Postcards From The Future ... Introducing Be Bop Deluxe

I was in the 7th grade, sitting in my science class, it was biology and I hated it, when they made the announcement, the space shuttle challenger had exploded on lift off. If you were alive and compis mentes you likely recall where you were when you heard. It’s one of three events that I would like to believe my generation recall where they were at the time. The other two are the suicide of Kurt Cobain (I walked onto the 3rd floor of Landon Hall and was told, we retired to someone room to tune into the MTV coverage) and of course more recently 9/11 (a computer lab at a Vaxjo University in Sweden, I was in logged into the Warren Ellis forum as the attacks went down and was chatting with folks watching it occur, people in LA and London)… Anyway, the Challenger explosion affected me more than the other two because on some level I knew that it was all over. The Jetsons dream of living in space, or moving to the stars, of having that bright utopian Sci Fi future exploded that afternoon. Really I already knew that we were doomed to a Blade Runner future (even if I had never seen the film at that point) but that day was simply the conformation.I felt devastated, and betrayed and my friends seemed elated by the news of the NASA failure. Maybe it was that they saw NASA as an extension of the Military Industrial Complex, which we were being told was the reason that we didn’t have as much tax money going into our school, as we should have. Maybe they were just that jaded, at the age of 13 or 14 or what ever we were to cheer the death of that dream…All this is my prelude to talking about the band Be Bop Deluxe, an early 70’s Glammy-Progy- Sci Fi pop group that I found on a CD comp about the roots of punk. The song ‘Sound Track’ caught my ear and I played it several times last month, and was inspired enough to order their best of CD. What they have to do with all that Sci-Fi stuff I was just talking about is that they were tapped into that hole 70’s Sci-Fi stuff… really what the hell am I talking about, this is Space Rock, this is the glammy side of Hawkwind, this is laid back drifting to the stars band, they are what should be playing in the background as Buck Rogers and Wilma Dearing (were talking the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25 Century here) go under cover on a pleasure cruise to the stars…. This is the more pop version of Ziggy Stardust, and the thing is that I get the impression that this is the positive Sci-Fi outlook… but I’m not sure. That day in 1987 has left me forever shaken, I’m never going to the moon, I won’t ever leave walk in space, or any of the rest of it…. My Recommended Space Rock listening List:David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from MarsHawkwind: psychedelic warlords (the best of)Monster Magnet: Dopes to InfinityBe Bop Deluxe: Postcards from the futureThe Atomic Swindlers: Coming out Electric