Eve of the War

A little revelation for me today. I finally found a song that I was whispering from time to time, without knowing the title or who the artist is. And yes, it has dawned on me, thanks to my friend Rade who is a meticulous seeker of pop culture stuff on the Internet. It is Jeff Wayne’s “Eve of the War”! Big thanks. You know, this is really a situation where search engines don’t help. How are you supposed to enter a keyword for something that you can only reproduce as music. Is this a good idea for an innovative search engine? Probably not.

There’s one thing that connects me strongly to this song. It was used as intro to a 1980’s Yugoslav sci-fi review show “Zvezdani ekran” (“Starry Screen”) hosted by Zoran Živković, the leading authority on science fiction in former Yugoslavia, later a big friend of Michael Moorcock and the most translated Serbian writer.

I watched the show in 1985 and 1986 usually some time at noon, before the school. I am sorry that the recorded shows are nowhere to be found, otherwise I would put the whole intro here, not just the music. The one below is from an animated series.

Yes, mid-eighties Graf! That was the time of those BBC documentaries, ones from Thames production. Wildlife shows like “Survival”. David Bellamy and wanders of nature somewhere around 10AM and then Zvezdani ekran. It was in that show that I saw a short sci-fi film "Quest" by Saul Bass based on a story by Ray Bradbury of the world where people live for only eight days and try to get out of that world for generations. One of my great impressions which is now decades old. It is another artefact of my TV life that I am lookin for...

Here's the video with Jeff Wayne's "Eve of the War" as a theme: