Sit Down, Take a Stress Pill, and Think Things Over

SPOILER ALERT:

Over the next week or so I'll be presenting all manner of important and trivial things concerning the entity (some book, mostly movie) 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So let me warn you right now: Rosebud was the Space Pod.

When I received my first stereo phono as a Christmas present from my wonderful Mom and Dad, the first thing I did that Christmas Morning of 1968 was slap on the soundtrack to 2001, and blare Strauss's homage to the no-god ubermensch across the chill of Jesus' birthday.

With my Christmas money, I went to Montgomery Ward soon after and purchased the record Music Inspired by 2001. As a kid I didn't understand the concept of cynical marketing ploys. It had a picture of the Starchild on the cover, and opened with "Also Sprach Zarathustra," so I was set.

I've never asked my Mom what she thought of those odd shrieks of Gyorgi Ligeti's Requiem or Volumina coming from my speakers.

I can tell you that music from the first 2001 album and this one became background sounds at several youth-group haunted houses (along with the "Free-Form Guitar" screeches on Chicago Transport Authority).

Anyway, inspired by the recent (FINALLY!) DVD "deluxe" 2001, I dug out the old "inspired by" album and played it, dubbing it onto cassette. Then I walked the tape across the study to the cassette deck sitting above the computer and "ripped" the music into mp3s.

And then the gruelling editing work began. I've discovered that most skips and pops can be covered over in an LP recording by pulling a Byrne "pocket universe" trick: I copy a fragment of sound from a fraction of a second AFTER the pop, and paste it on top of the offending occurrence. Most of the time, it works!

So, anyway, I now have a semblance of the album on CD. Above is a scan of Mike Curb's liner notes on the back. Here is a scan of my CD rear and front inserts. The two pictures are scanned from the back of the record jacket. The track listings are also direct scans from the record jacket, with the columns separated enough for track numbers to be inserted.

Notice the last paragraph of Curb's "insightful" liner notes. It amazes me that linguistic stupes have been MISUSING the word "hopefully" for almost 40 years!