This is post 6 of 6 today, and will close this afternoon’s virtual MonSFFA meeting. If you’re just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.

 

10) ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG

From the UK, this one’s the Penguinator’s take on a Kinks classic

For more from this guy, type “Penguinator” into your YouTube search engine!

11) ANSWERS TO QUIZ CHALLENGE

Here are the answers to my quiz on pop and rock songs that comprise SF/F-themes and imagery (see today’s earlier Post 1 of 6). Were you able to correctly identify each song, and the affiliated performer(s), from the snippet of lyrics we disclosed?

Check your answers below! The title of each song is given, along with the name(s) of the composer(s), the year of the song’s release, and the vocalist or band commonly linked to the tune. A brief word on each song is also provided, along with related trivia.

1)

In your mind you have abilities you know / To telepath messages through the vast unknown

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Terry Draper, John Woloschuk, 1976; original performed by Klaatu, memorably covered by The Carpenters in 1977)

According to co-writer Woloschuk, the idea for this song came from an event described in the book The Flying Saucer Reader, published in 1967. The author recounted the tale of an experiment proposed by the International Flying Saucer Bureau in 1953, in which all of that organization’s members, at a predetermined date and time, would attempt to collectively send out a telepathic message to space aliens that began with the salutation “Calling occupants of interplanetary craft!”

The tune opens this Canadian progressive rock band’s debut album, 3:47 EST. The band was named after Klaatu, the alien emissary portrayed by Michael Rennie in the classic 1951 sci-fi movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. Further, the group drew the title for their first album from a detail mentioned in the film noting that Klaatu’s spaceship landed in Washington, D. C., at 3:47 PM, Eastern Standard Time.

Pop/soft rock duo The Carpenters’ cover of the song closes their Passages album. Star Trek designer/illustrator Andrew Probert provided the sleeve artwork for the single release of The Carpenters’ version of the song.

2)

They got music in their solar system / They’ve rocked around the Milky Way 

Space Truckin’ (Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, 1972; performed by Deep Purple)

Its title sometimes interpreted as a simile for getting high—a habitual reading of so many 1960s and ’70s rock tunes—when taken at face value, this is simply a song about the jubilance experienced by a space-faring rock band that is touring the solar system bringing music to fervent fans. It is the closing track on the band’s Machine Head album, and a concert favourite.

Space Truckin’ is one of several Deep Purple tunes featured in the Starz television series Ash vs Evil Dead. Star Trek’s William “Captain Kirk” Shatner covered the song on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.

3)

Crossed through the universe to get where you are / Travel the night riding on a shooting star

Alien (Britney Spears, William Orbit, Daniel Traynor, Ana Diaz Molina, Anthony Preston, 2013; performed by Britney Spears)

To quote Spears, this song “deals with loneliness and how you can be surrounded at all times by friends, family, and adoring fans who you love, and still feel alone.” The lyrics are an expression of how isolating the life of a pop star can be, leaving one feeling “like an alien.” The mid-tempo pop piece opens Spears’ album, Britney Jean, and she rates it as her favourite track on the disc. “We have moments when we feel alienated, shy, or nervous,” she continues. “That’s what the song is about.” Spears says she wrote the tune to remind herself that she is not, in fact, alone.

The pop princess cameos as a “Fembot,” singing a re-mix of her 2001 R&B/hip-hop/funk number, Boys, in the 2002 James Bond spoof Austin Powers in Goldmember. In exchange, comedic actor Mike Myers, portraying his toothy ’60s spy character, appears in Spears’ Boys music video.

4)

Woke up this morning with light in my eyes / And then realized it was still dark outside

Mr. Spaceman (Roger McGuinn as Jim McGuinn, 1966; performed by The Byrds)

“Won’t you please take me along for a ride,” requests the narrator of this jaunty ditty about a series of whimsical and weird but friendly visitations by flying saucer aliens. Mr. Spaceman is an early example of what would come to be known as country-rock. It was the third single taken from of the band’s Fifth Dimension album.

Composer McGuinn and bandmate David Crosby were hopeful that communication might be made with space aliens through the medium of AM radio. “I was interested in astronomy and the possibility of connecting with extraterrestrial life,” McGuinn recollects. “I thought that the song being played on the air might be a way of getting through to them.” He later learned that AM radio waves diffuse much too rapidly to be a viable means of interplanetary communication.

A publicity stunt at the time of the song’s release as a single had it that the band was insured by Lloyds of London against alien abduction! William Shatner covered the tune on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.

5) I think your atmosphere is hurting my eyes / And your concrete mountains are blackin’ out the skies

I’m a Stranger Here (Les Emmerson, 1973; performed by the Five Man Electrical Band)

This one is a “message song” commenting on the failings of the modern world—pollution, rampant urban development, war, synthetic food and feel-good drugs—with mankind reproached for foolishly despoiling the “paradise” in which he was living. Ottawa’s Five Man Electrical Band, formerly The Staccatos, sermonized from the point of view of a visiting extraterrestrial sent to evaluate Earth. His people having made the same mistakes as he sees humanity now making, the alien speaks from experience, and with the knowledge that “the gates of Heaven can close.”

“It’s about the environment,” songwriter Emmerson says, “it’s relevant.” He wrote the number in late-1972 after the band had finished recording most of the songs for their album Sweet Paradise. “I don’t know where it came from. I was watching something on TV,” he recalls, “and I just got this idea of, you know, somebody coming from another planet and watching us, how silly we might look.” He showed the song to his producer, who liked it enough to suggest the band record it and include the tune on the album. Sweet Paradise was released on January 1, 1973, with I’m a Stranger Here as the opening track.

Over the course of their career, the Five Man Electrical Band released a number of singles that did quite well in Canada, but in the U.S. and elsewhere, were not nearly as successful. The exception was 1971’s Signs, which became an international hit and is, today, regarded as a rock classic. But I’m a Stranger Here climbed to second spot on the charts here in The Great White North to become the band’s biggest domestic hit, outperforming even Signs!

6)

I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife / It’s lonely out in space

Rocket Man (Elton John, Bernie Taupin, 1972; performed by Elton John)

The titular Rocket Man’s plaint has been taken as a metaphor for one detached from family, or reality, whether by distance, addiction, or maybe the kind of loneliness attendant rock star-like fame. Lyricist Taupin, animated by his sighting of a shooting star or distant aircraft one night, has explained that the notion of astronauts being thought of, one day, as no longer heroes, but merely ordinary people doing an ordinary job was what led to his writing the song’s opening lines: “She packed my bags last night, pre-flight / Zero hour, nine AM / And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then.”

For some, the phrase “high as a kite” clearly denotes drug use and so categorizes Rocket Man accordingly. Another interpretation infers that the lyrics were sparked by Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Rocket Man,” about a conflicted astronaut who yearns for his wife and son while away on long space missions, but when home, feels the equally aching lure of the stars.

In January 1978, William Shatner co-hosted the Fifth Annual Saturn Awards with actress Karen Black, broadcast as the Science Fiction Film Awards. Introduced by lyricist Bernie Taupin at one point during the ceremony, Shatner performed an abominably naff spoken-word rendition of Rocket Man! He again covered the song on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.

7)

They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air / And tell you that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care

1984 (David Bowie, 1974; performed by David Bowie)

This song was inspired by George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bowie had hoped to turn the famous book into a musical stage show but was refused the rights by Orwell’s widow, who was vehemently opposed to the idea! 1984 and a few other songs Bowie had written for his proposed production migrated to the Diamond Dogs album, thematically a loose amalgam of Orwell’s dystopian vision and Bowie’s own glam-rock perspective on a post-apocalyptic future.

A decade after Orwell’s widow curtailed Bowie’s ambitions, British motion picture company Virgin Films approached him to compose the music for their adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The reasoning was that rock idol Bowie’s appeal could only increase the film’s market potential, but he wanted more for the job than Virgin was prepared to pay, and eventually, Eurythmics got the gig, and in the bargain, a new wave synth/pop dance hit, Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four). Released as Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984, the film starred John Hurt and, in his swan-song performance, Richard Burton.

In addition to a thriving career in music, Bowie found success, too, as an actor, landing roles in, among other productions, a few genre films. He starred as an alien in 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, was a vampire’s consort in 1983’s The Hunger, and played Jareth, the Goblin King, in 1986’s Labyrinth.

Bowie’s son with first wife Angela is sci-fi film director/screenwriter Duncan Jones. Born in 1971 as Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, his first feature film was 2009’s acclaimed Moon, which won him the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. He also helmed 2011’s Source Code and 2016’s Warcraft.

8)

(All day long we hear him crying so loud) / I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, I just want to be myself, be myself, be myself

Clones [We’re All] (David Maurice Carron, Adam Jan Narkiewicz, 1980; performed by Alice Cooper)

With his 1980 Flush the Fashion album, shock rocker Alice Cooper moved to a fresh, synthesizer-laced new wave sound and scored a minor hit with this song, a statement of rebellion against forced conformity. The lyrics evoke a future in which dehumanized clones have taken over society and are stamping out individuality. Some consider the song’s “Six,” who is “having problems adjusting to his clone status,” as analogous to the character of Number Six in the British cult sci-fi television series The Prisoner.

The original Alice Cooper Band is said to have conjured up their handle by consulting an Ouija board, the spirit of a long-dead witch purportedly lending her name to the group. But this is urban legend, of course! In truth, the group was just trying to think off a name that belied their weird image and wild on-stage antics. And yet, the name “conjured up an image of a little girl with a lollipop in one hand, and a butcher knife in another,” cites the band’s frontman, who, born Vincent Damon Furnier, would become known as, and in 1974 legally change his name to, Alice Cooper. “There was something axe-murderish about ‘Alice Cooper’. It reminded me of Lizzie Borden. Alice Cooper, Lizzie Borden—that’s got a ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ feeling to it,” he expounds, referring to the 1962 Bette Davis-Joan Crawford horror/thriller. “It had some sort of ring to it, something disturbing.”

For the 1986 slasher film Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI, Cooper, now a solo artist, was in his wheelhouse when he recorded the film’s theme song, He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask). Also included on the movie’s soundtrack were his tunes Teenage Frankenstein and Hard Rock Summer. The first two were also released on his 1986 album, Constrictor, and all three were collected in the 1999 boxed-set retrospective The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper.

Cooper’s macabre persona and stage theatrics make the legendary entertainer a natural choice for stunt casting in fright flicks. In 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, for example, he portrays the alcoholic and abusive Edward Underwood, adoptive father of horror film icon Freddy Krueger. Cooper has appeared, over the years and often as himself, in a number of movies and television shows. In the 1970s, he guested on the mystery series The Snoop Sisters and played a waiter in Mae West’s final film, Sextette, a horrible, if not horror, film! The ’80s saw him star in Italian horror movie Monster Dog and appear as a possessed “street schizo” in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. In 1992’s Wayne’s World, he gave Wayne and Garth a backstage history lesson on the city of Milwaukee! And in 2012, he appeared in the SyFy TV movie Bigfoot, as well as the big-budget film adaptation of Dark Shadows, which starred Johnny Depp, one of his bandmates in the rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires.

Alice Cooper wrote Man with the Golden Gun for the 1974 James Bond film of the same name, but the band was deemed too controversial by Bond producers, who opted instead for another tune employing that title, written by veteran Bond composers John Barry and Don Black, and sung by Scottish songbird Lulu. Alice Cooper decided to include their rejected song on the band’s Muscle of Love album.

9) Mine’s broke down / And now I’ve no one to love

“Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” (Gary Numan, 1979; performed by Tubeway Army)

The “friend” in this song is a robot prostitute, Numan has clarified, and the song, like all of his work, is about being misunderstood and alone. Numan was a fan of SF writer Philip K. Dick and Beat scribe William S. Burroughs, and as a teen, wrote his own sci-fi stories, envisioning android companions—friends—that would come to the doors of desperately forlorn people in a bleak future and provide sexual services. “It was a futurist version of getting pornography in the post,” Numan outlines. “If the BBC had known what it was about, they would never have played it.”

“Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” and the other songs on Tubeway Army’s Replicas album were essentially musical renderings of Numan’s short stories, each about an aspect of what he imagined London might be like in 20 or 30 years.

Seeming automaton-like, the modern electronic music pioneer has contended that he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a type of Autism Spectrum Disorder that manifests as social awkwardness and obsessive behaviour. He has always found social interaction difficult and people, from his point of view, strange and disaffecting, a disposition reflected in his song lyrics.

Before Gary Anthony James Webb adopted the alias Gary Numan, he briefly called himself Valerian, a name alleged to have been appropriated from the French sci-fi space opera and time-travel comic book adventure Valérian et Laureline. This is not the case, according to Numan himself, who relates that “Valerian” stemmed from a patch of graffiti he’d seen scrawled on a wall while driving to work one day. Nor is the name Numan meant to represent some kind of robotic “new man,” as is occasionally implied by those who read more into it than was ever intended. The name, in fact, was merely lifted from a listing in the London Yellow Pages—Neumann—the spelling of which the singer simplified to arrive at his desired moniker.

10)

Hey mom, there’s something in the back room / Hope it’s not the creatures from above 

Aliens Exist (Tom Delonge, Mark Hoppus, 1999; performed by Blink-182)

From their album Enema of the State, punk-pop trio Blink-182 delve into UFOs and conspiracy theories, depicting an alien abduction and, as the song closes, alluding to flying saucer lore’s infamous, super-secret Majestic 12 committee of scientists, military officers, and government officials.

Singer/guitarist and band co-founder Tom Delonge is a true believer, to hear him tell it, entertaining a considerable interest in the subject of UFOs. He has researched the flying saucer phenomenon extensively, launching a Web Site dedicated to exposing the truth about UFOs and combatting the efforts of authorities to keep the public in the dark. Delonge might categorically be styled rock-and-roll’s Fox Mulder! He has camped out near Area 51, claims to have had his phone tapped by the government, and speaks of having experienced the “lost time” peculiarity commonly reported by UFO abductees.

11)

Oh Space Dude in your space suit / Our love, it takes us to the moon

It not only is a life saver but also a pill which helps the person in getting back to their regular cialis canadian prices life. This enzyme is levitra buy online important that works towards the erection process. Given below is some of the common spondylolisthesis buy super cialis treatment. This blood proficiency makes the organ becoming erect and gets true use of buy viagra without prescription. Space Boots (Miley Cyrus, 2015; performed by Miley Cyrus)

From the experimental pop/psychedelia album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, this song about Cyrus’ missing an emotionally detached lost love offers cosmic allegory almost certainly filtered through a bong.

In 2001, Miley Cyrus was eight years old and living in Toronto with her family while her father filmed the television series Doc, a medical drama. After attending a performance of Mirvish Productions’ jukebox musical Mamma Mia! at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Cyrus went home knowing that she wanted to be an actress. She was enrolled in singing and acting classes at Toronto’s Armstrong Acting Studios, later landing a minor role under her birth name, Destiny Cyrus, in director Tim Burton’s quirky 2003 fantasy/drama Big Fish.

She auditioned opposite Taylor Lautner—later to star in the Twilight movies—for the female lead in the 2005 children’s superhero adventure The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl in 3D, then in pre-production. However, she instead opted for the lead in a new Disney Channel teen sitcom called Hannah Montana. The show ran from 2006 to 2011 and brought Cyrus international stardom, leading to a lucrative pop music career.

12)

Then the stranger spoke, he said, do not fear / I come from a planet a long way from here

A Spaceman Came Travelling (Chris de Burgh, 1975; performed by Chris de Burgh)

Part Erich von Däniken, part William Butler Yeats, British-Irish balladeer Chris de Burgh’s sci-fi spin on the birth of Christ some 2000 years ago casts an extraterrestrial “from a planet a long way from here” as the angel sent to announce the arrival of mankind’s Lord and Saviour. The song was not particularly successful upon its initial release, but has since become a staple of Christmas playlists.

While staying with a friend in 1974, De Burgh read von Däniken’s 1969 book, Chariots of the Gods?, in which the author postulated that space aliens had visited Earth thousands of years ago. “What if the star of Bethlehem was a spacecraft?” De Burgh wondered afterwards, furnishing him the idea for the song. He pictured the vessel hovering over the nativity scene and imagined “shepherds in the fields, and this weird, ethereal music…drifting into the air.”

Von Däniken’s theories were quickly discredited and he was accused of lifting the idea of ancient alien visitations from a French book, Le Matin des magiciens, published in 1960, which in turn is said to have taken almost verbatim the notion of aliens having come to Earth in ancient times from the fictional tales of H. P. Lovecraft, notably The Call of Cthulhu (1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (1931).

De Burgh’s lyrics were also informed by early-20th century Irish poet Yeats’ elucidation of a complex, esoteric system of intersecting major historical cycles, termed “gyres,” each roughly 2000 years in duration. Yeats was a life-long occultist and his young wife, Georgie Hyde-Lee, purportedly brought to light this mysterious system of gyres by means of “automatic writing,” that is, spontaneous writing while in a trance, one’s hand guided by spirits. The poet utilized an image of interlocking, cone-like rotating coils to symbolize these gyres. In 1925, Yeats detailed his system in book form as A Vision, in which he professed to mathematically explain the associated philosophical, historical, astrological, and spiritual facets of no less than life itself! He published a second, revised edition in 1937.

13)

On Mercury, they’re crazy about my stellar rock ’n’ roll / And I always sell out in advance at the Martian Astrobowl

Spaceship Superstar (Jim Vallance, as Rodney Higgs, 1977; performed by PRiSM)

The signature song of Canadian pop/rock band PRiSM, Spaceship Superstar was written by Jim Vallance under the pseudonym Rodney Higgs. The hectic lifestyle of a touring galactic rock star is in the spotlight, here, and while it may be “a giant leap for rock ’n’ roll,” the song’s protagonist grouses that “it’s too much for just one man.” The adulation of fans “crazy about” his “stellar rock ’n’ roll” takes its toll on the Spaceship Superstar, who sings of becoming “so damned tired and uninspired doin’ all these one night stands.”

Vallance did not particularly enjoy the rigours of touring and left PRiSM shortly after the release of the band’s first album, preferring to remain at home writing songs in his makeshift studio. Spaceship Superstar is his science fiction-flavoured lament on the hardships endured by a travelling rock band. He would compose a few more songs for PRiSM before embarking on a long and successful song-writing partnership with Bryan Adams.

Since the days of the Gemini missions in the mid-1960s, NASA has been transmitting to orbiting spacecraft a daily, morning “wake-up song” to rouse astronaut crews. On the final mission of space shuttle Discovery in early 2011, PRiSM’s Spaceship Superstar was chosen as one such tune, selected for the shuttle’s crew by the overnight shift of the mission’s flight controllers and signalling the start of the crew’s last full day aboard the International Space Station. Discovery would undock from the station the following day and begin the return leg of her flight.

Discovery entered service in 1984 and over 27 years of operations, flew 39 missions, more than any other orbiter, circling Earth for just shy of a cumulative 366 days—indeed, a “spaceship superstar!” She deployed 31 satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope, was the first space shuttle to dock with the ISS, and in 1998, carried Mercury Seven astronaut John Glenn, then 77 years old, into orbit on his second spaceflight.

Discovery was the first orbiter to be retired and is now on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum.

14)

Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now / Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Saviour Machine (David Bowie, 1970; performed by David Bowie)

This early Bowie number, a progressive rock piece about a machine created to solve civilization’s problems, could easily have been a Star Trek episode or an Asimov short story.

When “President Joe” pledges to create a machine that will eliminate hunger, war, and the other ills of society, the public backs the idea. “They called it ‘The Prayer,’ its answer was law,” Bowie intones. The people soon begin to adore the God-like apparatus, but the omniscient super-computer has quickly become bored, and disapproving of mankind. “Your minds are too green,” it cries, “I despise all I’ve seen. / You can’t stake your lives on a Saviour Machine.” Finally pleading “Please don’t believe in me,” the machine contemplates harshly correcting man’s behaviour.

The song has been perceived as a cautionary tale about our placing too much faith in technology, lest it destroy us—a familiar construct of science fiction in the 1960s and ’70s—or, alternately, as a warning against the populace falling under the thrall of fascistic leadership, the machine, here, standing in for Totalitarianism.

Saviour Machine can be found on Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World album, his working title for which was Metrobolist, an odd mixing of the title of Fritz Lang’s seminal 1927 science fiction film, Metropolis, with the word “somnambulist”, more commonly, a sleepwalker.

A Christian heavy metal band formed in 1989 by brothers Jeff and Eric Clayton took its name from the title of this Bowie tune.

15)

He was turned to steel / In the great magnetic field

Iron Man (Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward, 1970; performed by Black Sabbath)

Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne described the song’s guitar riff as sounding “like a big iron bloke walking about,” which suggested the song’s title to lyricist Geezer Butler, who wrote his story of a man who time-travels into the future and beholds a terrible apocalypse. While returning to his own time to alert humanity of the impending danger, his flesh is metalized by a magnetic field and he is rendered mute, unable to convey his warning. When he is ignored and his attempts to communicate are mocked, he finally becomes angry and takes his vengeance on mankind, causing the very apocalypse which he had witnessed in the future.

“I was heavily into science fiction at the time,” Butler recalls. “Remember, this was the era of the space race. A lot of the stuff I was writing about was inspired by those sorts of stories. I was fascinated by what might happen to a man who’s suddenly transformed into a metal being. He still has a human brain, and wants to do the right thing, but eventually his own frustrations at the way humanity treats him drives this creature to…extreme action.”

Black Sabbath’s Iron Man is frequently tied to the American comic book character of the same name, many believing the latter inspired the former, but lyricist Butler sets the record straight. “My parents never let me read American comics when I was growing up,” explains the Birmingham, England-raised musician. “I knew about Batman and Superman, but that’s about it.” When he wrote the song’s lyrics in 1970, Butler was entirely unfamiliar with the Stan Lee/Larry Lieber/Jack Kirby/Don Heck-created comic book superhero, who debuted in 1963 and is, today, central to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, we may note that it’s especially meta to see Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt throughout the better part of 2012’s superhero epic The Avengers!

William Shatner covered Iron Man on his 2011 album Seeking Major Tom.

16)

Tell me, did you sail across the sun? / Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded

Drops of Jupiter [Tell Me] (Pat Monahan, 2001; performed by Train)

Train’s lead singer, Pat Monahan, has stated that this song, awash with astronomical imagery, came about as he dealt with the passing of his mother, who had died of lung cancer, and whose soul he imagined “swimming through the planets” and returning to him with “drops of Jupiter in her hair.” He tells of waking up from a dream with the phrase “back in the atmosphere” stuck in his head, remarking that “it was just her way of saying what it was like.”

With the loss of the most important person in his life topmost in his thoughts, Monahan began composing the song. “The process of creation wasn’t easy,” he remembers. “I just couldn’t figure out what to write.” He asked himself: What if no one ever really leaves? What if she’s here, but different? The phrase that emerged from his dream provided him with the central notion that his mother was again with him, “back in the atmosphere.” He has further intimated that the song is as much about “me being on a voyage and trying to find out who I am,” advancing that the “best thing we can do about loss of love is find ourselves through it.”

But Monahan did not initially reveal the true story behind his lyrics, providing vague responses when asked about the song’s meaning, saying at one point that it was about a strong woman who had “to find out who she was, and the man willing to let her do that.” Open to personal interpretation, the ambiguous lyrics have typically been surmised to be about a young woman, a close friend or, perchance, a former lover who leaves a relationship on a journey of self-discovery.

In “Nelson v. Murdock,” a first-season episode of the Netflix series Daredevil, this song is used to establish the early-2000s time period during a flashback sequence showing Matt “Daredevil” Murdock and his best friend Franklin “Foggy” Nelson in their freshman year at college.

17)

Encounters one and two are not enough for me / What my body needs is close encounter three

I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper (Jeff Calvert, Geraint Hughes, 1978; performed by Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip)

This lightweight disco number was designed to cash in on the popularity of the 1977 blockbuster movies Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, referencing both. It is notable as the debut of then-18-year-old singer Sarah Brightman, who went on to a career as a soprano in musical theatre, and later became a classical crossover artist.

In 2012, Brightman reportedly paid the private American space tourism company Space Adventures some $52 million for a ride to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket, but in 2015, withdrew from training for the flight, citing “personal family reasons.” Founded in 1998, Space Adventures, in cooperation with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has to date launched over a half-dozen space tourists into orbit, including, in 2009, billionaire Canadian entrepreneur Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque du Soleil.

18)

And with the top down, we’ll cruise around / Land and make love on the moon (Would you like that?)

Spaceship Coupe (Justin Timberlake, Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, Timothy Mosely, James Fauntleroy, 2013; performed by Justin Timberlake)

In this sci-fi update on the old rock and roll trope of cruisin’ around town in your car and making out with your girl, the town is elevated to outer space, the girl becomes an extraterrestrial, and the car, a spaceship!

Pop star Timberlake has also enjoyed success as an actor, garnering largely positive reviews. Among his films are the weird 2006 near future/alternate history comedy/drama Southland Tales, the 2011 dystopian science fiction thriller In Time, and three animated comedy/fantasy hits, 2007’s Shrek the Third, 2010’s Yogi Bear, and 2016’s Trolls.

19)

Now it’s been ten thousand years / Man has cried a billion tears

In the Year 2525 (Rick Evans, 1968; performed by Zager and Evans)

This tune was written by Rick Evans in 1964 and originally released in 1968 by Truth Records, a small regional label. RCA-Victor picked up the song the following year and made of it a number-one hit. Zager and Evans split up two years later after several unsuccessful follow-ups, having only scored this single hit record.

The song preaches on the dangers of allowing technology to advance so much that it overwhelms us to the point of our effectively ceding our lives to our own machines. As the verses lead us through the millennia, we find that life for man is becoming increasingly mechanized, programmed, and sedentary. “Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides” explains the singer, because “Your legs got nothin’ to do / Some machine’s doin’ that for you.” Even people’s very thoughts are provided for them by pills. Marriage becomes obsolete—“You won’t need no husband, won’t need no wife”—as does procreation—“You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too / From the bottom of a long glass tube.” Finally, at the 10,000-year mark, “man’s reign is through,” and the Second Coming sees God render a binary judgement: “He’ll either say ‘I’m pleased where man has been’ / Or tear it down, and start again.”

The song fades out as the cycle begins anew around another star somewhere “So very far away.” Will this new world of men also doom themselves by one day passively conceding control of their lives to their own overbaked technology?

It was a natural that a re-tooled version of this song was used as the theme for the syndicated sci-fi TV series Cleopatra 2525, set, as the title suggests, in the year 2525.

 

12) YET ANOTHER CORONAVIRUS PARODY SONG

Vintage Blue just may have tapped in to the sentiment of a lot of ladies who’ve maybe spent one day too many in quarantine with “him!” (www.vintageblue.co.nz):

 

13) THANK YOU!

We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in here at www.MonSFFA.ca regularly for additional content during this continuing period of quarantine, and for any news as to when the club expects to return to face-to-face gatherings. Thank you for your interest and attention.

We’d also like to thank Sylvain St-Pierre, Joe Aspler, Keith Braithwaite, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for putting this June 2020 DIY Virtual MonSFFA Meeting together.

Until we meet again, farewell, keep social distancing and washing your hands often, wear a mask, and keep safe.

 

14) CLOSING PARODY SONG

Five Times August (fivetimesaugust@fivetimesaugust.com) will take us out with this closing parody song about friends in this time of quarantine: