I have been looking for this movie for years. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what it was called. I was a very young kid when this debuted. Thanks for posting it!
The most amazing thing about this album is that all the music is derived from the opening chord's step progression (heard here in the guitar solo). Even the Hiawatha melody is simply singing the notes of the chord up and down. It is an amazing acheivement all round and my favorite album. It should be taught on music syllabuses as a masterpiece of economy.
@Martin Joustra - the material coming off the rocket is ICE. Water vapor from the atmosphere contacted the rocket, which, when fuelled up with liquid oxygen was very, very cold - and froze, becoming ice on the outside of the rocket. And the vibration of the rocket engines shook the ice and caused it to fall from the rocket fuselage.
Tony Palmer directed the film and hired Mike Oldfield to do the music for this movie simply called "A Space Movie". It's really fantastic with Oldfields music backing it up. As I recall this movie was actually made in 1979 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Nasa had all those tapes and wanted to put something together to celebrate all the things that went into finally going to the moon, so they got Tony Palmer to make the movie.
The Space Movie was recently released in full on DVD in the UK. But it's not all that pristine in places, clearly lifted from a slightly glitchy video copy than the film negatives. Still a nice thing to have out. :)
They left the first part of this music (before the never ending guitar solo) off of only 1 CD version. For no reason whatsoever, as it fits even when sticking to 74 minutes. There certainly are complete CD versions of Incantations, and I assume all CD's you find now in shops are complete. Marvellous video.
HI Ironlord I totally agree with you I would love to see Mike Oldfield , david Gilmore and Jean michel Jarre in concert together. The Music would bo out of this world as would the light show. 3< Peace and
I had taped it when I saw it as a PBS or History Channel Special around 1979 or 1980. I lost the tape. :-( They have a DVD of it but Amazon says currently unavailable! I wish they would stock up on these I wonder why it's unavailable??
brilliant. got all versions of this, but only now recall this video. KaFaraqGatri, where did you get this on DVD ? It's an awesome piece of 70's nostalgia. Can you imagine them making this these days ?? Think not !
I agree with mlbalan74, this is different from the original Space Movie! I taped it way back. I wish I could get the CD but Amazon says unavailable, anybody know where I can get a copy of Tony Palmer's "A Space Movie". Love Mike Oldfields soundtrack to it! Made a really inspiring movie!
I am afraid that you are very wrong - there is a laser reflector on the moon that was put there by astronauts and is currently used to check the distance that the moon is from us:check wikipedia
