Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
Shockwave Radio Theater was a weekly radio program on KFAI-FM <www.kfai.org> in Minneapolis that ran from 1979 to 2007. Science fiction humor. Really, pretty much anything we wanted to do, we just did. This included music. We played all sorts of strange music, mostly science fiction and/or fantasy related but also played songs relating to our guests, of interest to curious people, or just anything we found odd. I liked to play things people hadn’t heard before, and/or were unlikely to hear in any other venue. I pandered to weird people.
Every now and then on Facebook, someone comes up with a list of “100 Best Science Fiction Songs” or related topics. Like all such lists, they lead you to believe that they’re definitive when they’re just somebody with too much time on their hands. They tend to include songs like Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” which is a riff on loneliness and not actually science fiction; and Pink Floyd’s “Set Your Controls To The Heart of the Sun,” which, similarly, is weird and trippy but not actually sf.
Going through my Shockwave song lists and CD library, I have come up with the following list. I’m assigning numbers to the listings, not individual songs. While the songs I want to talk about most are closer to the top, this is not a ranking, and many listings will contain multiple entries; I tend to think in terms of segues and related music to fit a show, so similar types of songs may be clumped together.
Basic criteria, singly or in combination:
- Stfnal or science-based
- Humorous/weird
- Obscure/unavailable anywhere else
- A song I really wanted to hear just then
But most importantly: I had to like the song. Preferably, like it a lot. With few exceptions, I didn’t just play anything because it was vaguely sf.
So this isn’t a “Best of” so much as “What I played on a science fiction humor radio program” with the dj’s comments. As the late Shockwave Rider Kate Worley put it, “I have good taste, but I have other kinds of tastes too.” There are any number of wonderful songs that I don’t have and/or never got to play on Shockwave Radio Theater.
If you disagree with an entry or feel there have been omissions, you are hereby encouraged to make your own playlist. Then we can trade mix CDs.
Ready?
1. “’39” by Queen <www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU>. Despite avoiding Top 40 when I could, I love this song. Real science fiction, a great short story about a generation starship and the human toll of relativistic speeds. Still gives me a chill when I hear it.
2. “Starship Jingle” by the Intergalactic Touring Band <www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xd3s6JKeHg>. A concept album about humanity’s search for a planet to colonize. The whole album is worth a listen (and I played several cuts over the years) but the jingle is bouncy and upbeat ... and a lie. But you’ll have to get the album to find out why.
3. “Yoda” by Weird Al Yankovic <www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOPsfaQRcbk>. The Kinks’s original “Lola” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXmMMSo47s> is weird enough, and the parody is delicious. I prefer it to “The Saga Begins” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFq1tl1ZEBI>, not just because I like the Star Wars movie it parodies better. Meanwhile, Weird Al has a real science fiction song, “Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet near Mars” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVmTxYlvtSQ> within his wonderfully askew oeuvre.
4. “Verres Militares” by Rondellus <www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2y51ixsu8>. Not precisely science fiction, but bear with me. Rondellus <www.rondellus.ee> is an ensemble from Estonia, specializing in liturgical music of the fourteenth century. Now, if you were an Estonian group specializing in liturgical music of the Renaissance who wanted to do a tribute album, your first covers would be of ... Black Sabbath, right? Sabbatum <www.sabbatum.com> takes Black Sabbath songs, translates them into Latin, and plays them in fourteenth-century liturgical style. I picked this one, a cover of “War Pigs,” because I could find a link to it. My actual favorite on the album is “Via Gravis (A Hard Road).” I played these on Shockwave, daring anyone to guess which group this was a cover of. No one guessed correctly.
5. “Hope Eyrie” by Julia Ecklar <www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY> from the album To Touch the Stars: A Musical Celebration of Space Exploration <www.prometheus-music.com/thestars.html>. My favorite version of my favorite filk song by Leslie Fish, about the moon landing. Still gets to me. I cannot recommend the album too highly. Science and sensawonda, not science fiction. The entire album is wonderful, so let me mention two more that I played as often as possible: “Surprise!” by Gunnar Madsen <www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXqPY27sYGI>, about Sputnik and “Queen Isabella” by Kristoph Klover <www.last.fm/music/Kristoph+Klover/_/Queen+Isabella+(Kristoph+Klover)>, about needing someone, however racist and mad, to finance an expedition to the unknown.
6. “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band <www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVr2hbE6aW0>. Yeah, those weirdos, who also did the more stfnal “Beautiful Zelda” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-GJ3SddOYM> (this video with a strange “The Intro and the Outro” commercial).
7. “Stealin’ like a Hobbit” by the great Luke Ski <www.thegreatlukeski.com>. Personally, I think this is waaaay superior to the original Eminem “Cleaning Out My Closet.” Luke is one of the many Dementia artists listed here, called so because their songs are played on the Dr. Demento show <www.drdemento.com> (and may or may not be filk, depending). He has done many, many parodies (and the occasional original) with an sf theme, notably “Just Mister Londo” <www.thegreatlukeski.com/lyrics_files/just_mr_londo.html>, “Battlestar Rhapsody” <www.thegreatlukeski.com/lyrics_files/battlestar_rhapsody.html>, and “Bender Roboto” <www.thegreatlukeski.com/lyrics_files/bender.html>. to name but a few that could have their own listing. Here’s my video of his song “The Dada Slide” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgdGTiX4ZI4>.
And as long as I’m talking about Tolkien-derived music:
8. “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” by Leonard Nimoy <www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU>, demonstrating that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. I remember switching back and forth between a Star Trek episode and this show to catch Nimoy’s song. It didn’t disappoint, and it was the subject of my first fan letter. (I wrote the show asking how I could get a copy of the song, and they said check my local record store. Never got a copy until decades later.)
9. “Namárië,” by J.R.R. Tolkien <www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOZPWpUAX0U>. The author reads a poem in Elvish. Somewhere in my travels, I picked up the vinyl album this is on and played it several times (with other cuts not read by Tolkien). A few other Tolkien audio recordings have popped up since, including “Sam’s Rhyme of the Troll.”
10. “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin <www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cOYzDtpEmI>. This isn’t only (or primarily) about the locale in The Hobbit, but I played it more than some of their other LotR-referenced songs such as “The Battle of Evermore,” “Ramble On,” and (some say) “Stairway to Heaven.”
And speaking of Led Zeppelin:
11. “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” by Little Roger and the Goosebumps <www.youtu.be/F8oGz0mxwks>. Zep lost a bit of swagger when they sued over this parody. It took me a while to find a recording of this ... on Napster. It was a legal gray area whether I could download the song or burn it on a CD ... but it was perfectly legal for me to play it on the radio, as the station had the licenses in order. Not sf, but still mind-expanding and a Shockwave fave. See also “Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxrZWz2F6WQ>.
While I tended to go for the obscure and humorous, I played some well-known songs too.
12. “Atlantis” by Donovan <www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUEjzVQwKo>, often paired with “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid <www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC_mV1IpjWA> and/or surfing death songs.
13. “Let There Be More Light” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tr-0LgKreg>, by Pink Floyd. A trippy story about making contact with the human race. Lots of Floyd sounds stfnal, but only some of it is.
14. “Longer Boats” by Cat Stevens <www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QF3Cjbk1zU>, about flying saucers.
15. “Space Oddity” by David Bowie <www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP6xBFyA_aw>. Unlike “Rocket Man,” this is actually about an astronaut and about how hard it is to handle fame.
16. “Womble of the Universe” by the Wombles <www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSS-uDkvWDc>, about a Womble astronaut. A forgettable children’s tv show made memorable by Mike Batt <www.discogs.com/artist/205587-Mike-Batt> songs.
17. “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants <www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhjSzjoU7OQ>. A song from the point of view of a nightlight; it would have been hard not to include this as sf.
Thinking about the future, and occasionally living in the future, of necessity gets science fiction writers thinking about politics. Still, when Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota, I declared that “Politics is a subset of science fiction humor” and did more and more. I recorded Shockwave interviews with Gov. Ventura <www.romm.org/audio/Ventura.ram>, Minneapolis Mayor RT Ryback <www.romm.org/audio/Ryback111803_smooth.ram>, and soon-to-be Congressman Keith Ellison <archive.org/details/SRT20060701>.
18. “Building For the Future” by The Foremen <www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0GIBEkaiyI>. More Roy Zimmerman political satire than sf, but what the heck. With a few substitutions, this still works twenty years later.
19. “Ape Man” by The Kinks <www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEep67akIn4>. Fear of nuclear war drives man back to the jungle.
20. “Wooden Ships” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash <www.youtube.com/watch?v=O69L2mO9y-4> is also about a post-apocalyptic future.
21. On the other hand, Tom Lehrer explores the lighter side of nuclear war. Some are proud of the part they’ll play—“So Long Mom” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=pklr0UD9eSo>. And we can be thankful that “We Will All Go Together When We Go” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI>. (Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman should get whole sections to themselves but won’t.)
22. “Nothing on the Moon” by the Prince Myshkins <www.princemyshkins.com/lyricspagemoon.html>, is more political than stfnal (as are most of their songs), but the Fringe Festival favorites are always a delight to watch and listen to.
23. I’ll mention in passing The Capitol Steps <www.capsteps.com> and their song “We put the MOCK in Democracy.” Their political satire is too ephemeral to link to any one song but often scathingly funny and dead on target, and I’ve played many of their songs over the years.
24. “Sonic Attack” by Hawkwind <www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8pGS4cWbHo>. Hawkwind probably deserves an article on its own for their relationship to Michael Moorcock and the sf songs of the group and individuals. But I’m not into punk or ear-shattering sounds, so I tended to tread lightly. Other shows on the station handled the head bangers. Still, “Sonic Attack” is pure sf and got some playtime, especially in the ’70s and early ’80s.
25. There are too many Hawkwind songs to list individually, but I’ll also point you to “The Widow Song” by Robert Calvert <www.allmusic.com/song/the-widow-song-robert-calvert-mt0008638895>, which is so obscure it’s not on YouTube. From the POV of the widow of a starfaring man who is never coming back.
There are too many stfnal instrumentals and sfx-laden songs to list here, but I’ll mention one:
26. “XM” by Jefferson Starship <www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rvetP_Kcgk>. Much as Jefferson Airplane is one of my favorite groups, I never got into Starship. However, we used the rocket takeoff as the Shockwave theme for a few years, and it can be heard on some early archives.
27. “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett <www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOFCQ2bfmHw>. Yes, I played this on occasion.
And we played with tv theme songs. At first, as the “Folk Songs For Yuppies” annual show, with real themes. Then covers and variants (some listed earlier) ...
28. “Theme From Star Trek” as sung by Nichelle (Uhura) Nichols <en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Theme_from_Star_Trek>. A disco version, with the Roddenberry lyrics.
29. “Star Trekkin’” by The Firm <www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE>. Delicious send-up of several Star Trek tropes.
30. “I Wanna Be a Powerpuff Girl” by Lojo Russo <youtu.be/E-mR6XOc23Y>. A (sometimes) local musician.
31. “My Heart Would Be a Fireball” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ifS2nP53Zs>. The link is to the opening and closing themes of Fireball XL5, the 1962 Supermarionation show, which was great at the time, but I really loved the end theme (at 1:27) and spent years tracking it down to play on the air.
32. “The Addams Family Theme” in the style of Frank Sinatra <www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VDZRR3rN3Q>, from Rerun Rock.
33. “Interplanet Janet” from Schoolhouse Rock <www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmYVWJ82dQQ>. A fun kids’ song.
34. “Cake for Breakfast” by Greg Lee <www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRBHlcv-5_w>. This one from the Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? CD is not particularly sf, but a great obscure song, and it fit into a show dealing with food.
There are a lot of comics songs.
35. “Superman’s Song” by Crash Test Dummies <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUIPlLw2ZE> is just one.
36. Aside from the various tv show themes, Ookla the Mok’s “Super Skrull” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk_tu2MwZDw> and the fannish “My Secret Identity” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WHyyr52LMw> are both good. Special mention goes to “Horny” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wB4i5QXFac> by the Ringling Sisters and The Nick Atoms <www.thenickatoms.com>. (You had to have been there....)
Minneapolis is blessed with quite a few great musicians. I tried to play local talent as often as possible but mainly played the sf/weird stuff. In the ’70s and ’80s, we had live performances in the studio, as yet undigitized, so much of the great filk is not easily found online.
37. “The Chart Song” <www.last.fm/music/Nate+Bucklin/_/The+Chart+Song> by Nate Bucklin <itunes.apple.com/us/album/water-over-the-bridge/id204325939>, about being unable to escape the Langdon Chart of sexual contacts at sf cons, is one of the few Nate songs that’s stfnal. Still, he got a fair amount of Shockwave Radio airtime, along with my recording of “Preposterous” about growing up weird.
38. “The Reincarnation Song” is Howard Harrison’s magnum opus, but only one recording exists on the out-of print Songs From Lacy’s Kitchen by Howie and the Heathens <musicbrainz.org/release/ba7e1201-9f0b-4b80-9c3d-e7ce802921ba>. It’s best heard in live performance, which, alas, happens less and less. Howard was one of the earliest Shockwave Riders.
39. Then-Mpls fan Jane Frietag recorded a cassette of various original songs about Star Trek characters, science fiction conventions, and The Stainless Steel Rat called, iirc, Full Circle. I don’t think it’s available on CD. Mostly, I played the live recording I made of her and Nate Bucklin circa 1984.
40. “In My Dreams” by Nellie and the Drummers <archive.org/details/iuma-nellie_and_the_drummers>. Reed Waller’s entirely synthetic band, created for a video game that never happened, with digital instruments and voices. I don’t think it works as well as a stand-alone, but I played this cut several times. Early on, Reed was a guest in the studio playing “Sassafras Jones” about a post-apocalyptic survivor. If a digital copy of this exists, I don’t have it.
41. “Railroad Bill” by Andy Breckman, about being a writer; here’s a performance by Steve Brust <www.youtube.com/watch?v=myDBSfJlehs>. But really, you should get Brust’s album A Rose for Iconoclastes <www.cdbaby.com/cd/stevenbrust> which we played a lot of cuts off of, notably “Stream of Consciousness Blues” right after “Word Association” by Monty Python <www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdYCX60GRk>.
42. “The Microorganism” by Boiled in Lead <www.youtube.com/watch?v=l83rheFrjiY>, about AIDS. BiL has been around for a long time with a rotating group of musicians including Minicon 50 Guest of Honor Adam Stemple <mnstf.org/minicon50>.
43. The Dregs play a lot of Celtic and seafaring songs often at the local Renaissance Festival, but here’s one of their originals, “Zombies in the Shire” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-n58OyR9bI>. They always give a great, fun concert.
44. The Flash Girls <flashgirls.wordpress.com> had many sf connections, not the least being performers Emma Bull and the Fabulous Lorraine, and played many stfnal songs including “Banshee” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmc-LJScgDY>, written by Neil Gaiman.
From just East of here:
45. Folk Underground are described in this Minnesota Public Radio article as making “happy little pop songs about going to hell” <news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/12/11_kerre_folkunderground>. Not your usual zombie music, including some lyrics by Jane Yolen and Neil Gaiman with great music and vocals.
From just North of here:
46. Dandelion Wine <www.dandelionwine.ca/new%20html/cds.html> has all sorts of sf/f/filk songs, none on YouTube, including: “Drink Up the River,” “This Island Earth,” “Captain Jack and the Mermaid,” and “Discovery,” which I played a lot.
47. Shout out to Dr. Demento <www.drdemento.com>, who has an ongoing podcast, The Funny Music Project <www.thefump.com>, as well as Dementia Radio <dementiaradio.org:8027> and the Marscon Dementia Music Track <marscondementia.com>.
48. “Rich Fantasy Lives” by Tom Smith and Rob Balder <www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tJU9w6_YkI>. A beautiful song, considered filk, and certainly demonstrating that sf fandom has won and become mainstream.
49. “Re: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton <www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6vnM9I7HIo>, a zombie song. Jonathan Coulton should get his own slot for geekiness and subject matter, but this will have to do for now.
50. “When the Lights Go Out” by Oingo Boingo <www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5USankwRQE>. About what we would now call the zombie apocalypse by the guy who later wrote the theme to The Simpsons.
51. “She’s In Love With A Geek” by Wally Pleasant <www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJi1K4UEXuY>. Pleasant is similar to Jonathan Coulton, does songs that are more geeky than sf, but I played him as often as fit into the show. (And interviewed him when he was GoH at Marscon.) See also “Technonerdboy” by Urban Tapestry.
52. Oh, okay. This is MY list, so I’m going to include “Nun Fight” by Paul & Storm <www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxHtZJphmGA>. An amazing duo with incredible vocals. This song isn’t particularly stfnal, but I first heard it at a Marscon, and it has the odd advantage of being based on a real incident.
53. “Diamond Star” by Catherine Asaro <www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqIu_U4Dn0>; this is a video I made of a song she wrote for the novel of the same name.
54. Masquerading as Human by the Duras Sisters <www.amazon.com/Masquerading-Human-The-Duras-Sisters/dp/B001B1M046>, an album from the POV of aliens on Earth.
55. “Picnic Time for Teddy Bears” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w9hPpxuhZ8>. The pure Dave van Ronk version is my favorite, but I could only find this version with the addition of a children’s chorus. Often paired with Dr. Seuss’s “My Uncle Terwilliger Waltzes with Bears” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=A86JP2pMvLU>.
Nota bene: At the Minicon panel “Greenwich Village Memories,” it came out that both Dave Van Ronk and Jane Yolen had tried out for the group which eventually became Peter, Paul, and Mary. My singing ability is close to nil; otherwise I would have encouraged an attempt at Dave, Jane, and Dave. It is one of my life regrets that I didn’t try.
56. “Einstein the Genius” by the Cranberry Lake Jug Band. Their own version isn’t on YouTube, but here’s a performance by Faux Renwah <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksz6sjxTQ7o>. I usually pair this with “The Impressionist Two-step” by Pop Warner and Jack Hanson <www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q-RVnpqOUg>, but I would be remiss in not mentioning “Einstein’s Brain” <www.allmusic.com/song/einsteins-brain-mt0016413737>, the true story of its transportation by car, based on the book, part of the “Songs Inspired by Literature” series of CDs (currently only at two, alas <www.allmusic.com/album/songs-inspired-by-literature-chapter-one-mw0000221916>).
57. Another person who could get a whole section is Stan Freberg, but I’ll confine his listing to the stfnal parody “St. George and the Dragonnet” in this fan video without Legos <www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR-haaB0UhY>.
58. “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane <www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0>, is one of the great rock songs of all time and a take on the Lewis Carroll fantasies. On a semi-related note, we have Joe Scruggs’s “Humpty Dumpty” <www.last.fm/music/Joe+Scruggs/_/Humpty+Dumpty> .
59. “Shambala” by Three Dog Night <www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyh6i9NvmE> extols the mythical Tibetan kingdom.
60. “Swiss Army Girl” by Scatterbrain <www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2NHDIqUfYQ>, about a man building his own lover.
61. “Virtual Reality” by Rusted Root <www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwYVP1XGRo>, a country sf song.
Dinosaurs deserve their own section. Here are a few:
62. “Stoneage Bayou” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLNxiVYWAco>, a dino love song inspired by the tv show Dinosaurs.
63. Dr. James Robinson, who released several CDs as Dr. Jane, also deserves his own slot <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Robinson_(filk_musician)>. “Who Owns the Bones” tells the real life saga (up to that point) of Sue the Dinosaur <www.fieldmuseum.org/at-the-field/exhibitions/sue-t-rex>. “Digga Digga Bones” explains why one would want to be a paleontologist. Lots of songs about academia and dinosaurs.
64. “Professor Jones” by Dinorock <www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Pueb6Ei1c>, is bouncy rockabilly about a yodeling paleontologist.
65. “Birdland” by Patti Smith <www.youtube.com/watch?v=OReJIwNVOz4>. Nostalgia for home.
66. “Renaissance Faire” by Blackmore’s Night <www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ty_0PcWyy0>. Sprightly song about a Renfest.
67. “Starsoul” by Urban Tapestry <www.amazon.com/Starsoul/dp/B005BNLNN4>, about being more than willing to go on dangerous missions in space.
68. “Star Chanty” by Cecelia Eng <www.last.fm/music/Cecilia+Eng/_/Star+Chanty>, an a capella chanty about an ftl journey. Also noteworthy is her song “Star Rovers,” about living as a space merchant.
69. “Bask Ye Samplers” by Bill Sutton <www.youtube.com/watch?v=lddKP4Dh93I>, mining song of those who work the heart of a neutron star to provide fuel for spaceships. Sutton also offers “9-5 Barbarian” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Id73x5_4c4>, about a working stiff who doesn’t want to do paperwork.
70. “Girl on Theology” by The Electric Amish <www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ccro0Pvbw0>. A parody, but better (imrho) than the Tom Petty original. Special mention: Tom Smith’s “On-Line Religion” <tomsmith.bandcamp.com/track/on-line-religion>.
71. “Nuts” by Puzzlebox <www.last.fm/music/Puzzlebox/_/Nuts>, is a “Why are Earthlings so strange?” song in the vein of Leonard Nimoy’s very dated “Highly Illogical” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru9e2rTHeuk> and the more recent tv show Third Rock from the Sun or the not-so-recent Mork and Mindy.
72. “Marvin I Love You” by Marvin the Paranoid Android <www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ImiqaXBMkM>. A beautiful, incredibly sad song. One of two Marvin songs, but the other isn’t nearly as heart-wrenching.
73. “Jigsaw Man” by Malarkey <www.amazon.com/Jigsaw-Man/dp/B0016LQ2UO>. A bit o’ funk about forced organ replacement based on the Larry Niven story.
74. “Mephisto and Kevin” by Primus <www.youtube.com/watch?v=EccOr9h04nM>. Weirdness about cloning Michael Jackson, I think. Used on South Park.
75. “Cape Canaveral” by Monte Mead <www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzSkTDOl96o>. For a long time, the show before Shockwave Radio was Good ’N’ Country <kfai.org/goodncountry>, and host Ken Hippler made me a compilation of mostly rockabilly from the late ’50s/early ’60s with songs about space travel or the moon. Many were barely disguised sexual innuendo (e.g., “I Got A Rocket In My Pocket” by Stan Beaver <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk_PHBchVsA>), but many went the whole distance. I’m going to give the whole subgenre one slot, but I will mention in passing “Knocked-Out Joint on Mars” by Buck Trail <www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTZQW_237Qg>, “Shake It Over Sputnik” by Billy Hogan <www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P_qQM1Fdnw>, and “Rockin’ on the Moon” by Deacon and the Rock ’n’ Rollers <www.youtube.com/watch?v=csKzThXa4Uo>.
76. “Flying Saucer (Parts 1 & 2)” by Buchanan & Goodman <www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq5cB7K6_2M> is a clever series of copyright violations from 1956 that couldn’t be a commercial recording today. So enjoy this music-studded news report vaguely reminiscent of Orson Welles’s 1938 War of the Worlds.
77. “Martian Hop” by the Ran Dells <www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRqg3M4ZJg8>. While I prefer the Joanie Bartels version, the original is still a lot of fun.
78. “Witch Doctor” by David Seville <www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjrTcYMqBM>. A novelty song more than sf but fun and spawned several cartoons and movies. Can’t say that about any song from Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin.
79. “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxzg_iM-T4E>. I feel the exploits of a talking dog living in an alternate history are not taken as serious fantasy. In any event, this is one of the best songs for kids and the first of three songs with these characters.
80. “Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx47qrH1GRs>.
81. “Flying Saucer Rock & Roll” by Bill Riley & His Little Green Men <www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIlYMPeA0sg>.
82. “Calling America” by the Electric Light Orchestra <www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp2hbysEmWk> shows just how much the “modern world” has changed. Similarly, the “days of miracle and wonder” Paul Simon sang of in “The Boy In The Bubble” seem less so now <www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy5T6s25XK4>.
83. The Android Sisters deserve their own slot as adjunct to the production of Ruby, the Galactic Gumshoe by ZBS Foundation <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBS_Foundation>, mainstays of Shockwave Radio. I picked “Down on the Electronic Farm” <www.discogs.com/Android-Sisters-Songs-Of-Electronic-Despair/release/632626> because I couldn’t find a link to “Dumb Is Fun” and I’m not as fond of their robot songs.
84. “Alpha-Male Star Pilot” <www.last.fm/music/Barry+&+Sally+Childs-Helton/_/Alpha-Male+Star+Pilot> is one of a number of songs by Barry and Sally Childs-Hilton I played, including “Monorail to Atomland” <www.allmusic.com/song/monorail-to-atomland-mt0026682104>.
85. “Clockwork Creep” by 10cc <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipm2wm5Exik>, from the POV of a time bomb on a plane.
86. “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon <www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpYBT0XyvA> is one of the best songs to listen to while driving, though only peripherally about werewolves. More creepy is “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTv-I2Y390>.
87. “21st Century Schizoid Man” by King Crimson <www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XimMmONwio> seems almost prescient amid the great jazz/rock.
88. Steeleye Span is my favorite group, and fortunately they had any number of fantasy songs, including “Elf Child” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvYYVjzy_Qg> and “Thomas the Rhymer” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo3VxbJ0RJ4>.
89. “The Unicorn” by The Irish Rovers <www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EPsuOEH1fY>. I played Shel Silverstein whenever I could.
90. “Minotaur Song” by The Incredible String Band <www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQrzHOtbPI>. I usually paired this either with ISB’s “A Very Cellular Song” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=-90rrjR6Wvk>, a wide-ranging melange of themes including one from the POV of the cell (about 8 minutes in) or more thematically with “Tales of Brave Ulysses” by Cream <www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BGlFsf9DM8>.
91. “Jocko Homo” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc>. Our Devo phase didn’t last long, but it was fun for a while.
92. Word Jazz by Ken Nordine <www.wordjazz.com>. I’ve played several cuts from the compilation over the years. While “What Time Is It?” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVYpCdY4Y_0>, “Confessions of 349-18-5171” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp_ml6Kvcqo>, and others are more stfnal, I’ve probably played “Faces in the Jazzamatazz” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0EhmExIMoU> more than any other for sheer epistemology-changing jazz poetry.
93. “The Gettysburg Address” as translated into the hip by Lord Buckley <www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FkJ-uu3UpI>. An amazing performance (recorded live; other versions exist). If this doesn’t make you look at the world a little differently, I can’t help you.
94. “Billy the Mountain” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-0b0_SqyM0>. Mostly Frank Zappa at his weirdest. A live show, done differently in different venues, with dated references, it’s too long to be played often. Still, the story of a mountain in California (and his wife Ethel) who decides to take a trip to New York manages to covers a lot of thematic ground from advertising to the draft.
95. “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” the original version by Burl Ives <www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2klh2cTa_Q>. Glad to get him in this listing.
96. “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans <www.youtube.com/watch?v=yesyhQkYrQM>. A song that manages to be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time.
97. “I Want My Baby on Mars” by Bow Wow Wow <www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w9hPpxuhZ8>. Sort of punk nihilism.
98. The Dude From Mars <www.cdbaby.com/cd/dudefrommars> popped up on occasion.
99. “Small Things” by Isabelle Delage <isabelledelage.ca>. I really love this song (and others on the album). Uplifting, with references to scientists and thinkers, it never fails to move me. This is a major victory for my habit of finding odd compilation albums and tracking down an artist.
100. And to make a nice round 100 slots let me add “Baka” by Outback <www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsFP3Klqab0>. The didgeridoo music has nothing to do with science fiction except that I used it as the theme for Shockwave Radio Theater for many years. This YouTube version doesn’t have the long single note intro, but it gives the feel of a piece that is at once distinctive and doesn’t have the same tonal quality as voice so I can announce over it. Since I played at least thirty seconds of “Baka” every week at the beginning and ending of each weekly show, I got more positive feedback on this than any song I played except Danny Kaye’s “Little White Duck” <www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJoGSKjd-iQ>.
In popular culture, science fiction has won. Too many recent songs about computers or space flight are no longer all that stfnal, and there are too many to include here.
Don’t bother to count how many of these you’ve heard. If you were a regular Shockwave Rider, you heard them all. If not ... well, happy listening.
I probably left some out. Sorry.
Dave Romm spent many years as the cd reviewer for Bartcop Entertainment. For a more in-depth discussion of these and many other slices of music, look at his archive of Baron Dave’s Recommended Music <www.romm.org/CD_recommend.html>.
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