Did anyone have this release on their 2024 bingo card, 43 years after the show premiered? I’m not saying it’s in any way unwelcome – far from it – just very unexpected. But Marvel is having (or, perhaps, has had, depending on who you ask) its moment, so one cynical view that it’s possible to take is that even the most tenuous connection to the Marvel universe is ripe for some fresh exploitation. But if that takes the form of memories from your Saturday mornings in 1981, can you really remain that cynical?
On the downside, it’s an exceedingly short album, but as was often the case with animated TV of this vintage, a composer was hired to assemble a library of music that could be deployed interchangeably from episode to episode. Even those tracks that seem like they’re tagged for use with specific characters or situations (i.e. “Electro Man Theme”, “The Green Goblin”, “Ms. Lion Theme”) were probably used outside of those contexts, repeatedly and relentlessly. Whatever the show’s editors thought would fit a specific scene, they’d cut it together from the show’s internal music library and make it work. The strange magic of this era of animation (and this is something that’s been covered in past reviews of such soundtracks as Star Trek: The Animated Series and Battle Of The Planets) is that the constant reuse bred a delightful familiarity; if you were watching these shows in real time every Saturday morning, these tunes burrowed into your head as much as anything you heard on the radio.
With its 1981 timestamp, the musical lexicon of Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends includes all-purpose funk (“Bobby The Iceman”), which almost sounds like a lost opus from Buck Rogers’ Space Rockers, and the slightly more sinister, sinewy “Firestar Theme”. If it ever seemed like there was an implied romance between Spidey and Firestar, the track “Spider-Man And Firestar” is probably responsible for planting 90% of that idea. Action tracks like “Three Heroes Prepare To Go” have distinct disco flavorings, just a reminder that disco didn’t just instantly die on New Years’ Eve 1979 – it hung around into the early ’80s and cross-pollinated with new wave and other genres.
It’s all lavished with lush production – honestly, it all sounds better than I remember, and much like the other specimens of vintage animation music cited earlier, there are real players, not a stack of synthesizers. I really was only ever a very casual viewer of Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends at the time, but I always jump at vintage animation soundtrack releases like this because they’re greater than the sum of their parts somehow. The intricate musicianship and production were worthy of something with a bit more staying power than an animated show that were frequently treated as disposable entertainment.
- Main Title – Spider-man And Friends (00:59)
- Bobby The Iceman (01:05)
- Firestar Theme (01:24)
- Spider-Man And Firestar (00:59)
- Three Heroes Prepare To Go (02:20)
- Electro Man Theme (01:21)
- The Green Goblin (01:21)
- Suspense Action (01:11)
- Loki Theme (00:44)
- Aunt May (00:42)
- Rock Jazz (00:35)
- College Theme (00:47)
- Impending disaster (01:35)
- Ms Lion Theme (01:32)
- End Title – Spider-man And Friends (00:30)
Released by: Dulcima Records
Release date: February 24, 2024
Total running time: 17:01