It's finally here... After a long wait, all MECO and STAR WARS fans have the opportunity to dance their asteroids off to the MECO music of all four films!
It's finally here... After a long wait, all MECO and STAR WARS fans have the opportunity to dance their asteroids off to the MECO music of all four films!
The CD
The new CD features the music produced
by MECO since 1977 based on the classic Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope,
The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) and three brand new songs
inspired by The Phantom Menace. Here are the CD contents:
 |
Star Wars A New Hope
Main Title Theme/The Land of the Sand People/Princess Leia's Theme/Cantina Band/The Last Battle/End Title. The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Phantom Menace
|
But, is this a new compilation CD? Not at all. The music that was previously reissued on compilation CDs (The Best of Meco and Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk) has been remixed and new additions included so that even if you already own those compilations, you'll get something new. A treat for MECO fans! Here's what Meco told me about these new additions:
In the original 1977 Star Wars suite there is a new opening and the mix has been enhanced with voices an new sound effects. Similarly, the Darth Vader/Yoda's Theme and The Asteroid Field/Finale of The Empire Strikes Back, have been remixed with a new ending for Yoda's Theme and a new Yoda voice-over in Finale. However, the voice-overs are just a subtle enhancement of the original tracks which retain their original flavor. Meco comments about this...
"...the creative process for the most part is one which is generally tied into the passage of time. By that I mean a film director cannot take an unlimited amount of time to film his movie. He must do so relative to the film's budget. So it is with almost all media creativity. Television shows, commercials, books, magazines and records. I have had around 20 years to wonder what I would do differently if I had a chance to rework my Star Wars records. The result is on the CD. It's a combination of tempo changes, new sound effects and the addition of key dialogue..."
The two themes from the album Ewok Celebration (Lapti Nek and Ewok Celebration) were not previously available on CD and have been remixed for this CD.
"This is intentional as I discovered whenever I took home rough mixes of what I was working on, if the dialogue was loud enough to hear clearly, it interfered with the groove of the song. It became an intrusion. So except for two places -the first in 'A New Hope' where Obi-Wan says to Luke, 'Remember the Force will be with you, always' and the second in 'Finale' where Master Yoda tells us all about the Force, the other lines of dialogue are intentionally very low in volume."
And after the reissues/remixes we finally have three brand new songs inspired by The Phantom Menace. The first theme is the only one based on John Williams score, a single entitled "Duel of the Fates/Augie's Municipal Band". MECO fans expected a longer suite but as Meco told me:
"I listened long and hard for more themes from The Phantom Menace which I could possibly do my 'Meco' thing to, and I only came up with two others. I didn't think that either of them were as much fun as the two original songs I've recorded and included in the CD."
Meco
refers to the two songs inspired by characters (not music) of the movie,
Cousin
Jar-Jar and A Jedi Knight. The first one is a light but rhythmic
song in which a cousin of Jar-Jar enters an intergalactic disco and talks
through the song in the Gungan style. The second song A Jedi Knight
is a great theme with a wonderful instrumental arrangements and lyrics
(sung by Yamira) that even Yoda could use to teach his young padawans!
Some production notes
Meco has personally produced this CD down to the minutest details. Not surprising if we consider that this is the first independent production by Mecoman Productions. One of the things that, besides the music aspects of the record, Meco had to supervise was the cover art for the CD. Here's its history:
Tommy Stanton is a young artist and a great fan of Star Wars and MECO. Through the Meco Fan Page he got in touch with Meco, who visited Tommy's website and, impressed with the graphics, decided he was the person who would prepare the cover. Meco proposed a concept for the cover but it was changed afterwards:
In fact, the robot designed by Tommy was an artwork he was preparing before Meco proposed him to do the cover...
At first, I wanted to do a variation on the Disney World theme parks for my CD cover, but after trying a few ideas, Tommy convinced me that the graphics would be too busy for such a small area as a CD cover. He asked me to take a look at a robot he had designed. I loved it and that robot is the central graphic to my CD cover and web site. Tommy Stanton is a very talented man! I'm lucky to have met him.
 |
"I designed the robot
even before I first contacted Meco. I took my idea to my computer and I
began constructing the robot. The "StarBot" as I call it, is really the
only artwork that went into the CD cover. The rest was simply Meco's design
which looks great"
Then the cover production was developed between Meco and Tommy, over the phone and the internet... "It was really nice collaborating with Meco about the cover. He would tell me where things needed to be placed and I would do that. The more I got to know him over the phone the more I felt comfortable working with him. Meco is the nicest guy I've met in a long time!" If you want to read more about the cover,
click
here to visit Tommy's website!
|
 |
