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Jeff Wayne
The War Of The Worlds
(CBS, 1978)
To give it its rightful, bloated title, ‘Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds’ was, along with Paul Kennerley’s 1978 prog-country Civil War double-vinyl miniseries, White Mansions, and Mike Nesmith’s 1978 existential west coast relationship metaphor book-with-a-soundtrack synth prog-country thing, The Prison, one of my three favourite albums of 1978. Why my older brother invested in three of these 12” x 12” story-book soundtrack affairs in that particular year can, I think, be explained away by that telling late ’70s phrase, “value for money”, or, more accurately, “never mind the quality, feel the width”. As a precocious 11-year-old I loved them: portentous, meandering song structures and doomy synths with different singers playing the roles of different people across double albums that were so much more than mere pop songs. In the days before audiobooks, I could sit with the headphones on, flicking through a big book that told an educational story, while Richard Burton (WOTW), or Waylon Jennings (WM) intoned about doomy, historical things. This was what grammar school would be all about, I told myself, educated young men discussing the intricacies of Martian invasion and the 1847 U.S. Mexican war whilst sipping a Cresta and putting Side Three on again. It wasn’t. It was this. Sigh. That life in academia would have to wait a few years. AM
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