Max Rebo Band “Jedi Rocks” CD

Given the latest news about the changes George Lucas has made to the original trilogy, I thought this would be a good time to post about this item. As I discussed in my post about the Power of the Force Rebo Band figures, George Lucas replaced the Jabba’s palace musical number that originally appeared in Return of the Jedi with a different one called “Jedi Rocks.”

It features lots of new CGI characters, and really seems out of place in the overall film. Lucas apparently wanted a place to flex his CGI muscles, and I guess this stretch of time in the film fit the bill. Very few people see this as an improvement, and I personally can’t stand to watch this section of the film. So the idea that they would release a CD single with just “Jedi Rocks” on it kind of boggles the mind. Who (aside from a completist Jabba collector like myself) is going to buy such a thing? The version of the song on the CD is 2 minutes 46 seconds long — almost twice as long as the song in the clip (which is cut short when Oola falls into the Rancor pit). But the last half is just instrumental, so you’re really not getting anything you don’t see in the clip above.

The only sort of cool thing about this is the CD itself, which is mostly transparent and decorated with a picture of the (original) Rebo Band. If you turn it over, you can see the actual CD portion. I’ve never seen a CD quite like this.