Special Guest Villains: Sun Ra And Al Kooper.

This is the kind of thing that causes Record Geekdom.

Back in 1966, this toy company outta Newark, New Jersey, decided to cash in on the Batman craze. Why not, everybody else was doing it?

So they got some musicians. Those musicians made up a bunch of stuff in the studio, some of it based on classical stuff that wouldn't cost anything. They gave the tunes some Bat-ish titles. And POW!, you got yourself a Batman record, credited to the "Sensational Guitars Of Dan And Dale."

Cash-in records like this — whipped up around some theme in an effort to snag the dough of unsuspecting consumers — were all over the place in the mid-60s. (There are dozens of Beatle-y ones.) Well, in this case, the nameless session players turned out to be members of the Sun Ra Arkestra and Al Kooper's Blues Project. Kind of a coup, really — not that the people making this thing probably cared.

You find this thing sitting in a thrift store every once in a while, and you realize that people musta really liked it — they sure played the crap out of it.

And you can play the crap out of it, too. Just activate the Bat-Downloader.