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Updated: Friday, Dec. 12, 1997 at 08:23 CST

Space Opera at Caravan of Dreams: Back on Earth

If you're a rock band re-forming to play for the first time in more than a decade, the easy thing to do is to slap the old material into shape, perhaps do a new song or two, play to the old faithful, take a bow and take the money.

Space Opera, at one time Fort Worth's most popular band, is doing the exact opposite: For their first show since the summer of 1980, they're going to offer about 90 minutes of music, only a small portion of it from their eponymous 1973 LP.

"If anybody really liked the band, it was because we always did new things," says Scott Fraser, the guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist who got the ball rolling on the reunion in the summer of 1996. "We're sprinkling the set with older material, five cuts from the album, but most of the set is either entirely new or if you have heard it before, it was in a different format. I'm very happy with this -- it took a lot of work, but I think it's better than if we'd just worked up a quick club date."

Also, say Fraser and David Bullock, who sings as well as plays the guitar, flute and harmonica, most of the set will be structured as one long piece of music. Songs and themes will flow into each other with only a few breaks.

"Some of the connecting themes we're using are still developing," Bullock says. "And that's fun."

Fraser, Bullock, drummer Brett Wilson and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Philip White formed Space Opera in 1969. They played their first gig at The HOP, and by August of that year were one of the few local bands to play the Texas International Pop Festival in Lewisville, a Lone Star version of Woodstock that included sets by Led Zeppelin, Sly Stone, Grand Funk Railroad and B.B. King.

The band was a true hybrid, mixing Beatles-ish pop, folk, touches of classical and jazz, and more. In the next few years, they opened for the Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, the Byrds and Johnny Winter. They played their last gig at The HOP in the summer of 1980; Bullock and Fraser subsequently worked together and kept writing.

Inspired by the Beatles' `Anthology' CDs and TV special, Fraser floated the idea of a reunion in mid-1996, and the group has been regularly rehearsing since. Joining them now are Eagle Audio owner Jeff Ward (on synthesizer) and William Jackson, who will play a variety of instruments, including B-flat clarinet, oboe, oboe d'Amore, accordion, English horn and viola da gamba, which dates from the 1400s and was very popular during the Renaissance. Jackson has played with the Texas Baroque Ensemble and the Dallas Bach Society.

"Basically, we've had time to become steeped in Western musical traditions -- popular and classical forms," Bullock says. "We're more grounded than we were and, paradoxically, we have more freedom to improvise."

Fraser says the Caravan show will be recorded for possible release; BGO Records, an English label, has expressed interest.

"If it's unusable, we'll go instantly into Eagle and record it live, get it out right away, and sell it over the Internet," Fraser says. "This is the highest-quality thing we've ever done. We'd like the record to get on college radio and go work the East Coast. We want to play -- we've got a year's worth of working on this material, and we need this show to work to give us a strong anchor for us to do other things."

Space Opera will play the Caravan of Dreams on Thursday. Show time is 8:30 p.m. There is no opening act. Tickets are $12.50 and available at the club or by calling 877-3000.