Revival and Revenge of the Robot

Old Robot Dead - Long Live New Robot!

The Revenge and Revival of the Robot

"Catz" comic strip was a regular feature of the Chicago area newspaper The Illiana Beat. The above strip was first published August 6, 1984 by young cartoonist Rob Lattin. This cartoon is apt to go with the release of the Revenge of the Robot Part 1 & 2, dontcha think?

Last year, on the Fantom Phactory site, this article appeared about a new version of the song The Robot:

Revenge of the Robot: Son of Robot 3.0 Released

Digging in the vault of broken parts and dusty vibes, we found the extended version of TeknoGeek's The Robot (2009). The Robot 2.0 (also known as The Robot Returns) was a variation but this recent discovery extends the song into another "realm".

Hence, the song which crawls out of the original would be aptly called "Son of Robot 3.0."

Alternative title is "Revenge of the Robot". It's pretty cool, especially with the added segue of the intro music to "Son of Pumpkinstein Theme".

Well, 2016 brings a different surprise! We recovered a wave of the original Robot which had the Teknogeek nerds discussing their plot. Originally called “The Plot”, the vocal dialog was deleted and a cymbal crash began (and ended) the song.

The idea was to have these geeks who sounded like Steven Hawking, who had no musical talent, to come up with a dastardly plan to create rock music to make them famous since they failed at their tech jobs. The plot was to kidnap Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and force him to record music for them. However, they wimped out and noticed that their neighbor also played electric guitar. Apparently, they had created a robot in which to become a musician but that failed (as the robot destroyed everything - so the story was supposed to go).

Anyway they decide to use the Robot to kidnap their guitar playing neighbor. The song The Robot (originally distributed by Tunecore) then led into the title track of their album “The Abduction of a Rock Guitarist”. This album was released in 2009 and was no longer available in the US after 2012.

The plot thickens, naturally, as this scenario led to the creation of Dr. Pumpkinstein’s Monster, fondly called Son of Pumpkinstein, released by the Fantom Phactory on the spooky album "Lonely Ghost"..

So when we remixed and remastered the Revenge of the Robot in 2015 we added part of the theme of Son of Pumpkinstein at the end of the extended version.

The Fantom Phactory article about the Robot continues:

Most of the TeknoGeek GoonSquad songs (soundtracks) were to be chapters in their story relating to the discovery of the Robot, going to Seattle, plotting to kidnap Jimmy Page, and discovery an old cassette player which had a tape that plays screams of the dead. Pretty frightening.

Fast forward to April 2016 - with the discovery of this slightly different version (wave and digital live) take of our friend the Robot, we kept the nerd dialogue, removed the cymbals and remastered the Latin rhythm backdrop. My original guitar tracks were re-inserted, as well as a remix of the Robot's voice. Cool!

Then, re-recording and remixing the second part, we added more dance rhythms, as well as robot sounds and an ominous undercurrent. Yes, he’s really a bad, bad robot.

With this discovery and re-mixing, etc, we have titled the song “The Revenge of the Robot Part 1 & 2” and it can be heard on YouTube in its entirety. The video isn’t about being a video, but a means to listen to the song so if you want to comment, please comment about the music and not the visuals.

Here it is everybody - don’t you just love the digital music freedom?!




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LINKS

Lost in Space Robot
Can Robots Dance?
Robby the Robot
Bad Robots of Dr Who??
Good Robot of Dr Who? Dr Smith!

The Final Frontier: Space Safari

Star Trek Meets
Jurassic World
- Space Safari

Going Beyond

Going beyond Star Trek, beyond Space 1999, and easily beyond Star Wars.

Converging with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Jurassic World and Jurassic Park.

Welcome to Space Safari. 
Ah, the Final Frontier! 

Sparing all effort on technological creativity and operating under a budget of $1.20, I finally finished the video accompaniment to the space soundtrack "Space Safari."

Here is the intro text to the video in case you have trouble reading:

"1700 years a go, a pre-Cambrian Englishman was commissioned by the Neolithic Universityfor the studies of imaginary black holes . . .
to study strange new worlds and civilizations and boldly go where no caveman has gone before . . . but he was irascible.

Being a young whippersnapper with a chimp on his shoulder he decided to ditch the scientific dogma of the Big Bang and . . . embark on his own interstellar expedition to discover if there are other zoological creations in the galaxy.

Since this was 1700 BILLION years ago, a time when space travel was very difficult, this mad Englishman, by the name of Fred Figstone, employed the assistance of his number one student, Barney Rebel, to develop a time machine to travel through the universal atmosphere. 

Barney was the discoverer of the aether, and since gravity wasn't discovered yet for billions of years, there was no gravity to hold them back.
They were looking to bag big game and place head trophies on their cave walls.

Unfortunately, Barney was too advanced for machinery and their time machine - space ship exceeded warp factor five and thrust them into a wormhole which stranded them in Outer Space in the year 1985 . . .

They subsequently got Lost in Space on their very special Space Safari."

That last part just brings a tear to my eye. In any event, I was just having fun and hope you got a kick out of the video. The meat lies in the music. This version of Space Safari (the soundtrack) is the extended version to cover the length of the video.

Did you know that the original song was under 3 minutes and the full video was over 10 minutes?
So, I extended the song (remastered it, too) and edited the visuals. Yes many cool scenes were cut and ended up on the projector floor. Oh, that's right, I didn't use movie film. Duh!

Anyway, since this is about space, and time travel and dinosaurs and elephants, it fits in perfectly with the work we are doing here at Mad Experiment.

Related links:

Star Trek Theme (Always brings a tear to my eye!)
Star Gate SG1 Theme - Best Sci Fi Theme in recent years
Space 1999 - I love Martin Landau and Barbara Baines
Jurassic World 2015

Special Note:

Although I love the original series of Star Trek (and The Next Generation) as a kid, I did not watch Kirk and Spock. I was a fan of Lost In Space and watched that instead. NOW I watch reruns of both shows and hands down, I love the themes from Lost In Space first and foremost. (It's not as sad as Star Trek's).

Listen to this . . . .

2 version of Lost In Space Theme
My Favorite Version of Lost In Space Theme
(This version opens with computer-like sounds and has great brass, composed by John Williams. If this link breaks or is discontinued, please let me know.) And I love the robot.

Gotta get back on the big hunt on my Space Safari.

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