The Best of Star Trek, Volume Two
This new collection of previously unreleased suites from various episodes of all of Star Trek’s live-action incarnations includes some of the most requested music from all of the series - and a few extras as well.
The classic series is easily the show best represented by this CD, with music from The Corbomite Maneuver, Balance Of Terror, What Are Little Girls Made Of? and a “lounge” version of the show’s main theme which was used in a small number of episodes as background source music. Though the Corbomite and Balance scores have been re-recorded in part on past releases by Varese Sarabande, it’s always nice to hear the original recordings rolled out and remastered. They sound great.
Deep Space Nine is represented by a suite from the fourth season opener, The Way Of The Warrior, which introduced Worf as a permanent feature of the DS9 landscape. The music is big and bold…and, by and large, lifted directly from the music of Star Trek: Generations. Go ahead - listen to the “Final Fight” track on the Generations CD and then the Way Of The Warrior suite, back-to-back. The similarities are stunning. Not to say that it’s bad music…just that we’d heard it before. I would much rather have heard some music from season two’s three-part epic premiere.
Also included in the DS9 section is the televised mix of the main theme from seasons 4-7 (a previous version, heard on the original Best Of Star Trek CD in 1996, featured more percussion than the version actually used to open each episode), as well as Nana Visitor’s version of “Fever” from His Way (the first Vic Fontaine episode). The latter is quite nice - Nana’s no Shirley Bassey, but “Fever” is supposed to be moaned and growled more than it’s sung anyway. It’s a nice companion to Jimmy Darren’s album of tunes performed by Vic on DS9.
The DS9 suite is also plagued by another problem - an incorrect table of contents in the CD’s liner notes booklet which omits a track of Warrior score and adds one more track of music from the Voyager suite than actually appears on the CD. The track list below is the correct track list.
Voyager is also represented by an uncharacteristically bombastic score, David Bell’s music from The Bride Of Chaotica. Incredibly atypical of the most recent Trek spinoff’s usually somnolent scoring, Bell’s music is an over-the-top homage to Flash Gordon-style pulp sci-fi radio epics of yesteryear. Some of the most interesting moments in the Chaotica score occur when the music shifts gears abruptly between the retro-40’s music and Bell’s more frequently-used style. Sadly, in these few very brief “modern” passages, one hears - more or less - the entire gamut of Bell’s typical Voyager score, as he too has fallen victim to replicating his own work under the constraints of time and - in all likelihood - the limited inspiration provided by the average Voyager episode.
The album does at least pick a good note on which to close, however: several minutes of music from Dennis McCarthy’s score from the Next Generation finale, All Good Things. This score, though it too features some musical repetition, features some of the best moments from the last episode. The “Saved Again” cue accompanies the memorable scene of the refitted Enterprise saving the collective butts of the crew of Beverly Crusher’s doomed U.S.S. Pasteur, and the cryptically titled “I Have A Gun” is the wonderful final shot of the episode, in which the crew’s last poker game dissolves into the Enterprise’s flight into an alien sunset, set to the strains of Alexander Courage’s Star Trek fanfare, bringing things nicely full-circle. (Shouldn’t this track have been called “The Sky’s The Limit”?)
There’s one cue I wish they’d included though: Picard’s first view of the Enterprise as Tasha ferries him to the ship for the first time via shuttle.
Overall, the second volume of The Best Of Star Trek will satisfy fans of nearly every one of the 
show’s incarnations, particularly fans of the classic series that started it all. Here’s hoping that it won’t take four more years for volume three. There’s enough unreleased Trek music to merit a yearly release (hell, there’s enough unreleased music to fill a monthly CD magazine, but the economics of that kind of venture would be nightmarish for both label and consumer, so I’d settle for a yearly release).
- Theme from Star Trek - string arrangement (0:51)
- The Corbomite Maneuver (4:29)
- Balance Of Terror (3:42)
- What Are Little Girls Made Of? (4:39)
- In Chapel (1:18)
- Theme from Star Trek - lounge mix (1:39)
Suite from The Way Of The Warrior
- Theme from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - season 4 (1:55)
- Dry Run (1:31)
- Medieval Harp source (2:57)
- Worf (1:35)
- “Yo!” (4:08)
- Worf II (1:47)
- Fever (2:01)
Suite from The Bride Of Chaotica
- Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (1:47)
- Begin Chapter 18 (4:21)
- Presenting…Arachnia (3:07)
- Chaotica Is Defeated / Distortions (3:43)
- Chaotica’s Last Words / The End (1:05)
Suite from All Good Things…
- Theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation - season 2 (1:40)
- Here Comes The Judge II / To The Rescue (5:59)
- Primalosity (2:29)
- Courage (3:31)
- Saved Again (2:26)
- I Have A Gun (0:52)
Released by: GNP Crescendo
Release date: 2000
Total running time: 63:42
At last - at long last - a Genesis greatest hits collection. This puppy is long overdue. While some bands are defined by their album tracks which don’t become singles, namely ELO and Alan Parsons, post-Peter-Gabriel Genesis has never been such a band, at least not for me. It seemed as though they knew which ones would be the singles, poured all their efforts into those songs, and limped through the rest. This album finally collects all of the hit singles into one collection, with the glorious addition of a 1999 re-recording of “The Carpet Crawlers”, complete with Gabriel and Steve Hackett. Though it has shifted stylistically into the Phil Collins-era sound, the song is marvelously done, and Gabriel and Collins actually sound good harmonizing. (I expected Phil to be favored in the mix, and perhaps to even take over half the song, but fortunately this didn’t happen.) As you’ll see from the track listing, just about any single you’re looking for since the late 70’s is on Turn It On Again, including “Congo”, a decent 1997 tune featuring a new 
Well, I guess this is proof that I’m a sucker for nearly anything with the Electric Light Orchestra’s name on the cover. This latest release from Eagle Records, the people who brought us rather nice CD pressings of concert recordings from ELO’s 1975 and 1978 tours, is a collection of studio numbers from the band’s appearances on BBC Radio’s Bob Harris Sessions show between 1972 and 1974. If it sounds like I’m a little bit skeptical, it’s because in places the songs on this CD sound exactly like the studio versions that eventually saw light on their respective albums. “Kuiama” especially raised my suspicions - are we sure that this isn’t the same cut that wound up on ELO II? Either that, or ELO really was the best live band in the world, managing to duplicate the entirety of a song, right down to its production nuances, in a live performance!
So, the final question is…for those die-hard fans who have heard every last ELO song in existence a thousand times, is it worth the effort to track this CD down? I’m such a fan myself, so my answer is a “Yes!”…but that’s a qualified yes. Even if it’s just for this version of “Mama”, I recommend the BBC Sessions album to those who have the time and money to blow on finding this one.
For years, I’ve been addicted to music from New Zealand’s royal family of pop music, the Finns (of Split Enz and Crowded House fame). Not so long ago, however, I saw a CNN piece on a new Kiwi project which not only sounded interesting, but drew heavily from New Zealand’s Maori heritage (another subject with which I’m fascinated). This new musical entry was called Oceania, and it took me forever to find a copy. But the search was well worth it (and now, as you can see from the ubiquitous purchase link on this page, it’s suddenly easy to find!).