richard Maltby, 1959.
The Rocket Ship--Tops Orchestra and the Toppers Cast.
The Twilight Zone (M. Manning)--The Ventures, 1964.
Top of the Moon (Cook-Gilbert)--Margaret Whiting, 1959.
Man from Mars--Ferrante and Teicher, 1955.
The Thing (Grean)--Danny Kaye w. Ken Darby O. & Cho., 1950.
The Thing (Grean)--The Sundowners Band.
Poem to the Moon (Mantovani)--Mantovani and His Concert O., 1948.
Rocket Ride (John A. McGee)--Harry King and His O., 1956.
Man from the Moon--Dean Barlow and the Crickets, 1953.
Honeymoon on a Rocket Ship (Johnny Masters)--Hank Snow, 1952.
Martian Mutants (Grofe; from Rocketship X-M soundtrack, 1950).
That Crazy Place from Outer Space--Annette, 1958.
Robot Man (S. Dee, G. Goehring)--Gayla Peevey (as Jamie Horton), 1960.
Mercury (The Winged Messenger) (Holst)--Gustav Holst, c. The London Symph. O., 1926.
Will There Be Space in a Space Ship--The McGuire Sisters, 1961.
The Outer Limits (End Title) (D. Frontiere)--TV soundtrack, 1962.
Skyblab--Dan Dayton (Jeff Levine), 1974.
Meanwhile, Back on the Air (Jeff Levine)--Martian Top 40, 1974.
Journey Into Space (Phillips)--Frank Weir and His Orch., 1955.
There's No Life on the Moon--The Mills Brothers, 1972.
Theme from Star Trek (A. Courage)--Ferrante & Teicher, 1978.
Approaching Mars (Grofe; from Rocketship X-M soundtrack, 1950)
The Creature (From A Science Fiction Movie)--Buchanan and Ancell, 1957.
Buchanan and Ancell Meet the Creature--Buchanan and Ancell, 1957.
Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft--The Carpenters, 1977.
Moonflight (Barry Siegal)--Vik Venus, Alias: Your Moon Man, 1969.
Martian Melodies--Dickie Goodman, 1961.
The H Man--Columbia Pictures Theatre Lobby Spot, 1958.
The Flying Saucer--Buchanan and Goodman, 1956.
It's About Time (Wylie-Schwartz-Fried)--Wade Denning & the Port Washingtons, 1966.
Neptune, The Mystic (Holst)--Leopold Stokowski c. The Los Angeles Phil. O., 1956.




Lee

Halloween Suite!

Yes, Halloween can be sweet. The candy, the costumes, the camaraderie. The Cool Whip® on the pumpkin pie.

And there are other kinds of Halloween suites--like this one, which I composed in a hurry last Halloween (I'd been hoping to have some time to spend on it, but you know how that goes). I decided I'd give it a complete reworking this year, maybe even adding some stuff to it. You know, if I had the time.

And we know how that goes. Instead, I simply edited the first and second "Herrmannesque" into one, omitting a section that didn't work so well. Then I stuck "Ghosts on the Loose" in the middle, which means that, in this fresh version, my Halloween Suite ends with "Phone Calls from the Dead," albeit a reverb- and echo-laden version, with sound contouring and EQ'ing--to the point that the original file now sounds like a memory from a forgotten past. (Hm. Is that logically possible?) Or... a phone call from the dead.

The curse of modern life--having to do everything in a hurry. It's because of all of these labor-saving devices we're surrounded by. They give us more time in which to be busy.

Anyway, I love the new final movement so much, I've posted it with the suite AND by itself. Amazing how layers of reverb and whatnot can create a big ghostly choir, the sound of car horns in a tunnel, and the like. While, I might add, erasing some of the original details completely.

Besides layering the effects, I also overlapped the same file at two different pitches (same duration, different key). It all sounds like an outtake from Forbidden Planet.

The only thing I didn't think of was a dial tone at the end. (Click, buzzzzzzzzzzz.) That might have worked better than the cliched fade-out-into-nothing effect which, after 50 years of same, probably doesn't register on modern ears.

"We're all slaves to the fade-out."--From Lee's Made-Up Quotes, Vol. 14.

The link will take you to Savefile.com. (Sorry about the pop-ups.) Download boxes show up at the bottom of the page.

Halloween Suite.




Lee

Sunday Funnies!!

Link to Sunday Funnies!


PLAYLIST

LAUGHING SONG--The Cathedral Quartet, 1970.
TELEPHONE CALL FROM GOD--Jerry Jordan, 1973.
THE SUBSTITUTE PARSON--Charles (Chic) Sale, 1929.
BRIGHTEN THE CORNER WHERE YOU ARE--Homer Rodeheaver, with comic asides, 1922.
YOU CAN'T GET TO HEAVEN ON ROLLER SKATES--Betty Johnson, 1958.
FRIED CHICKEN REVIVAL-The Lewis Family, 1976.
WILLIE McNEILL--Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters (early 1960s).
EVERYBODY'S GONNA HAVE A TERRIBLE TIME DOWN THERE--The Statesmen Q., 1958.
THREE ROUTINES FROM "THIS OLE BOY" LP--Tim Stivers, 1972.
IT'S IN THE BOOK--John Standley with Horace Heidt, 1952.
TIPTOE THROUGH THE TITHERS--Dan McBride, 1968.
HERE COME THE RATTLESNAKES--Wendy Bagwell, 1970.
DOWNTOWN--Dan McBride (Circa 1968).
THIS OLE HOUSE--The Cathedral Quartet, 1973.