lthough he first appeared in 1966 on the Saturday morning animated TV series The Space Ghost And Dino Boy, it took the debut of the Cartoon Network more than 25 years later for Space Ghost to become a sensation among adult SF cognoscenti. With a weird blend of silliness, satire and surrealism, his talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which debuted in 1993, has attracted an audience of devoted viewers who enjoy watching the masked host verbally skewer live guests such as Bob Denver, Adam West and Sandra Bernhard. While none of those flesh-and-blood individuals appear on this album, the collection does present harmonic highlights and short vignettes from both the intergalactic gabfest and its companion production Cartoon Planet, along with a couple of karaoke sing-along songs and two all-new compositions.
Joined by his bandleader Zorak, who also happens to be a six-foot-tall alien insect, and the dimwitted space pirate Brak, Space Ghost romps through 25 musical selections and 13 dialogue snippets. The compositions generally mix childish topics with adult references, as in the opening cut "Smells Like Cartoon Planet," which offers a stylistic nod to Nirvana, the Elvis-esque "I Love Almost Everybody," and the brief homage to "MacArthur Park" buried within "I Love You, Baby." These relatively mature melodies are interspersed with silly ditties like "Hoodleehoo," "Oh Fun Key Bay Bee," and "Put Your Sox On Mama," plus deliberately infantile interactions such as "Big Head," "Minkey Boodle," and "Muh Nuh, Muh Nuh."
Cartoon buffoons
Although devoid of their customary visual shenanigans, this trio of immature entertainers still generates enough humor to make even the most jaded critic crack a smile. Hearing Zorak's entomological ode to his thousand-eyed paramour "Zingor" is laugh-out-loud funny, and Brak's litany of legumes, dubbed "I Love Beans," is--ahem--a genuine gas. Space Ghost himself also performs his share of tunes, offering a fast-paced and well-written history of the series on "The Cartoon Planet Story" and a ridiculously egocentric but enormously entertaining "Everybody Wants To Be Space Ghost."
Beyond the music, which stylistically ranges from rock and pop to blues and jazz, the dialogue spotlights the often scatterbrained and occasionally scatological wit of the characters. Listeners joyfully learn never to count on an ape to take accurate class notes during "Brak's School Daze: Trust A Monkey?" while Space Ghost takes listeners on a brief excremental excursion in the surprisingly hilarious "Fluffy." It's easy to get caught up in the smart aleck spirit, and by the end of the record, when wordless versions of "I Love You, Baby" and "Zingor" appear, it is almost impossible not to sing along (using the lyrics thoughtfully provided in the booklet accompanying the collection).
Brak's horrid rendition of the previously unreleased and apparently unrehearsed "Highway 40 Unplugged" represents one of the few weak points on the package, but most of the tracks are enthusiastically performed and highly amusing. Diehard science fiction fans may be disappointed at the lack of traditional speculative subjects, but admirers of humorous harmonies and preposterous jokes should find little to complain about from these three outlandish and over-the-top denizens of Cartoon Planet.
