It all started with Hawaii Five-0 as you know. Then those Disney records where they adapted their movies to album form. Back in the 1960’s and into the 1970’s these adaptations were the only way to bring these movies home from the theater. Remember, there weren’t DVD’s or even VCR’s back then. So records like this, Island At The Top Of The World were the closest thing. They would take the soundtrack music, the dialog and sound effects and try to recreate the films on the record. Occasionally, there would be an accompanying book with illustrations but mostly it was imagination only. I wonder if it was having records like this as a child that led to my interest in dialogue and ability to memorize the spoken word. We had Island At The Top Of The World back in the 70’s and I had accidentally memorized it. When I saw the movie again a year or so ago [It was in the $5 bin at Wal-mart] I was surprised that I could repeat so much of the dialogue.
When Star Wars came out, I had seen it so many times that I could repeat every word from every scene from beginning to end. It was kind of like Fahrenheit 451 only with movies instead of books. My sister Bethany did the same thing with Empire Strikes Back. All we need was Barbara to pick up Jedi and we’d have the set but she went Manilow instead.
Anyway, from the Disney seed grew this attraction to film scores, and Television theme songs. Don’t be surprised when they keep showing up.
Welcome Back Kotter
Happy Days
Laverne & Shirley
The Monkees. The Monkees will show up again when I’m at Vermont Academy. This is why.
S.W.A.T. – S.W.A.T. was the first time that I can remember seeing an M-16 and I wanted one.
The Partridge Family
Baretta