At 1:49 PM +0530 6/25/10, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
And although plenty of random rock songs in the '60s were fixated on SF
themes - including The Byrds' "Mr. Spaceman" from 1966 and "Space
Odyssey" from 1968, not to mention Pink Floyd's groundbreaking "Set the
Controls for the Heart of the Sun," also from 1968 - it was David
Bowie's "Space Oddity" in 1969 that really sealed the deal.
Of course, Bowie would also be the artist to put the SF concept album on
the map in the '70s. Full albums, after all, are much better vessels for
SF's sprawling tropes.
Of course? David Bowie?!?
When Heller started developing this outlandish meme, I
immediately thought
of Jefferson Starship's Blows Against the Empire, all of side B.
A story arc,
starting with Sunrise then moving into Hijack:
You know - a starship circlin in the sky - it ought to be ready by 1990
They'll be buildin it up in the air even since 1980
People with a clever plan can assume the role of the mighty
and HIJACK THE STARSHIP
Carry 7000 people past the sun
And our babes'll wander naked thru the cities of the universe
Then Home and then Have You Seen the Stars Tonight?
Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?
Would you like to go up on 'A' Deck and look at them with me?
Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?
Would you like to go up for a stroll and keep me company?
Do you know
We could go?
We are free
Anyplace you can think of
We could be
Then XM and finally the clarion call of Starship:
SPILLIN' OUT OF THE STEEL GLASS
GRAVITY GONE FROM THE CAGE
A MILLION POUNDS GONE FROM YOUR HEAVY MASS
ALL THE YEARS GONE FROM YOUR AGE
Hydroponic gardens and forests
Glistening with lakes in the Jupiter starlite
Room for babies and Byzantine dancing astronauts of renown
The magician and the pantechnicon
Take along the farmer and the physician
We gotta get out and down
Back into the future
Beyond our own time again
Reachin' for tomorrow
It's so fine Starshine
...
Roll with the natural flow
Like water off a spinning ball
Out - the one remaining way to go
Free - the only way to fall
The light in the night is the sun
And it can carry you around the planetary ground
And the planetary whip of the sun
Will carry you well past Gideon
And the people you see will leave you be
more than the ones you've known before
Hey - rollin' on
We come and go like a comet
We are wanderers
Are you anymore?
The land is green and you make it grow
And you gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
Or else you stay
You gotta let go you know.
Or else you STAY.
Summer of Love and 60s communal/protest themes pushed into the
final
frontier with a hint that technology will free us to do exactly
what we most
want to do.
Here's some of it live:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHmUC59GO0g&feature=related
I miss that future that is now part of a past that never
was.
I've always had a soft spot for good crazies -- those wild
idealistic visionaries
who paint a reality that can never exist but that nonetheless
shows us a
direction that we ought to think hard about before
abandoning.
--
Heather Madrone ([email protected])
http://www.madrone.com
http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com
I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me access to the source code.
http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com
I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me access to the source code.
