Science Fiction Themes in Rock Music Lyrics: Wooden Ships, After the Gold Rush, Longer Boats are coming.

It is very difficult to write a song about UFOs or a Post Apocalypse Techno Industrial Wasteland but Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Bowie and Paul Kantner have done it well.

What are those songs about anyway? Some lyrics have been debated for decades... here is my interpretation.

Wooden Ships tells the story of two people from opposite sides of a war that become friends and survive due to cooperation. After an Atomic War, food is often radioactive... so the sharing of purple berries makes the difference... the survival of the human race. Lucky for us, this song was recorded by BOTH the Jefferson Airplane and Crosby Stills and Nash. Done during the time they all worked in the Mansion on Fulton Street. The house had a recording studio in the basement... and was THE SCENE.

Link to Famous Houses...
http://www.zillow.com/blog/2012-02-02/famous-homes-where-american-music-history-was-made/

After the Gold Rush is about putting people on ships to colonize space. Still a worthy goal.

So is Longer Boats. (UFOs).

Wheel in the Sky by Journey and Estimated Prophet by the Grateful Dead.
Ezekiel and his close encounter with a UFO in the Bible.

Space Oddity by David Bowie. Inspired by the Mercury Project and the tiny ship John Glen rode in.
The entire stage persona Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a tribute to Pulp Fiction Novels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Rice_Burroughs

Hey, Mr Spaceman by the Byrds. Please take me along!

Rapture by Blondie. "The Man from Mars eating Bars where the People Meet."

One Eyed, One Horned Flying Purple Eater. by Sheb Wooley.

Billy Preston: Space Race... a wild performance song in the George Harrison/Ravi Shankar tour.

Rocket Man by Elton John... reminds me of the book "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich" by Phillip K Dick. Mars... not a great place to grow up your kids... so build your Perky Pat Layout.

Frankenstein by Edgar Winter... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pnSSHwmu8I

and the Movie "Phantom of the Paradise" which starred the Moog Synthesiser TONTO that was so big a person could get inside it to play. The Original New Timbral Orchestra was also used by Stevie Wonder to make the magic sounds for "Boogie On Reggae Woman".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonto's_Expanding_Head_Band

Know any more? Comment Please.

Peace on Earth
http://vandergreg.blogspot.com/search?q=peace
Pentagon Rainbow
http://vandergreg.blogspot.com/search?q=pentagon

MKULTRA: was a CIA Mind Control Project in the USA during the 1950's and 1960's. They were looking for a way to use drugs as weapons of war. For example: LSD as a truth serum to aid in interrogation or as a way to simply get the "enemy" to lay down their arms, voluntarily... like, too stoned to fight...

The project conducted tests on college students at Stanford University. Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter both volunteered to eat LSD and other mind control drugs and report on the effects. Later, Ken started having "ACID TEST" parties where the participants took LSD and danced to the Music of the Grateful Dead. Robert Hunter wrote lyrics for the Dead.

Just co-incidence?
      or were "the sixties"
             a CIA experiment to just see what happens if MILLIONS of people took LSD?

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