Because, you know, none of us were into sci-fi or anything.

[yeloson]

Most of this stuff is at least 10 years old. But seriously. All of this is like tertiary fallout from communities that all were into geeky stuff.

MIssy Elliott "Sock It 2 Me" produced by Timboooo!
Uploaded by ThomasCrownChronicles. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Let's also not forget that Michael Jackson was a giant fucking robot...

Busta Rhymes - Fire It Up
Uploaded by R33f. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

And just some clowning:

Comments

Dizzee Rascal - Sirens

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

(Also, would you x-post, like, all over space? I wanna see what else people got.) :)

Re: Dizzee Rascal - Sirens

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Will do, tonight, after work.

[misadventurelad.livejournal.com]

**sigh**

MF Doom is LIFE.
And the idea that a dude in a mask, spitting about space, villains and having dope beats with it? No, obs a figment of my imagination.

Heh. Even new(er) hip hop acts like Dyme Def build WHOLLY on scifi ideas-- Space music young man go cop a telescope.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

George Clinton, P-Funk, particularly the Parliment Mother Ship Connection.

From earlier daze 'n tyme ....

Love, C.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I brought that up over in the fiction-theory thread, along with Isley's Voyage to Atlantis. I remember one thing my dad said about why he loved Hendrix - "That man can make the guitar sound like you're in outer space" and I always ended up envisioning spaceships and stuff when he would put the records on.

[carabosse.livejournal.com]

Sun Ra, too. Has anyone based in music pop culture has written anything on the SF of 1970s funk and glam? I know that afrofuturism includes music, but I'm hoping for something more music-focused.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Good call, I'll do a music sf/f post in Deadbro tonight. We can all pull together links and rec's.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Absolutely Sun Ra. Woo.

I was asking that question at the start of the 80's re sf, funk and glam, but nobody I knew then was writing about the connections overtly. Since then perhaps someone has. Just fired off an e-mail to a music writer friend who was writing a lot about various musics for the Village Voice at that time (she still is writing about music now for that matter) -- she'd know if anybody does.

Love, C.

[carabosse.livejournal.com]

I've just found a book about rock music and SF, Alien Rock (http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Rock-Roll-Extraterrestrial-Connection/dp/074346673X/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242157815&sr=8-18): The Rock 'n' Roll Extraterrestrial Connection, but I can't tell how much it gets into funk. The index at least mentions Sun Ra, P-Funk, and Hendrix, so that's a good start.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Here's the response mi amiga returned to the inquiry -- oh, and her website's here (http://carolcooper.org/):

[ "The only writing I can recall that connected British 70s glam to American glam funk acts like Labelle or Funkadelic or Sly were kind of snide about it, like nothing could be more crazy, drug addled or bizarre than black folk in space. Come to think of it, rock writers were no kinder to Bowie or Elton when contemplating their space fantasies. The moody, escapist aspect didn't appeal to their sense of balls-out rockist machismo. That space fantasies were somehow gay escapism leaked over into Vicki Wickham and Nona's "space amazon"
image, and a little onto the p-funk crew, although Ernie and George never gave a fuck. Bootsy appropriated the pimp's effeminate pose and guitarists wore fetish diapers onstage, and never feared for their masculinity. They were alien, what did they care what deluded earth people thought. I think Michael Gonzales did a paperback book called *Funk* which touches on some of this.

As I recall, the white writer who did a big bio on Sun Ra spent a lot of time contemplating his (and even to a lesser extent Coltrane and Ornette's) musically implied space/time theories; linking the space stuff with spiritual mysticism about Egypt and ancient Mali and India.

Until recently, Science Fiction and space travel per se, were not an area taken that seriously by nationalistic black cultural types. Ghost stories like LeRoi Jones's *The Dutchman*, or mojo myths like those Zora Neal Hurston liked to write were favored over dreams
influenced by Verne, NASA and Sputnik.

My suggestion would be that you look into the Arab world for legitimate sky lore and sky science pioneered by people of color. Then look at black Muslim musicians, and even those musicians emerging from the 5 Per Cent Mation.

Islamic Arabs did, along with Indian astrologers, after all, give European navigators the astrolabe, the sextant, and accurate star charts. Medieval Europe never got these directly from the Greeks and Romans or Chinese as they'd like us to believe." ]

Love, C.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I deleted and re-copied the comment because LJ's not doing quote tags for some reason in comments. Foo.

Better get to work on my DW space! Just been so busy.

Love, C.