Here is the middle of our set of vintage Star Wars Theme Covers, and it's the slowest of the bunch, but not completely without interest. These tracks fall into the second category of SW covers, namely orchestral re-treadings of John Williams' score. Now, if we are being fair, we should mention that the soundtrack album was a huge seller, and the idea of some of these cover albums was to entice you (or your penny-pinching parents) to buy the cheaper LP, which no doubt worked very well.
One such album ended up being the only thing I knew existed that couldn't be tracked down for this project: "Music from Star Wars Performed by The Silver Screen" is actually an album-long, one-disc remake of the film's score, but apparently it's just not anywhere to be found. Four people claim to own it on Discogs, but it's never been sold there, with zero copies for sale. Should it ever turn up, there's room on this disc for it to be added.
One item placed here to break up the monotony was the second of two (yes, two) Star Wars LP's starring pipe organs. The one featured in an earlier volume utilized a large church organ, but this one (entitled SPACE ORGAN, which is living proof that I will not always take the obvious joke) starred a "theatrical pipe organ," which, at the time, was the largest in the world. It was built into the very walls of a restaurant in Portland, Oregon called "The Organ Grinder," and it must've been more than a little unsettling when your dishes and salt and pepper shakers kept vibrating off of your table. According to Wikipedia, the restaurant developer's goal was to acquire every type of pipe and voice ever manufactured by the Wurlitzer company--which he did--as well as include some non-traditional effects, including "a dive alarm from a submarine." Unfortunately, the restaurant closed in 1996, but on this disc, we have a 13-minute medley of more than just the Star Wars theme, in fact including other parts of the Williams score, as well as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." It highlights the organ's many voices and sounds, and is certainly the high point of this volume...yes, because the rest of it is so boring. Work with me, here!
If you are intrepid enough to hang on, AND if you enjoy the Star Wars disco interpretation by Meco, then you are going to love the concluding two volumes of this series, so stay tuned...
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