Saturday, May 24, 2008

Now that's what I call a re-release

Shawn Zehnder Lea noted that a new batch of recordings was added to the National Recording Registry back on May 14. But among the Harry Truman speech, the Michael Jackson "Thriller" recording, and the other things, one of the recordings caught my eye:

...the 1977 record of Earth sounds that flew aboard the spacecraft Voyager in the event alien life forms encountered the craft....

Yes, we're talking about a re-release of something that originally came out in 1977.

And even the 1977 release wasn't original.

The music included an eclectic 90-minute musical program, in which Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode" and Mozart's "Magic Flute" vied with a Zairian Pygmy girls' initiation song, a shakuhachi piece from Japan, and "Dark Was the Night," written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson.

So we had Johnny B. Goode, originally recorded in the 1950s, then included in an intergalactic 1977 record release, then enshrined in a 2008 collection.

Hope Chuck Berry is getting some good royalties.

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