Welcome To The 24th Century

Holy crap! Holy crap! Did you know about this? I didn't until yesterday! Holy crap!! If I'd known about this earlier, I wouldn't have bought the last dozen or so CDs I did buy (well, not necessarily the last consecutive dozen, but a dozen) and would have saved up for this instead! But I still bought it anyway, 'cause I just gotta have it. Seriously, I honestly don't know how I would be able to go on living without having this in my possession as soon as humanly possible. Want to know what it is? Maybe you'd better sit down, 'cause I myself had a geek-out on a transphasic level when I found out about this.

It's a limited-edition box set of not four, not six ... no, not even eight ... no, keep going ... would you believe a whopping 14 -- yes -- FOURTEEN CDs jam-packed with never-before-released music from dozens of episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"! Devoted solely to the work of Ron Jones, who traded off scoring duties with Dennis McCarthy through the first four seasons of "TNG", "Star Trek: The Next Generation -- The Ron Jones Project" includes nearly every note written and recorded for 42 of the series' first 94 episodes (the score for "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter is already available on the GNP Crescendo label, so just some bonus tracks from it are included here) plus numerous outtakes, as well as a disc devoted to his work for a pair of "Trek" video games released later.

The panicked evacuation of the Enterprise in "11001001" ... the tearful farewell of Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil" ... the appearance of the Romulans in "The Neutral Zone" ... Riker's escape from the Mintakans in "Who Watches The Watchers" ... the terrorist attack on the ship in "The High Ground" ... Lal's tragic demise in "The Offspring" ... the perilous journey across the arid wasteland in "Final Mission" ... they're all cues that I've been waiting 20 years to hear unobscured by dialogue and sound effects, and now's my chance! With this doozy of a package being limited to a production run of just 5,000, I couldn't waste any time in seizing the opportunity to add it to my collection, since the price is certain to only start going up on the aftermarket.

Widely regarded as the best composer that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ever had, Ron Jones was known for delivering sweeping, attention-grabbing, feature-film-worthy scores for countless episodes. The problem was that "TNG"'s producers didn't want attention-grabbing music; they wanted the episodes' scores to lay quietly in the background. So after almost four full years of flying in the face of the producers' demands, Jones was fired and replaced by Jay Chattaway (quite a dandy composer in his own right, to give credit where it's due). But I always thought the "Trek" producers were not only making their episodes just a bit less memorable by taming down the music, but they were also forsaking a perfectly good merchandising outlet. Fans have been clamoring for Ron Jones' scores to be commercially available for years, and I have to wonder how many CD sales they missed out on by missing that opportunity and never licensing retail releases until all these years later.

If you can't live without it, like I couldn't, this incomparably amazing Trek-a-thon of music will set you back a healthy $150 (plus shipping), but at 14 CDs that ends up coming out to less than $11 per disc, which is a great price, especially for something that's a limited-edition collectible like this. It's available for purchase now at SAE and at Intrada, and further information is available from the Film Score Monthly website (and thanks to them for the links to the audio clips!). A friend of mine has all but challenged me to bundle it up in giftwrap when it arrives and not open it until Christmas morning ... but that's gonna be a really tough test of my will.

Star Trek: 30 Years - A Tribute

Time for a little shameless cross-promotion here ... for those of you who are both Star Trek/sci-fi fans and music lovers, I've taken the liberty of putting this post on both of my blogs at the same time, since it firmly touches on both points of interest ("the best of both worlds", if I may toss in a Trek in-joke). So, by all means, check out my other blog if you're so inclined, as it's quite nifty-neato in its own right, if I do say so myself.

various artists
"STAR TREK: 30 YEARS - A TRIBUTE"
(BMG Ariola Germany, 1996)


"Unendliche Weiten" by Illegal 2001


The surrealistically anti-hip "special" Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond (Ted Danson? Kenny G? WTF?!?) was forebodingly telling of how tired the once-venerable sci-fi franchise had become. But as terrible a train-wreck as that spectacle was, the occasion of Star Trek's pearl anniversary did produce a couple of unique and interesting pieces of memorabilia, even if they did come from outside of its home country of the United States. A prime example: this "curious" (as Spock himself might describe it) compilation of music, assembled in Germany, in honor of Star Trek's 30th Anniversary.

Given its origin, it stands to reason that the majority of this album's tracks are performed in German, but that's not nearly the deal-breaker in this case that it might normally be. In fact, a good part of the fun comes from listening for the recognizable Trek names that pop up regularly through the German language ("Kirk", "Picard", "Klingons", and I think I even heard "Tasha Yar" and "Cardassians" at least once each). Another thing that keeps this CD from becoming boring is the multitude of music genres represented: you'll find everything from jazz ("We've Lost The Captain", which employs a soundbite of that very quote from the original pilot "The Cage") to techno ("Die 4. Dimension") to pop ("Ich Bin Verknallt In Jean-Luc Picard", which sounds a little like something off a Dido album) to punk ("Ich Bin Knille, Pille") to hip-hop ("Reime, Räume Und Zeiten", full of the forementioned Trek shout-outs as well as a handful of authentic sound effects), resulting in a pretty safe chance that everyone will find something to like here.

I won't lie to you -- I was a bit disappointed when I first played this CD, as I was expecting more faithful interpretations, mostly instrumental, of the various Star Trek themes heard throughout the years; indeed, the first track, a cool synth-rock sort of take on the Star Trek: Voyager theme, got my hopes up a bit too much the first time around. But the dazzling cover design, and the fact that it was an official Paramount-licensed compilation from a major label, compelled me to more readily accept it. It's now safe to say that this album has come to hold a place of honor in my collection of Star Trek music CDs -- Worf himself would probably be proud.

Buy the CD (while you still can...!)