Thursday, December 23, 2010

Music Trivia - The Justice League theme songs that never were

If I talk to you about Justice League opening theme songs...
You probably think about this one:


Justice League Unlimited Opening 

And/or that other one:



Justice League Unlimited Opening

Well I wasn't talking about the Justice League theme song, rather Justice League members theme song!
And now I'm guessing your thinking about these one:



Batman: The Animated Series Opening


Superman: The Animated Series Opening

Or if you're old enough;


The original Superman animated Opening

 
The Superfriends cartoon opening from 1976

Well, what I wanted to talk about in today's post is neither of those.
In fact it's not even a cartoon but an "audio" series.

 Okay...so the cover looks awful...specially that forced pose everyone's doing..

I only discovered this CD not long ago...
Songs and Stories About the Justice League of America was released in 1968.
It seems it was part of a larger "trilogy" of release they had back then, only this one's really interesting.

For you see this one's called "Songs and Stories About the Justice League".
So it is like several radio dramas put together, each with its own opening theme song.

 Here's a second release cover, the much better alternate art done by Neal Adams(!)

It was basically composed like this: (here's the tracklist)

  1. Justice League of America Theme Song
  2. Wonder Woman Theme Song
  3. A Wonder Woman audio drama - "The Return of Brunhilde"
  4. Plastic Man Theme Song
  5. A Plastic Man audio drama - "The Invasion of the Plastic Men"
  6. Metamorpho Theme Song
  7. A Metamorpho audio drama - "Metamorpho vs. Fumo the Fire Giant"
  8. Aquaman Theme Song
  9. An Aquaman audio drama - "The Defeat of the Dehydrator"
  10. The Flash Theme Song
  11. A Flash audio drama - "The Three Faces of Mr. Big"
Yeah, you notice the very unusual occurence, a JLA mechandise without Superman or Batman, but Hey! at least Wonder Woman, part of DC's Trinity, is in here!

Now, to the songs.
Thanks to youtuber CalebTheTimeTraveler, who has uploaded all the songs on his youtube channel, I can share with you guys and gals the music from this good ol' release!
(to get, buy, download, pirate this, well... google is your friend, do it yourself! :P)

First, let's start with the JLA theme!



Well...that was..not particulary good. Sort of less good than other cartoon theme songs of that time, maybe because since this was a record release, they wanted to be "more musical", while still doing the whole voices/narration/presentation particular to that era.

Now the Flash!
He even got a pretty badass live series in the 90s.
How does Flash theme song sound like in here?



Woah! A very fun surf song typical from the late 60/70s!
Sort of fun!



Aquaman gets an OUTRAGEOUS!! James Bond-sound alike song.

By now if you dislike "retro" music you're probably sick of this.
(hey!! nobody forced you to watch this)



Metamorpho gets his origins wonderfully summarized in this catchy song.
It's always the same group singing, sure, but this one is very much 60s, in the sound, the style, the composition.
Groovy~

Now it's time for PLAAASTIC MAAAN!!~



I gotta say it now.
Plastic Man's opening is my favorite by far!
It's great, funny and catchy!
Simply put: PER-FECT!!
The one, the original elastic man!

One left to go:



Wonder Woman gets a pretty strange song.
Pretty far from what they would get several years later in her old live action show, less goofy at least.
It's sort of a romantic/tango-like tune.

Anyway for any DC fan, it's really worth getting a copy of this!
The episodes/stories are...ok, it really depends on the characters.
(I specially dig Plastic Man's casting here. From here to his Superfriends cameo, his old 70/80s cartoon, his Cartoon Network pilot that never was and his recent appearances in The Brave and The Bold; his voice has been pretty consistent and similar throughout the years and different actors)

And that's all for this musical post~
Again, thanks to CalebTheTimeTraveler sharing the tunes on youtube!