Monty Python meets Clint Black

Clint Black covered “The Galaxy Song” years ago, which was written for Monty Python and the Meaning of Life by Eric Idle. His version has just as much charm and Black’s voice serves the song very well. It’s not what one would expect from a mainstream, Nashville recording artist.

 

More Sci-Fi Rock

Hot Leg (Feat. Ex-Darkness vocalist Justin Hawkins) travels through inner space for the “I’ve Met Jesus,” video.

 

Sci-Fi Rock: ’39 by Queen

And they never saw their loved ones again.

“’39″ is a quaint, folksy ballad plugged right into the middle of Queen’s classic Night at the Opera, but all is not what it seems with this song. It was written by guitarist Brian May, who left school in the middle of his doctorate studies in astronomy to form Queen in the early 70s. May now holds that Ph.D, and even co-authored a very good book explaining astronomy and astrophysics called Bang!. Knowing this let’s peel back the onion on “’39,” the innocent-looking shanty that looked so innocuous on the rocking Opera album (Night of the Opera is the one with “Bohemian Rhapsody” on it, btw).

In the year of ’39
A simple year, the volunteers
In the days when the lands were few
Here the ships sailed out,
‘nto the blue and sunny morn’
Sweetest sight ever seen.

The year ’39 is interpreted to mean anywhere from 1439 to 1939, and on the surface seems like the beginnings of a sea voyage. Often people think “’39″ is about a journey to the Americas, and the first verse here gives little to say otherwise about it. Now let’s go to the next stanza of this verse and see what is there.

And the night followed day
And the storytellers say
That the score brave souls inside
Though many a’lonely day
Sailed across the milky seas
Ne’er looked back, never feared
Never cried.

Again this looks pretty standard, doesn’t it? Sailing, score of men inside a ship, storytellers regaling sagas about the voyage? Here’s where the little word tricks start showing up in this song though. Note the score (as in, hundred) of men are inside the ship, not on board? Also doesn’t “milky seas” sound a lot like Milky Way? This makes perfect sense coming from a composer whom studied space.  Let’s see what else May snuck into this tune.

(Chorus 1)
Don’t you hear my call
Though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me callin’ you

Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew

“Many years away,” pretty much lifts the veil on what’s going on in this song. A person isn’t many years away if they are just on another part of Earth. They’d have to be located at another point in time in order to be years away from someone else. Also “land that our grandchildren knew,” implies that the traveler is definitely in a different time than the one he left behind. Lest you think this is just about time travel though, hold off on that judgment for now. There’s still more to this little ditty. On to the 2nd verse.

In the year of ’39
Came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day

And they bring good news
Of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh

For the earth is old and grey
Little darlin’, we’ll away
But my love, this cannot be

Oh so many years are gone
Though I’m older but a year
Your mother’s eyes, from your eyes,
Cry to me.

Okay so we just discussed how the subject of this song traveled in a ship that was in space, going across the galaxy. The 1st  stanza of the 2nd verse mentions the year ’39 again, which of course knowing what we know so far, implies the time travel theme. However, consider that the first 2 numbers of the year are not mentioned, meaning that ’39 could have been 100 or even 200 years after the year the traveler and his crew left. The reason for this will be explained shortly.

Don’t you hear my call
Though you’re many years away
Don’t you hear me callin’ you

All your letters in the sand
Cannot heal me like your hand

For my life
Still ahead
Pity me.

As you can see from the 2nd verse and 2nd chorus, it seems to be that the traveler’s love has long since aged and passed away, through phrases like, “Oh so many years are gone/ though I’m older but a year,” and “Your mother’s eyes, from your eyes, cry to me.” And the last phrase in the song says, “For my life/ still ahead/ pity me.” It’s tragic. The traveler went away so long his loved one is no longer here, and it was his lover’s descendants who met him when he returned.

All this has not to do with time travel, but relativity. Remember that whole E=mc2 thing? What we understand about time is that perception of it is relative, and when someone goes near the speed of light, there is an effect called time dilation. Time dilation is a perception that time slows down as you reach the speed of light. So if you were on Earth watching a ship go into light speed, it would actually look like it was slowing down. The thing is the ship is actually going much, much faster through time than us Earthlings, and this has the effect of making the ship and those on board age slower. Hence when the ship goes back to normal speed, it has actually jumped forward in time while it and the inhabitants have aged very little relative to Earth. This is why the traveler, having been gone for a hundred years or more, has only aged a year, because he’s been going near light speed and thus traveling through time faster than his friends and family back on Earth. This of course makes him sad, for on his return he lost everyone he knew and loved, as they grew old and passed away.

Many kudos to Brian May for sneaking some good old Einsteinian physics into the middle of a rock and roll album.

 

Arc Attack Rocks Iron Man on America’s Got Talent

Check out this sick video of Arc Attack doing “Iron Man.” In a past post I mentioned how this group uses robotic instruments, keyboards, regular instruments and actual Tesla coils to make music.

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via Week 10: ArcAttack.

And if NBC’s link sucks, check it here on Topless Robot.

 

Pics and More from the Nerd Burlesque Show

Topless Robot has pics and more about the Nerd Burlesque show and party from the Comic-Con weekend.

Meow.

 

Electro Harmonix Doing Dr. Who with a Big Muff

Here’s a great video of Electro Harmonix’s Bill Ruppert using nothing but an electric guitar and a selection of EH pedals to recreate the Dr. Who theme. The video goes through the pedals used to create all the swoops, sweeps, beeps, and thumps of the British sci-fi show.

I’ve shown stuff like this before with the Arc Attack video, who use a band and Tesla coils to create their music, but this was one guy, his toys and some recording software.

EH’s Youtube page is here if you want to see what other crazy compositions they’ve come with using their pedals. Also if you are not a musician this is a good intro to what effects pedals can do and how a guitarist uses them to create unique soundscapes.

 

Neil Diamond + ET = Heartlight

Neil Diamond put out a single in the early 80s known as “Heartlight.” It was his last top 40 hit, and to many in the 80s it was just another soft rock jam from a man who long, long ago led us through a hot, August night. What’s a little less known though is that Neil Diamond wrapped a saccharine love song around a science fiction tale. Heartlight is a reference to ET, particularly the scenes where ET’s heart glows through his chest. In fact he even references the famous, flying bike ride with the lyric, “Take a ride across the moon.”

This is simply reason #112 why Neil’s the man.

 

Nothing to do with music or beer, just plain AWESOME

Behold, a mammoth tech project that is sure to amaze: a couple guys took Legos, robots and a slab computer to make a fully robotic chess set. I’d explain more, but the video really lays it all out.

 

When Science and Music Collide

Arc Attack are a group of engineers who employ Tesla coils and regular instruments like drums, guitar, bass and keyboards to create both original pieces and covers of popular songs (“Imperial March,” from Star Wars, for example).

They were featured this week on America’s Got Talent, but NBC, mostly because they suck, edited out the sounds of the Tesla coil. See the Tesla coil itself will make tonal sounds you can manipulate into creating notes.

Here’s an example: Arc Attack does the theme from Dr. Who:

As you can hear the Tesla coil’s buzzes and zaps coordinate with the drum beat and the backing melodies provided by the keyboards. Pretty cool, huh?

Here’s them again with “100 Horses:”

Instead when Arc Attack performed on America’s Got Talent, NBC overdubbed the Tesla coil with generic zapping sound effects, leaving only the instruments on the televised mix.

Gizmodo has more on NBC’s shenanigans here, and you can see Arc Attack’s YouTube channel here.

 

Where Does this Gate Lead?

From io9

This is a sculpture done Australian artist Tony Phantastes called “Dreamers Gate.” He worked on it for 4 years, from 1993 through 1997, then left it. A neighboring community wants to tear it down.

It looks like it should be a movie set. In that movie, I wonder where such a gate would lead? Here are my ideas:

Babylon:

Gnomeria:

Some random cemetery:

Hell:

More pics and news about this sculpture here.