Monkey (TV Series) - Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The songs in the series were performed by the five-piece Japanese band Godiego. In Japan, the first series' ending theme "Gandhara" (ガンダーラ, Gandāra?), which was named after the ancient kingdom of Gandhara, was released by Columbia Music Entertainment on 1 October 1978, backed with "Celebration". This was followed by the release of the opening theme "Monkey Magic" on 25 December 1978, with "A Fool" on the B-side. Godiego also released the Magic Monkey album on 25 October 1978, comprising all of the songs that the band had composed for the first series. The album became one of the group's highest charting releases, staying at #1 on the Oricon chart for a total of eight weeks. For the second series, the ending theme of "Gandhara" was replaced with "Holy and Bright", which was released on 1 October 1979 (the two sides of the single featured a Japanese language version on one side and an English language version on the other).

In the UK, BBC Records released "Gandhara" as a single in 1979 (RESL 66), with "The Birth of the Odyssey" and "Monkey Magic" on the B-side. The single reached #56 on the UK Singles Chart, eventually spending a total of seven weeks on the chart. A second BBC single was released in 1980 (RESL 81), this time featuring an edited version of "Monkey Magic", along with "Gandhara" and "Thank You Baby", but this single failed to chart. The BBC releases of "Gandhara" have one verse sung in Japanese and the other in English. BBC Records also released the Magic Monkey album under the simplified title of Monkey (REB 384) in 1980 but it failed to chart.

Masaaki Sakai, who plays Monkey in the series, also performed several of the songs for the series: "SONGOKU", "Ima de wa Oso Sugiru" (今では遅すぎる?, "It's Too Late"), "Kono Michi no Hatemademo" (この道の果てまでも?, "To the End of the Road"), a Japanese version of Godiego's "Thank You Baby", and "20 Oku Nen no Kurayami" (20億年の暗闇?, "Two Billion Years of Darkness").