Drunkard's Walk Forums

I've known about Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" album, at least vaguely since the early 1980's, but somehow never bought a copy.

Today I came across a mention of it over at Space Battles and it brought back memories of looking for it back in the mid 80's, which led to Yahoo searching
and Youtube.

Here is a Youtube video of the live version of Thunder Child from "War of the Worlds"

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As a rule I have been dissapointed in the movie and TV versions of "War of the Worlds" and until now have been dissapointed in all version set in
relatively modern times say after about 1905.

All the directors and script writers using relatively modern times feel forced to boost the Martians technology and end up making the aliens so powerful they
become completely untouchable and lose a lot of the flavor of the Martians in the original book often destroying the telling of the story.

I personally don't think the script writers and directors fully understand what made the book a classic work of science fiction.

Another pet peeve and evidence that the movie directors or script writers don't understand is the fact that I've never seen even a variation of the
Thunder Child's battle with the Martian Walkers set in film.

Part of the power of the book was not the martians advanced technology "Walking Over" man's best efforts, it was the frustration of the nearness
of that technology to what man already had. Just a little more another decade or maybe 30 years and they could have stood off the invasion, yes at great
cost, but it wouldn't have been the walk over that was occuring.

When I found out about the stage performance of the Thunder Child Battle I waited the 55 minutes it took to download it and was pleasantly surprised to see
someone understood. In spite of being set after 1900 the script writer had used that frustration from the book of almost being enough, almost being able to
stand, almost able to make a fight of it.

For you that have fast internet connections there are other youtube files of stage performances of the Jeff Wayne's album's, sadly I don't have
the hour or so it would take me to download each video.

howard melton

God bless

Wow. I think I need to get this album and/or DVD...
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I grew up with the album (back when it was an album).

My dad had a copy - double record - with very, very, disturbing art in the fold out (Geoff Taylor and Peter Goodfellow). Part of what made albums so flipping
cool.

I have it on CD and the whole thing rocks hard; somewhere between a radio drama and a full scale musical production.

Find it. Buy it.

(and if you get the chance, check out Jeff Wayne's musical version of Spartacus)

Cheers,

Shayne

Bob Schroeck Wrote:Wow. I think I need to get this album and/or DVD...

 

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
2-CD set, remastered from the 1978 LP release by Columbia, catalog number C2K 35290
page

There is a persistent rumour that Richard Burton worked for scale on this project, because he wanted to be part of it and Jeff Wayne couldn't afford his usual fee. I don't know whether that's true, but I keep hearing it...

 

 
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I can believe it - is the sort of project that it would be hard to say no to.

Like when Ben Folds called up Henry Rollins and said 'we want you to do a track with William Shatner' (and then added Adrien Belew to the mix)

There are some things you just have to do; no matter what.

Shayne

Absolutely beautiful, thanks for the link. After watching it I had to go and purchase the DVD Special Edition.