Cowboy Bebop VICL-60201

front of CD

back of CD

actual CD

title: Cowboy Bebop
catalog number: VICL-60201
country of publication: Japan
publisher: Victor Entertainment
date of release: May 21st, 1998
book: full color and black and white, 8 pages
tracks: 17
total running time: 53 min 28 seconds
description: The CD's title doesn't say much, but this CD really is the first Cowboy Bebop tv CD. This CD contains the opening song, background music, and one insert song from CowBe tv. The insert song is the only one with vocals on this CD, lyrics are included in the book. "The Real Folk Blues", the first ending for the series, is noticably not included. <:P The first 6 pages of the book are full color, the final 2 are black and white. Pages 2 through 4 are half red and half black, divided vertically down the center. The left side of these pages contains stills from the anime series for illustrations over the arforementioned red background. Page 2 has the CD track list printed in white and red on the black background. Page 3's black half contains more information for tracks 1-9, such as Japanese katakana (phonetic syllables) underneath the English song titles, and also music credits for a number of songs. Page 4 contains the more detailed track breakdown for songs 10-17. Page 6 is entirely red with two black and white long vertical photographs of odd ironwork as illustrations. In white type over the red and photos are CD and music credits. Page 7 is printed in black and white, and has a small photo of a Japanese woman (likely Kanno Youko herself) next to a photo of sand with "Be" written in it with a stick. Interestingly, the photos are credited to "Y.K.", again likely Kanno Youko. In white type on the black background are credtis for the anime, and the unavoidable "Copyright Warning" statements in Japanese at the bottom of the page. Interestingly, that copyright notice is the only Japanese text in the entire book, aside from the katakana spellings of song titles on pages 3 and 4. Everything else is in English! Now, the music! Kanno Youko proves once more that she is a modern master of music. CowBe's jazz songs are about as far as Escaflowne's traditional chorus and orchestra themes as you can get! My favorite tracks are the opening, the insert song  Rain, and the bgm Bad Dog No Biscuits. (That last one is the song playing white poor Spike is trying to catch Ein in ep 2.) :D This anime's music runs the full gamut of jazz and blues, from harmonica or trumpet solos to full a jazz band. Normally I don't care for jazz, but I can and have listened to this CD on infinite loop. ^^ Now I have to buy my own copy, since this CD is not mine, I just borrowed it! Ahhh! There goes another $30....
cd from Tiffany's collection

track list (no romanization or translation required)

1. Tank!, tv op, full-length, instrumental, 3:30
2. Rush, tv bgm, 3:34
3. Spokey Dokey, tv bgm, 4:04
4. Bad Dog No Biscuits, tv bgm, 4:09
5. Cat Blues, tv bgm, 2:35
6. Cosmos, tv bgm, 1:36
7. Space Lion, tv bgm, 7:10
8. Waltz for Zizi, tv bgm, 3:29
9. Piano Black, tv bgm, 2:17
10. Pot City, tv bgm, 2:14
11. Too Good Too Bad, tv bgm, 2:34
12. Car 24, tv bgm, 2:29
13. The Egg and I, tv bgm, 2:42
14. Felt Tip Pen, tv bgm, 2:39
15. Rain, by Steve Conte, tv ins remix, vocal, 3:23
16. Digging My Potato, tv bgm, 2:24
17. Memory, tv bgm, 1:31

10-12-04