So the title says "Original USA TV Soundtrack" in retrospect those titles hold true, this wasn't the first English dub of the series but it was the first time an English dub was given new BGM. For years after this we would get tons of new BGM for the series but this, this was the original.
So the cover for the DragonBall soundtrack seems... alright, the one for DragonBall Z? Uh, a little odd. Why would you have an image where Goku is covering two characters? I think they should have gone with a different image or just moved some stuff around...
There seems to be an odd printer error strip across the DBZ logo. It's also in the booklet, you'll see that in a second. I've actually seen this error on other versions of this CD, so I don't know what's up with that. The track listings are a bit odd. They are named after the episode titles in order. Some tracks have more then one piece of music which is confusing, why not give them all there own tracks and name them something else? I don't know, I think this is a standard practice though, I've seen this done on that old 4 disc (Japanese) BGM but I really don't know.
The booklets for each soundtrack credit Akira Toriyama and yea, they should. I really don't think this would be done today. Look at these things, they are pretty snazy looking (snazy? uh...).
So, yea. Big industrial printer error all over Goku's face there. The DragonBall soundtrack booklet opens two fold and the DragonBall Z one opens three fold. The reason it looks like there is a piece missing on the DBZ one is because it was too long for my scanner, it was just a track listing right next to Piccolo's face with a black background. Nothing major.
This was the opposite side of the DBZ booklet. I forgot to scan the DB one but it was just that production image of Goku on the Nimbus and Bulma riding her...uh, flying machine and the other image was the cover so...
The disc themselves are DragonBalls. I guess it was pretty cool the first time I've seen it. But since then it's been done so many times. The DB one looks a bit odd to me, the DBZ seems to look more like a DragonBall but that's just me.
So what about the music itself? Well like I've said before it's just the BGM, which sometimes has up to 3 pieces of music on one track with only one name. I could play a track and totally remember the scene(s) that music was used in. If this version of DB\DBZ was the way you got into DragonBall, then you will absolutely adore these tracks. Here is a (very) small sample of three tracks. The Emperor Pilaf keyboard solo is one of my favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGdry2Y2Bl8
Also the DragonBall soundtrack is an "Enhanced CD". Ya see kids, back in the late 90's it seemed pretty cool to put a video on a CD with an album. The first Britney Spears album was an enhanced cd. You don't really see them anymore, but if you do they are much better quality then what we were given back then. Take a look at this video on the DragonBall soundtracks. It's just the introduction speech and the intro followed by a hilarious looking ad for thecollector.com. The video quality is so bad, but at the time this was pretty cool...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMp2EOLHIOg
Yes, it does look like they just recorded it from one of there videos. Well that's about it. Hope you enjoyed this look back!
