For those of you too young to even know what it meant to be in the Kiss Army, you missed out on many things, chief among them Power Records. With Power Records, comic book characters came alive and feature films like Planet of the Apes were transformed into 15 minute adventures!
It was a magical time when every hero had his own song.
(click on the image to hear the infamous Metamorpho tune)
I still get a charge out of listening to these old recordings, from Batman in Stacked Cards to the absurdly hilarious Star Trek’s Passage to Moauv, Superman talking to dolphins in the Mystery of the Mad Minnows or hearing the most rockin’ and soulful version of the Batman theme ever!
The stories were madly imaginative, often taken from the very comic books on the stands at the time! Featuring a man with a metal plate in his head tricking Wonder Woman’s magic lasso, the Man-Thing encountering the ghost of a clown or Batman meeting Sherlock Holmes in the jolly old England, these tales were astounding… in many ways. The voice acting ranged from inspired to awful. I often theorized that several records were made on the same day in quick succession. You may even recognize old familiar voice actors from Speed Racer!
A division of Peter Pan records, Power Records was every boy’s internal voice for super heroes in the 70’s. Each record came with a fully illustrated book and was lushly produced into the maddest experiences ever put to vinyl.
If you have never heard a Power Record, visit the fantastic Power Records blog to read up on the material or Power Records Plaza and have a listen. It will either make you nostalgic or completely bewildered (depending on your side of the age of 30), but it will make one thing clear… there is nothing like this today!
