Alien Lore No. 118 -- Video and lyrics: The Carpenters' Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft

Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft is unquestionably the nuttiest song The Carpenters ever recorded. . .so out there it qualifies as an Alien Lore entry on All This Is That. Aside from Sun Ra, not a lot of modern music has focused on "visitors" alien lore, or close encounters, and for the clean-cut mainstream Carpenters to perform this song was, even in those wacky times, a real mind-f***er!

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft is a song by Klaatu, originally released in 1976. It was covered by the Carpenters with a crew of 160 musicians.

John Woloschuk, a member of Klaatu and one of the song's composers, said:
The idea for this track was suggested by an actual event that is described in The Flying Saucer Reader, a book by Jay David published in 1967. In March 1953 an organization known as the "International Flying Saucer Bureau" sent a bulletin to all its members urging them to participate in an experiment termed "World Contact Day" whereby, at a predetermined date and time, they would attempt to collectively send out a telepathic message to visitors from outer space. The message began with the words..."Calling occupants of interplanetary craft!"




Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft

In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we're about to sing

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

You've been observing our earth
And we'd like to make a contact with you
We are your friends

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary ultra emissaries

We've been observing your earth
And one night we'll make a contact with you

We are your friends
Calling occupants of interplanetary quite extraordinary craft

And please come in pace we beseech you
(Only of love we will teach you)
Our earth may never survive (So don't come we beg you)
Please interstellar policemen
Won't you give us a sign give us a sign that we've reached you

With your mind you have ability to form
And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm
You close your eyes, you concentrate, together that's the way
To send a message we declare World Contact Day

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

Calling occupants
Calling occupants
Calling occupants of interplanetary, anti-adversary craft

We are your friends
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Newsweek looks into what makes Rudy Rudy

If you're a regular reader, you know we think The Mayor of 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani, is not specifically the best choice for President of the United States of America. Far from it. From the Republican column, we would even give the nod to that dingbat Dennis Kucinich, or the plodding but charming Fred Thompson (bonus: knockout first lady) before we'd give the nod to Rudy. If I was a Republican I'd probably vote for Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney. Note: I've only voted for two republicans in my entire life, and I'd be glad to do it again if they could just quit sounding like, well, Nazis, toothless hillbillies, imbeciles, reactionary toads , whores to the establishment, Republicans.

Giuliani unquestionably has done some good in his life. He completely turned around the town I lived in for five years (NYC), and as a federal prosecutor, he broke the strangle-hold of the mob on NYC and elsewhere. But then there were other problems, with his trigger-happy police, who seemed to feel like they had a standing shoot to kill order on anyone who breached the peace, or with his personal life where he felt no compunction about housing his girlfriend and wife and children in Gracey Mansion at the same time. And then, at his nadir in public opinion as he was about to leave office, 9/11 happened, and he walked around with a hardhat and megaphone issuing sound bites to a ravenous press, and he was suddenly transmogrified into an expert on Islam, terrorism, and national security. The policemen and women and the firefighters do not agree. And neither apparently do many other people. Under this logic, I should probably be the police commissioner of New York City, since I was mugged three times while I lived there.

In their December 3 issue, Newsweek publishes a fascinating article on just what made Rudy Rudy:

"On Sept. 16, 1992, the police in New York City held a rally that spun out of control. The cops wanted a new collective-bargaining agreement, and they were angry at Mayor David Dinkins for proposing a civilian review board and for refusing to issue patrolmen 9mm guns. More than a few of them tipsy or drunk, the cops jumped on cars near city hall and blocked traffic near the Brooklyn Bridge. According to some witnesses, they waved placards crudely mocking Mayor Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York, on racial grounds, while at the same time chanting "Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!" to welcome Rudy Giuliani, the crime-busting former U.S. attorney who had arrived in their midst to shore up his political base.

"It is not clear Giuliani knew exactly what he was getting himself into—he later denied that he did—but video shows him wildly gesticulating and shouting a profanity-laced diatribe against Dinkins. The next day the New York newspapers were sharply critical of Giuliani (a Daily News editorial called his behavior "shameful"), and Dinkins, years later, accused him of trying to stir up "white cops to riot." At the time, Giuliani refused to back down or apologize for his remarks, saying only: "I had four uncles who were cops. So maybe I was more emotional than I usually am." Giuliani's performance that day lost African-American voters, some permanently, but it guaranteed the informal backing of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the policemen's union, which helped him get elected mayor in 1993."

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More on the El Rancho Drive-in in Kent, Washington

By Jack Brummet, Green River Valley Ed.

click to enlarge

There were three drive-ins in Kent, but we mainly went to one, because it was cheap. The El Rancho was our high school choice to see spaghetti westerns, scary movies like I Saw What You Did And I Know Who You Are, and monster movies like The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, or Billie Jack, Charles Bronson, and Clint Eastwood movies, or sometimes R-rated potboilers by Russ Meyers, like The Stewardesses, or the memorable Wife Swappers.

There were two other drive-ins in Kent: The Midway, on West Hill, which still exists, albeit as a swap meet location (the screen has long been dead), and the Valley Drive-in (which closed in the last two years). The El Rancho opened the year after I was born.

The fantastic marquee out front showed a gigantic cowboy on the range, cooking bacon in a cast iron skillet over a campfire. At $3.50 a carload, so you could see a movie for about seventy-five cents. Lining the street in front of the drive in were a row of stately Lombardy poplars. The El Rancho was torn down in 1975, but there among the concrete tilt-up warehouses and strip malls, a few of those poplars still exist, in between buildings and warehouses.

Drive-ins close every year at a quickening pace, but in this state (Washington) a few remain:

Samish Twin Drive-In Theatre
Bellingham

Auto Vue Theatre
Colville

Dayton Drive-in Theater
Dayton

Puget Park Drive-In
Everett

Your Drive In Theatre
Longview

Rodeo Tri Drive-In Theatre
Port Orchard

Blue Fox Drive-in Theater
Oak Harbor

River-Vue Drive-In
Pasco

Skyline Drive-In Theatre
Shelton (with an actual Indian totem pole at the entrance)

Wheel-In Motor Movie
Port Townsend

Vue Dale Drive In Theatre
Wenatchee

Country Drive In Theatre
Yakima

one of the two murals in front of the theatre

An aerial view of the El Rancho before it was demolished

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Joe Biden for President

click The Senator to enlarge

I don't talk or write much about Joe Biden for President, because, regrettably, he can't win. But if we chose who might actually make the best President--like a Bill Clinton with a stronger moral compass--Senator Biden would win hands down. Even his fellow candidates (opponents is not the right word...aren't we looking for the best and brightest as opposed to the most marketable?) seem to agree:


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snack bar ads, intermission countdowns, and the El Rancho drive-in

When I was growing up, the drive-in theatre was a cheap place for families to go. I remember the El Rancho drive-in in Kent, Wash., for many years charged $3.50 for "a carload."

Even back in 1960, the ads at the drive-in seemed corny. Here are some choice gems from the late 50's and early 60's.









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Pope to eliminate modern music from the Vatican

click to enlarge

The Pope is about to overhaul the Vatican to enforce a return to traditional music.

Now that the Pope has reintroduced the Latin Tridentine Mass, he wants His church to go back to the Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music. In an speech to bishops and priests at St. Peter's Basilica, he said the church needs "continuity with tradition" in their prayers and music.

He referred to "the time of St Gregory the Great", the pope for whom the Gregorian chant is named. The Gregorian chant has become the prevalent form of singing by the new choir director of St Peter's, Father Pierre Paul.

The Pope has also ended the tradition, started by John Paul II, of having a choir drawn from churches all over the world, to sing Mass in St Peter's.

The International Church Music Review recently criticised the choir, saying: "The singers wanted to overshout each other, they were frequently out of tune, the sound uneven, the conducting without any artistic power, the organ and organ playing like in a second-rank country parish church."

Monsignor Valentin Miserachs Grau, the director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, which trains church musicians, said that there had been serious "deviations" in the performance of sacred music. "How far we are from the true spirit of sacred music. How can we stand it that such a wave of inconsistent, arrogant and ridiculous profanities have so easily gained a stamp of approval in our celebrations?"

The Pope favoured the idea of a watchdog for church music when he was the cardinal in charge of safeguarding Catholic doctrine.

According to my friend Daryle Conners, who produced a documentary on The Vatican, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he was known then, was referred to as Darth Vader by Vatican insiders. I believe it! I wonder if anyone has even had the heart to tell Pope Darth that in America we have such perversions as folk-rock masses? Or that I have heard folk music, gamelon, rock and roll, and jazz in the sacred confines of his sanctuaries in the states?
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Happy Thanksgiving -- The Band cover Marvin Gaye's Don't Do It at their final show

31 years ago this Thanksgiving, The Band played the last time on stage. I always think about the band on Thanksgiving because of that show and the movie.

Bill Graham put the show together (along with Thanksgiving dinner for the attendees). They brought along a few friends like Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Emmy Lou Harris, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, and others. Don't Do It was their encore. Martin Scorsese used it over the opening credits of the film The Last Waltz released in 1977. It is a great movie of an epic event by a great band (R.I.P. Rick Danko and Richard Manuel). Buy the DVD--on sale at Amazon for a paltry $7.99!


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Obama's Dirty Secret, Part 2

Earlier this week (Obama's Dirty Secret), we talked about the Obama skeleton-in-the-closet rumor allegedly floated by the Clinton campaign. In New Hampshire yesterday, Presidential hopeful Senator Obama told high school students that when he was their age he was experimenting with illegal drugs and drinking alcohol. Admittedly, he wasn't encouraging the kids to follow in his footsteps ("what the hell you doin' sitting in here on a sunny day like this!? When I was your age...").

Obama stopped by a study hall at Manchester Central High School and answered students' questions about the war in Iraq and his education plan.

An adult asked about his time as a student, and Obama said: "I will confess to you that I was kind of a goof-off in high school as my mom reminded me," said the Senator. "You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said.

While Obama has discussed this before, you have to wonder if he wasn't prompted to bring it up one more time after the rumors the Clinton campaign may or may not have floated.
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Photograph of Keelin Curran circa 1976

photo by Jack Brummet - click to enlarge

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Former Press Secretary McClellan says Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Card lied and covered up CIA identity leak

In his forthcoming book, the former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney lied to the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative, and were involved in the cover-up.

McClellan recounts a 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that strategist Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, in an excerpt of the book released yesterday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff (Andrew Card) and the president himself."

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Painting: The Pugilist

click the boxer to enlarge

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Zappa Plays Zappa at Paramount Northwest

I went to see Dweezil Zappa's touring show and band tonight. I'd give it a mixed review. You have to remember, as always, that I suck as a music reviewer. For as much time as I spend going to shows, you'd think I could possibly sound literate, or knowledgeable, about music. And you would be wrong. That's why I keep these reviews brief.

There were some weird moments, like the band playing along with a 70's video of Frank (where they stripped away all the multitracks except Zappa's voice and guitar). It was a little creepy (ala Natalie and Nat King Cole's "duets." Dweezil is an incredible guitarist, playing the same kind of speedy, mathematical style his father employed. He didn't play a lot of melodic material...a couple songs, maybe.

Zappa Plays Zappa is a mostly young band, augmented by the wonderfully charming showboating singer/guitar veteran Ray White (who has an amazing set of pipes). They played songs from the first album all the way to the end, but focused a lot on the late 70's/early 80's Ray White era music like Zappa in New York (including his intense vocal on The Illinois Enema Bandit), Tinsel Town Rebellion, and You Are What You Is. If I had a voice, I'd have chosen more the late 60's to mid-70's music.

They played a few older gems like Uncle Remus (one of my favorite songs of the night), Uncle Meat, San Bernardino, Pygmy in Twilight, and other classics.

It was a good show, and I might even go see them again. But, I have to admit, it didn't match the two times I saw Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention play at the very same theatre 30 some years ago (including one show where they played a set of Reuben and the Jets).
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