The Electric Light Jedi Orchestra
Every once in a while I run across something that really makes me believe in synchronicity – that there are simply no coincidences whatsoever. This interview with David Acomba, who was initially slated to direct the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, really keeps me thinking that way too. An excerpt discussing the original intentions for the legendarily lousy show’s musical direction:
FAX: It’s interesting imagining “The Star Wars Holiday Special” as a rock musical.
ACOMBA: It definitely would have had more rock ‘n’ roll in the same way that Robin Phillips is more rock ‘n’ roll, it’s just crazier. It needn’t have been loud, grungy stuff, but it would have been much more contemporary and much simpler. I like really simple music tracks. I think it would have turned out to be much better.
FAX: Who might you have used?
ACOMBA: Let’s see, who was available at the time? The new version of Jefferson Starship had some big hits at the time and that was okay for me. The Electric Light Orchestra, not my favorite group but, on the other hand, it does have some relevance because they were very big at the time.
It just goes to show that I’ve been right all these years: as hairy as he is, Jeff Lynne is a Wookiee. As many sci-fi references and concepts as he managed to sneak into ELO’s lyrics over the years, one can only imagine that old Jeff would’ve jumped at the chance. On the flipside, I’m glad that things didn’t happen that way – it took long enough for me to get my hands on “Beatles Forever.” Considering that Jefferson Starship’s song from the Holiday Special was never an album track (and so far as I know, hasn’t even shown up on any career retrospectives), the last thing I would’ve needed would be another impossible-to-find ELO song.
But given that I’m a huge fan of both ELO and Star Wars, I’m sure I would’ve figured something out. 😉… Read more
Grrrrr. Basically, this is almost all of wave 1 (I’m keeping Gwen if I can afford to); I ordered in July, cancelled in August, and scificollector.co.uk seems to have forgotten I cancelled…so, long story short, I have an overdraft and some stuff for sale. Listings: 
So, that big-ass Doctor Who reference book that I keep threatening to write and publish? I’m still working on it. Oh yes, it’s not going away. It will happen. The purpose of this post, however, is to do a wee bit of market research ahead of time; I’d appreciate it if those interested would respond and help me out a bit. While I’ve got some fairly definite ideas on how I’d like it to turn out – basically, my criteria with just about anything I create is that I’m producing a DVD that I’d like to watch, writing a book that I’d like to read, writing a song that I’d like to hear, and it just so happens that no one else has saved me the trouble of doing this stuff first. … 
The one guy in the county who will bother to look at our apparently outdated furnace is unavailable until Monday. We’re on our own since then. Borrowed a couple of space heaters from “the fam,” despite my huge, huge, huge reservations about those things (especially in terms of putting one in Evan’s room – I think I finally stopped looking into his room every half hour at around 3am), and we’ve kept the bathroom heaters running full-tilt too. I’ve also been doing a heap of cooking – tuna casserole, chicken, brownies…today’s menu probably includes hamburger helper (with ostrich meat instead of beef – I’m aiming for a minimum of beef usage, or, if you like, keeping it all to a “beef min”) and some teriyaki yumminess. The oven heat vents mostly inside the house (have I ever gotten into how weirdly this house is wired/arranged?), though not all in one place, so there’s a method to the cooking madness.
Remember 
As has probably been painfully apparent lately, I really off of the sci-fiaction figure collecting bandwagon in 2008, largely thanks to Doctor Who. (Hey, there are worse hobbies/habits to have, and in all likelihood there are less expensive and more “mature” ones too. At least my practice run for a midlife crisis involves little bits of plastic.) Now it’s looking like next year’s Star Trek movie is going to make 2009 a hell of a year to have fallen off the wagon. … 
Two lovely bits of news: