Quest for Camelot

Sometimes, perhaps a lot of the time, I’ll watch a movie solely for the music. A lot of my favorite movies are like this. The Goofy Movie, The Country Bears, and Quest for Camelot are examples that come to mind. I’m sure there are others. While all these movies have great music, and I like them, some leave more to be desired than others.

The Country Bears, once I finally acquired the soundtrack, I never felt the urge to watch again. The music truly was the one and only reason I would watch. The other two aforementioned movies are another story entirely however. It is Quest for Camelot that I wish to address at this time. (I feel like my voice here has been affected, and not for the best, by the fact that I have been watching the Granada Sherlock Homes TV series—1984 starring Jeremy Brett. Just FYI)

Quest for Camelot is the only one of those movies that I do not possess the soundtrack of. This is strange because from the very beginning my interest in the movie has been wholly musical. That is to say, I wanted to see the movie because I found out Steve Perry sang for it. Steve Perry again, huh? He is, to those who don’t know, the singer for Journey that made them famous when they decided to stop being some sort of 70s prog fusion band or something. He’s great.

Anyway, I may have mentioned this before, but I love several of the tracks from this album enough to listen to them over and over again. “United We Stand” is one of them. Credited to Perry, this song is the main reason I love the album. I really do listen to this song over and over when I check the CD out from the library. This song is the one played during the title sequence, when Kaylee’s father is going to Camelot to sit at the Round Table. While I love Perry, his part singing as King Arthur, is far from the best. The song simply isn’t tailored to show off his voice. Instead the song is dominated by an awesome faux Irish Hornpipe part on a string arrangement and a repeated male chorus part. Also unfortunately, as much as I love Perry’s version of “I Stand Alone,” Bryan White’s version is better. White’s is used for Gareth in the film, while Perry’s is regulated to the credit sequence at the end.