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Sunday, December 09, 2007

Songs & Stories About the Justice League LP - 1975

sgThis piece is such a prominent part of my Aquaman obsession over the years I can't believe it took me this long to get to it--Power Records' Songs and Stories About the Justice League of America, with smashing sleeve art by Neal Adams, Aquaman front and center!

It wasn't until just a few years ago that I learned this record's contents are taken from the 1968 Tilton record of the same name; that record also featured theme songs for Flash and Aquaman, which were omitted here(for running time?). I don't have a personal copy of that record(yet), but once I do you can be sure it'll show up here, as well(and of course the Aquaman and Flash stories were separately released on a Power Records 45").

As a kid, I must have listened to this record a thousand times--the songs are catchy yet totally goofy; and the stories are well done and yet very idiosyncratic, with little touches that still surprise me were included. This thing could've been seen as just a kid's record and made as dull as dishwater; instead we get very specific characterizations for each hero. Plus the Aquaman story features Mera!

I'm currently featuring the entire record's contents over at my
Power Records blog today, but here we'll just feature Aquaman in..."The Defeat of the Dehydrator!":

7 comments:

Damian said...

That is some serious high quality stuff right there.
I always cursed Metamorpho for getting himself on these things. "Why him?"

Plaidstallions said...

I used to have the songs from this on cassette and brought it on trips to cons with friends. The Plastic Man song was a favourite.

rob! said...

as goofy as they are, the songs are genuinely catchy--"Meta-Mor-Pho-METAMORPHO!" i mean, geez, can you imagine how tough it was to work "metamorpho" into song lyrics??

and i love that on the JLA song, its clearly a man doing WW's voice, and Batman sounds like some really old guy--"Heeyah!"

Scurvy said...

Everytime I hear something from this era I always ponder how do YOU pronounce "Aquaman"? is it ack-uaman, or ah-quaman. I always notice it's never consistent, but the bad guys and the announcer usually prefer the first one. I prefer the latter. Never liked the "ack" part. (yes I know I am picking nits here)

Great track by the way. Definitely made me smile.

Diabolu Frank said...

Tomayto/tomahto. Mason/Dixon?

Um... isn't Ahqwaman a tad callous about all those poor dead people the Dehydrator was trying to save? Unless they all had that same jerky voice...

rob! said...

Aquaman is being VERY callous about an entire planet full of people about to die a slow, agonizing, miserable death from dehydration.

see? characterization!

Anonymous said...

Just FYI, the Plastic Man and Metamorpho stories were released together on a single. The only reason I know this is because I own it. I happened upon it at an antique store and had to have it because its so odd!

Chris