I've known about Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" album, at least vaguely since the early 1980's, but somehow never bought a copy.
Today I came across a mention of it over at Space Battles and it brought back memories of looking for it back in the mid 80's, which led to Yahoo searching
and Youtube.
Here is a Youtube video of the live version of Thunder Child from "War of the Worlds"
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As a rule I have been dissapointed in the movie and TV versions of "War of the Worlds" and until now have been dissapointed in all version set in
relatively modern times say after about 1905.
All the directors and script writers using relatively modern times feel forced to boost the Martians technology and end up making the aliens so powerful they
become completely untouchable and lose a lot of the flavor of the Martians in the original book often destroying the telling of the story.
I personally don't think the script writers and directors fully understand what made the book a classic work of science fiction.
Another pet peeve and evidence that the movie directors or script writers don't understand is the fact that I've never seen even a variation of the
Thunder Child's battle with the Martian Walkers set in film.
Part of the power of the book was not the martians advanced technology "Walking Over" man's best efforts, it was the frustration of the nearness
of that technology to what man already had. Just a little more another decade or maybe 30 years and they could have stood off the invasion, yes at great
cost, but it wouldn't have been the walk over that was occuring.
When I found out about the stage performance of the Thunder Child Battle I waited the 55 minutes it took to download it and was pleasantly surprised to see
someone understood. In spite of being set after 1900 the script writer had used that frustration from the book of almost being enough, almost being able to
stand, almost able to make a fight of it.
For you that have fast internet connections there are other youtube files of stage performances of the Jeff Wayne's album's, sadly I don't have
the hour or so it would take me to download each video.
howard melton
God bless
Today I came across a mention of it over at Space Battles and it brought back memories of looking for it back in the mid 80's, which led to Yahoo searching
and Youtube.
Here is a Youtube video of the live version of Thunder Child from "War of the Worlds"
-----------------
----------------
As a rule I have been dissapointed in the movie and TV versions of "War of the Worlds" and until now have been dissapointed in all version set in
relatively modern times say after about 1905.
All the directors and script writers using relatively modern times feel forced to boost the Martians technology and end up making the aliens so powerful they
become completely untouchable and lose a lot of the flavor of the Martians in the original book often destroying the telling of the story.
I personally don't think the script writers and directors fully understand what made the book a classic work of science fiction.
Another pet peeve and evidence that the movie directors or script writers don't understand is the fact that I've never seen even a variation of the
Thunder Child's battle with the Martian Walkers set in film.
Part of the power of the book was not the martians advanced technology "Walking Over" man's best efforts, it was the frustration of the nearness
of that technology to what man already had. Just a little more another decade or maybe 30 years and they could have stood off the invasion, yes at great
cost, but it wouldn't have been the walk over that was occuring.
When I found out about the stage performance of the Thunder Child Battle I waited the 55 minutes it took to download it and was pleasantly surprised to see
someone understood. In spite of being set after 1900 the script writer had used that frustration from the book of almost being enough, almost being able to
stand, almost able to make a fight of it.
For you that have fast internet connections there are other youtube files of stage performances of the Jeff Wayne's album's, sadly I don't have
the hour or so it would take me to download each video.
howard melton
God bless
