History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
This is the end product of crass over commercialization of a fantastically successful movie franchise (and crass over commercialization is something new Star Wars franchise owner Disney has made a fucking SCIENCE of.) A totally useless and crummy knockoff of itself.
This was among the last releases from the dying RSO Records label. RSO was still smarting from the massive failure of their first and only entry in the movie business, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Which costed the company millions to produce and millions more to promote and barely drew flies, let alone an audience at the time of it's release.
Like another upstart '70s record label and their biggest rival, Casablanca Records, RSO was a wildly successful record label gone horribly wrong. They both made a serious error on betting far too much on disco and when disco died, they were both left with massive image problems and a massive portion of their rosters of once platinum artists who suddenly couldn't sell cardboard.
On top of that, the Bee Gees had filed a $200 million lawsuit against RSO and were forced to settle out of court and the band stayed with the label until it dissolved
In fact, the only album RSO released that sold anything decently in 1980 was the Irene Cara-heavy soundtrack to the movie Fame. But RSO was still drowning in red ink.
In 1981, RSO finally yelled uncle and sold out to it's distributor, Polydor Records, who promptly dissolved the label and save the always lucrative Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees (who both had the advantage of the upper hand over their former label, which Polydor inherited, But they were also still platinum sellers outside the US), sent everyone else packing.
This record was part of a deal to distribute soundtrack albums for the Star Wars franchise. Christmas In The Stars actually sold fairly well and a second printing was planned, But RSO was so deep in debt, they couldn't even raise the capital for that.
But the REAL kicker on this album is the last track on Side 1, "R2D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas", sung by a young lad named John Bongiovi (You may know him better as Jon Bon Jovi.) In his first professional recording.......
Yes, I know I've been slacking up here lately. But I've had a very agonizing month. Lots of health problems and worst of all, chronic pain. It's very hard to concentrate and come up with fun flashbacks when inside, you really just wanna scream.
Things are settling down now and I hope to be back on the ball with even more posts from the Landfill of Time starting December 1st.
Thank you all for your concerned e-mails and comments. They really meant a lot. Yes, I am alive, but not so well. I have a lot more tests to go through next month and I may be spotty on my continuity. But I hope to be a little more productive.
