Jan 07 2007
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Flying Saucer Music #1
An often ignored segment of UFO history is the phenomenon’s influence on pop culture. It’s a great hobby to find these buried musical gems that combine two things that I can’t live without–wacky music and flying saucers. I have a collection of about 50-60 (and growing) little-known songs with flying saucer or spaceman themes and I’d like to share a few of the copyright-free gems with visitors to this site. There are contactee songs, alien abduction-country-trucker songs, songs about mice from space, and the always fascinating music of Sun Ra, a jazz musician who said he was from Jupiter. Don’t expect anything you’ve heard before, unless you’ve been a listener on my internet radio show on Sunday nights from 8-10PM PST. Some archived interviews can be downloaded for free here.
Our first installment is “Take Me To Your Leader Cha Cha Cha” by Sam Space and the Cadettes. I have no idea who these people were. It was probably a one-off with studio musicians to cash in on the saucer craze.
Take Me To Your Leader Cha Cha Cha: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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January 8th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
I am very interested in this aspect of Ufology and it’s possible relationship to the “leaky embargo” hypothesis. One case that I find especially interesting is Lennon’s UFO encounter (and possible Abduction according to Uri Geller). Not only did he mention this on the back cover of “Walls and Bridges”, the lyrics to # 9 Dream really stand out (a few others as well).
So long ago
Was it in a dream,
was it just a dream?
I know, yes I know
Seemed so very real,
it seemed so real to me
Took a walk down the street
Thru the heat whispered trees
I thought I could hear(hear, hear, hear)
Somebody call out my name as it started to rain
Two spirits dancing so strange
Ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
Dream, dream away
Magic in the air,
was magic in the air?
I believe, yes I believe
More I cannot say,
what more can I say?
On a river of sound
Thru the mirror go round, round
I thought I could feel(feel, feel, feel)
Music touching my soul,
something warm, sudden cold
The spirit dance was unfolding
Ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
ah! bwakawa pouss, pouss
One other bit I find somewhat fascinating is the parallels between John and Yoko and Crowley and Roddie Minor. Both counter culture heroes, both deeply influenced in their respective relationships, both experiencing contact with the ‘other’. The capper would be if Crowley ever lived lived or partied at the Dakota…
The there is Sammy Hagar’s story. Here are the lyrics to “Love Walks in”. He directly credits his encounters as the inspiration for the song, which appeared on “5150″, his first effort as the frontman for Van Halen. As far as cultural influence goes, it didn’t get any bigger than that back in the mid eighties. The song was penned -before- the release of “Communion”.
Contact is all it takes
To change your life
to lose your place in time
Contact! Asleep or awake
Coming around you may wake up to find
Questions deep within your eyes,
Things you’ve never realized
So when you sense a change
Nothing feels the same
All your dreams are strange,
love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Wait for the opening
Then simply pulls a string
Another world, some other time
You lay your sanity on the line
Familiar faces, familiar sights
Reach back remember with all your might
Ohh there she stands in a silken gown
Silver lights shining down
Love comes walkin’ in
Sleep and dream is all I crave
I travel far across the Milky Way
To my master I become a slave
Til we meet again some other day
Where silence speaks as loud as war
And the earth returns to what it was before
Love comes walkin’ in
There are others as well but you get the drift. You really couldn’t pick artist who held more influence in their respective times to carry forth your message.
“Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed”
Rock on Greg!
~Jonah
January 9th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Take me to your leader - cha cha cha
Fantastic! More please. I especially liked the special-effects sounds. BTW I always wondered where the Chipmunks came from.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Anyone interested in UFO and Fortean-based music should check out the CD “The Weird World of Lionel Fanthorpe, Jon Downes, and the Amphibians from Outer Space.”
Lionel is a prolific UK-based author on mysteries and Jon is my good friend in the UK who runs the Center for Fortean Zoology (CFZ). The Amphibs were Jon’s band who he made (I think) about a dozen or more albums with.
The “Weird World” CD uses old traditional tunes and adds new, Fortean-driven lyrics.
It’s a fun, witty CD, with songs on Crop Circles, UFOs, Bigfoot, the Yeti, Springheeled Jack, Britain’s “Big Cat” sightings, and a punk-driven song all about Jon’s CFZ, which includes the immortal line: “Don’t want to work in a boring job, but that’s all there is around here. I’m going to cash my giro check [government-paid unemployment check, for non-UK readers] and explore the last frontier.”
The CD was sadly ignored for the most part when it was released in the UK in 2000. It’s definitely time for a re-issue. Greg…?
January 9th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Jonah,
Thanks for the heads-up. I didn’t know about that Van Halen song, and I never thought of the Lennon song as an alien contact piece. Has Hagar actually admitted to some sort of experiences with aliens? Another song that always struck me as an abduction-type tune is “And She Was” by the Talking Heads from the Little Creatures album. It’s difficult for me to post songs like that, mainly becuase of copyright issues, but also since I tend to prefer the more obscure and older ones.
January 9th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Nick,
Maybe Jonathan can send me that CD for free as a member of the California staff for CFZ!
January 10th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Many will be surprised to discover that Sammy credits a direct contact with aliens for his huge success, “I had a dream when I was about 19, I felt I was programmed and it changes my life, It was the middle of the night, I started waking up and there was a feeling these guys are going, he’s waking up. I opened my eyes but couldn’t move the rest of my body. My whole room was lit up so light you couldn’t even see the walls. It was scary though I wasn’t being hurt. Then all of a sudden it went black and I could move again. Ever since then my life has changed. From the next day on everything started happening, my career, I started writing songs, reading certain kinds of books. I was put on a quest and I’m still on it.
Since this amazing encounter Sammy reports contacts have continued. “It’s happened four or five times since then with the same guys but I don’t remember it as much. I’m into astronomy and metaphysical, anything you could possibly do to maybe make contact with these. You start finding out about different ones. They’re from all over the universe and some of them are from different dimensions and some are people living right here, the walk ins like Ruth Montgomery writes about, there’s a lot of walk ins around.”
We see the influence of contact artistically expressed in many forms. I am also fascinated by the works of Pablo Amaringo and the relationship of the effects of DMT, McKenna’s “machine elves” and the like…
The complicated nature of his paintings reflects the complicated nature of the phenomenon (don’t be a hater Nick…LOL)
And not that I don’t mind a novelty tune every now and again but there is normally an underlying sense of skepticism expressed in most saucer related tunes. I see it as musical nervous laughter. Understandable…
January 10th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
[...] I cannot find any information on this song, but like the last post, I’m sure Brennan’s agent or someone decided to get at least one entry in the mania that was the flying saucer craze of the 1950s and early ’60s. The space mice sound exactly like the Chipmunks, as almost all aliens did in recordings of the time. Compare the last music post for my Chipmunk conspiracy theory. [...]
January 13th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Jonah,
Cool news about Hagar. Although I’m not really a Van Halen fan, I can certainly appreciate the contact element.
I don’t really care if the songs evince “nervous laughter.” They’re fun and funny. I’ll be posting some in the next few weeks that as much as shout “I know they’re here. I love ‘em. Bring ‘em on!”
December 11th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Actually, most of the time that Sun Ra claimed to be from another Planet, it was Saturn. He was really Herman “Sonny” Blount from Birmingham Alabama, “The Magic City.”
I strongly recommend John Szwed’s fine biography, _Space Is the Place_.