Spiderman Suite (1967-68 Cartoon)

Before anything else, I want to state my gratitude to “11db11” for the work he/she did on pulling together all of the Original Spiderman background music—as none of this would be possible otherwise! The Cartoon: The original Spiderman Cartoon (1967-70) was produced on a shoestring budget. I’ll admit that it has its flows- some of the dialog is terrible, some of the plots ridiculous, and there is a lot of padding where the same animation is repeated over and over gain. However, there are three noteworthy aspects which give these 50+ year old episodes their vitality. 1. In the second and third seasons, a new company was brought in to create the animation, with the very talented Ralph Bakshi (later to develop Fritz the Cat and Wizards). The layouts and use of color have an apocalyptic feel that is very different than most cartoons of the era. 2. Some very gifted Canadian voice actors supported this show- there has never been a better J. Jonah Jameson. 3. Bob Harris and Ray Ellis have contributed some excellent music. I’m not just talking about the catchy title tune- but the incidental music they created in the first year is one of the most creative hybrids of big band, jazz,rock, and the occasional orchestral music. I think it was the music that drew me into the show. The Music: However, the masters for the original background music are supposedly lost—they have become the “Holy Grail” for flim/tv music collectors. At this point, the person known as 11db11 has done the music world a HUGE favor by compiling 68 minutes of original music from the show directly from the episodes themselves:    • Spider-Man Music 1967-69 (ALL Background M...   Once again- this is directly from the show’s soundtracks, which meant there was also dialog and sound effects. Fortunately, in padding a 25 minute script, there were many sections where the music carried the show, and 11db11 clearly took a lot of time to find the sections with the least amount of dialog. Discovering this collection was a major joy for me. The only thing lacking, for me, was to get a feel of continuity between the varied snippets, so I have taken about 32 minutes of the audio and edited them into a musical suite, using overlapping, cross fades, and some convolution reverb to “glue” parts together. I also tried to cut dialog even further- you may note some spots where I deleted a few bars here or there to cut out more dialog. (I also had to leave out a couple solid tracks where the dialog overwhelmed the music, IMO.) I’ve also done some basic restoration work—I reduced some hiss, made volume levels more consistent, fiddled with the EQ to tone down some excess brightness, and remastered with multi-band compression to make the sound more full across the spectrum. This is still far from perfect, but given the rarity of the music, definitely better than nothing. The Video: I had created a video that would have clips from the cartoon to match the action in the music, but the content owner didn’t want to share, even if they wanted all the monetization. (I NEVER monetize my work on Youtube, and never will). The only way to escape this restriction was to apply one (and in some locations TWO) kaleidoscope filters. If you haven’t seen the cartoon, here are a few episodes worth looking up: KingPinned: One of the more “normal” villains you would see, and Spidey Is fighting gangsters. Home: The cute girl Peter Parker meets at the coffee shop turns out to be a Spiderwoman with her own agenda. Swing City: A mad, green, nuclear scientist (the “Master Technician”), t takes over a nuclear power station and levitates Manhattan Island,, holding it for ransom. Spider Man has to websling “beneath” Manhattan to get into the power station. This is probably now my favorite episode, and has some really great artwork in the background. The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: A creepy looking phantom plans to take over the world with toy furniture with the assistance of three attractive robot mannequins. Revolt of the Fifth Dimension: Spiderman has a psychedelic, out of the body experience when he tries to save the knowledge of an alien civilization. This episode has a reputation, given that one of the sound tracks was called “L.S.D.” and Spiderman refers to the ordeal as a trip he would not want to take again. The Horn of the Rhino: A human rhinoceros is out to steal DoD secrets. I love this guy. Cold Storage: Spiderman is trapped in a nuclear power freezer by criminals, and when he thaws out, his is in a prehistoric, post apocalyptic future. There is a lot of padding in this episode, but still some of the strangest visuals they’ve ever had.