Otherworldly Music
by Ray Tabler
It’s well camouflaged, but there’s a distinct strain of science fiction running through jazz and rock & roll music. Fantasy elements too. Because I’ve always read SFF it’s noticeable to me. There are other examples, and I invite you to bring the forward. But this essay, I’ll concentrate on a band and a “solo” artist who frequently feature speculative fictional in their works. Those would be the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), and Donald Fagen (one of the co-founders of Steely Dan).
In 1981 ELO released the concept album Time. Time straight up is a collection of songs telling the tale of a man transported from the 1980s to the year 2095. One music critic described it as a “…future-set rock opera…”, with “…moon tourism! Hovercars! Smartphone spouses!” Although the time traveler is impressed with the future, he pines for the simpler life of the past, and his long-lost love, trapped back in the 1980s. That melancholy runs through the songs, tempering the gee-whiz brightness of 2095.
Just a year before Time, ELO released Xanadu, the soundtrack album of the movie of the same name. Olivia Newton-John portrays a Greek muse, daughter of the god Zeus and immortal being who inspires artists. She falls in love with a California painter she’s tasked with inspiring, and (spoiler alert!) eventually becomes mortal to be with him. There’s a lot of dancing and singing along the way. Critics didn’t really like Xanadu, but I think it’s a fun, escapist flick. Which I suppose tells you a lot about me and my pedestrian taste in entertainment. Good story, and ELO’s music is great. At the time, Newton-John and ELO were under contract to competing record companies. So, a compromise was reached to release different albums by each company. The album you listen to might not have all of the songs.
Donald Fagen periodically sneaks off the Steely Donald reservation to write, produce, and release solo albums on his own. Because the man has just that much creative energy cracking around in his heart. Three of those albums have definite SFF elements.
The Nightfly (1982) concentrates mostly on a jazz take of the 1950s and 1960s. However, 2 songs are firmly science fictional. In New Frontier, a crew-cut high school boy attempts to fast talk a blonde into a tryst in his parent’s backyard fallout shelter.
“…It’s just a dugout that my Dad built
In case the Reds decide to push the button down…”
“…She loves to limbo, that much is clear
She’s got the right dynamic for the new frontier…”
IGY (What a Wonderful World), another song on Nightfly, is a paean to the way the year 2000 looked in 1957. According to Fagen, the song came to him while he paged through a back copy of National Geographic. The issue was dedicated the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957. The magazine pictured the wonders sure to come by the turn of the century.
“…The future looks bright
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we’ll be A-OK…”
And,
“…Here at home we’ll play in the city
Powered by the sun
Perfect weather for a streamlined world
There’ll be spandex jackets one for everyone…”
IGY makes use of the most science fictiony of all musical instruments, the theremin. Leon Theremin invented the electronic instrument which bears his name in the Soviet Union, in 1920. The thereminist doesn’t touch the instrument. By passing hands near the theremin, proximity sensors allow the skilled artist to play an other-worldly music. An interesting side note is that while Leon Theremin emigrated to the US in 1927, He disappeared from his New York city apartment in 1938, to surface in the Soviet Union later. Some say that he was abducted by the NKVD, to labor on electronic espionage devices in a gulag. Others accuse him of simply running out on heavy debts.
The Kamakiriad (1993) is, like ELO’s Time, straight up science fiction from beginning to end. The protagonist takes delivery of his brand-new car, a steam-powered Kamakiri model (Japanese for praying mantis), with Balinese tech, and a self-contained biosphere in the back seat. He picks up his father, and a beautiful hitchhiker, and they’re off on a journey across a futuristic landscape. There are songs about steaming along the Trans-Island Skyway, a drive through the glaciated north, and relaxing in the car’s on-board biosphere, which he calls the “Florida room.” Tomorrow’s Girls is a warning about alien girlfriends. It sounds bizarre, and honestly it is. But the music is good. At least I think so.
Fagen’s 3rd solo album, Morph the Cat (2006) isn’t unified around a single story or theme. But fantasy and mildly post-apocalyptic themes abound. The title song, Morph the Cat, refers to a ghostly cat floating through Manhattan. An all-girl band, the H-Gang, roams the USA, looking for showdowns. In the song Brite Nitegown, the singer reveals,
“…Ten milligrams of Chronax
Will whip you back through time…”
A bit of context, “the fella in the brite nitegown” was W.C. Fields’s private nickname for the Grim Reaper.
The song Mary Shut the Garden Door has people laying low to escape notice of government robots in an Orwellian time.
“…When we heard the engines idling
Saw the headlights through the blinds…”
Jazz, rock&roll and science fiction go together like macaroni and cheese. Can you think of other examples?
Bonus: Late entry honorable mention – How could I overlook Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? This 42-minute musical introduces us to Dr. Horrible, an evil mad-scientist supervillain, played by Neil Partrick Harris (Doogie Howser MD to those of my generation). The bad doctor falls in love with a fair maiden, and tries to win her heart making him question his evil life choices. Maybe Dr. Horrible doesn’t quite fit in here, but it’s worth a watch.
END.
Reference Links:
· Electric Light Orchestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra
o Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(Electric_Light_Orchestra_album)
o Xanadu
· Donald Fagen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Fagen
o The Night Fly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightfly
o Kamakiriad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamakiriad
o Morph the Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_the_Cat
· Songs quoted
o New Frontier
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/FtovFI8etOg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
o IGY
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rOQUzrhTBgw?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
o Brite Nitegown
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rTUYx14Oe80?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
o Mary Shut the Garden Door
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sHz2IRSdTeE?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
· Theremin
o Instrument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
o Leon Theremin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin
· Bonus video, Tomorrow’s Girls
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EDmmUstCbtM?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
· Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (complete musical)
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Of9kHpCv1ts?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
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