Science Fiction Music

David Bowie's Space Oddity is a great example of a science fiction short story in song form (albeit one about an acid trip). One of my favorite songs ever, by one of my favorite rockers ever, is equally great. Writing a great sci-fi short story is hard. Writing a song that is a great sci-fi short story is brilliance.

The song is Billy Radcliffe. It's by Frank Black and the Catholics, from their album Pistolero.

Billy Radcliffe didn't go to town
And when we looked up
He was looking right down
Catching blue in his eyes that were brown
Billy Radcliffe
(Billy Radcliffe)

Billy Radcliffe owned by the state
From his first breath
To the cemetery gate
He was the first boy born in space
Billy Radcliffe
(Billy Radcliffe)

Billy Radcliffe very first one
He really had lived just a cursed son
A split in half man sang the cherubim
Billy Radcliffe
(Billy Radcliffe)

Billy Radcliffe saw what the Devil man saw
He saw a spot of blue in black of the eye of the Lord
Such a cruel love
Is the kind that has wrought oh Billy
Billy Radcliffe

Billy sadly didn't live long
He had to stay there
Because he wasn't too strong
He's stepping out the door
Blowing up like bomb
Billy Radcliffe
(Billy Radcliffe)

Billy Radcliffe very first one
Really a hatched man a light switch son
A split in half man sang the cherubim

Billy Radcliffe very first one
A split in half man sang the cherubim
I bet you cried when he died now didja
Now didja ?

Now Billy Radcliffe saw what the Devil man saw
A spot of blue in black of the eye of the Lord Oh Billy
Billy Radcliffe saw what the Devil man had
And I feel very bad for
William Radcliffe

The Marsist

My favorite Frank Black song maybe. Live.

I Finally Got My Favorite Pixies Cover

"I said this can't be me, it must be my double."

Way back when I was a teenager in high school, my best friend got a CD called I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. I loved Leonard Cohen, and I dubbed a copy of this tribute CD on a tape. Every morning of my high school senior year, I had an alarm clock with a tape deck that played the Pixies' cover of "I Can't Forget" to wake me up.

iTunes doesn't have the album, and none of the Pixies' compilations have this song. So I bought the CD off of Amazon. Sixteen years after I first heard it, "I Can't Forget" is still my favorite Pixies cover, and it remains one of the top ten songs they ever did. In addition, most of the other covers remain brilliant, including REM's "First We Take Manhattan" and Nick Cave's "Tower of Song."



"I'll be there today with a big bouquet of cactus."

Black Francis: When They Come To Murder Me

"Sun Shines In The Rusty Morning"

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken many beautiful pictures of what the camera's designers are describing as an "airplane view" of the red planet. They are quite stunning.

Grand Duchy Does The Cure

A Strange Day



By the way: Just Like Heaven is a great tribute album worth buying.

Not Bad

Frank Black and his wife have an album out under the name Grand Duchy. I like it more as I listen to it. It's The Good Queen of Pop meets the Wicked King of Distortion. The album has a very 80's feel, like the bad dreams of the Thompsan Twins.

Because I so love you all:

loudQuietloud - Documentary of The Pixies Reunion Tour 2004
The first 5 minutes and the DVD and a trailer:



Where was I?