Just for fun: a synthpop soundtrack for Ascension

[Questioner]

When I was in high school in the 1980's, I loved most of the high-tech pop and rock of the era... and I still do!

It seemed that every week there was some brand new, super-cool synth sounds, new special effects for the drums, new catchy hooks with the occasional sophisticated orchestral or jazz twist to the harmonies. The best music added vocals with excellent clarity, easy to understand, backed by nicely arranged harmony singers.

With today's magic of Youtube users uploading long out of print records from long-gone labels, we can enjoy those sounds again!

At the time, the Christian subculture - where my family wound up after leaving the cult - wanted to claim its own version of music just like what's on the radio. But only lyrics about the charismatic church's version of Jesus. The worst of that was instantly disposable, stale, cheezy rip-offs of the latest trends.

But there were some Christian musicians who had fresh, creative, well-crafted music and a desire to sing about God's love. Getting distributed into Bible bookstores doomed them from the hits they could have had if only they weren't so spiritually minded. I think the best of them could have been huge mainstream successes if they had broader lyrics.

I'd love to talk about all that more, but all this is to introduce the best 80's fun techo-pop new-wave Christian-rock sci-fi concept album... of all time! (Of course it might be the only one in that category...but it's still the best!!!) Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Crumbacher and his band present Escape from the Fallen Planet!

Take a nougat center of guitar, bass, and drums. Pile up a coconut meringue of synths. Add astoundingly precise backing choir (remember, this was before computerized editing to fix mistakes!), rising up as high as 80's Big Hair. That's almost as fluffy and sugary as this musical dessert. As one reviewer commented on Amazon, "the earnest, earnest, heartfelt delivery and flawless keyboards will transport you back to a time when the world was brightly colored and extraneous zippers ruled." (You can see the cover painting of the Rocket Ship! The band photo showed them wearing Starship Explorer Uniforms!)

Something about the themes of this one made me feel indescribably nostalgic and wistful even back then. So, the soundtrack that provides bubbly poppy synthy rockin' accompaniment to Ra, Q'uo, Esmeralda and friends:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbdYP3Okm...re=related

1 Solo Flight - instrumental - this is the music for the movie's opening titles, swooshing through starfields and galaxies until the spaceship suddenly winds up on Earth!

2 Crashlanded - this is the perfect theme song for any Wanderer!
"I'm just a stranger looking for an information source. My indicator says I went a little bit off course. I've got this feeling I'm a hundred million miles from home, and that my heart has crashlanded in another time zone.... Nothing short of Divine Intervention could save me from this tragic snare. Can anyone hear me out there?"

3 Identical Twins - metaphor for the Choice amid the Veil. For Esmerelda, this would be perfect for the good-guy soldier who has to choose between following orders or conscience. "Sometimes I feel like I'm identical twins, each one trying to do the other one in. As I'm fighting for my life, I'm praying that the better man win..."

4 Name Droppers - upset (as upset you can be with this happy, bouncy, FUN FUN FUN fluffy music!) about false prophets misleading people - seems to me to relate to today's "we're all gonna die" 2012 gloom & doomers

5 Royal Command Performance - speaks for itself - would love to hear this with the budget for a real orchestral brass fanfare

6 Tourist Trap - getting sucked into the physical 3D world and forgetting about higher things - MAN is this one catchy, catchy, catchy bunch of hooks! "When the pressure's high I want to fall, it would be so easy after all, but do I dare? It's a tourist trap!" Not sure if I have the lyrics right.

7 Life of the Party - about "the cloud of witnesses" cheering us on with as many hints and encouragements as they can while respecting our right to stay asleep! This is the perfect music for the closing titles. Would love to hear this one done by a jazz band with a saxaphone duet.

8 Alma Mater - just an excuse to do a synth version of Pomp & Circumstance leading into Graduating Class. Would be cool for Esmerelda's good guys doing their magical invocation prayer rites.

9 Graduating Class - not as much zing for me as the rest of the album - could relate to our concerns about how loved ones are doing after we go off on different adventures post-Harvest!

10 Interstellar Satellite - Hear the UFO take off! What positive Harvest aspiration! "Oh Lord I want to be your interstellar satellite, and sail beyond the outer limits of the night. I've escaped this fallen planet to an everlasting light!" Gotta love it!

Happy listening!

[Questioner]

I realized that this post has a narrow focus about a much bigger idea. Moderators, can I get the name of the thread changed to: "Musical intuition discovers the Law of One"?

I realize that this particular type of bouncy pop music is an acquired taste for some, which is fine. Let me expand to the larger theme that spans genres.

Many musicians will say that they used their own ingenuity or thinking skills to come up with their music. But there are also many musicians who will say that the music seemed to already exist, ready for someone to play it. They simply tuned in this existing music.

Now I feel that Stephen Crumbacher might have tuned in to the Law of One, as an unwitting channel. Stephen repeatedly said that his goal was to have a fun metaphor that would help people understand the love of Jesus, leading them to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, highest force of light and love in the universe, guiding light of their life. All this according to standard interpretations in the mainstream of evangelical Christianity.

I don't have any problems with that, but I wonder if Stephen's unconscious actually accomplished something much bigger than his conscious mind can recognize. If you use his Escape album as a metaphor for Billy Graham style preaching, it's a huge stretch to make it fit. With some convoluted twisting, it's just barely a 50% overlap with what Stephen's church leaders discuss. Yet if you start with the Ra books, it's something like a 95%+ match immediately, taking it in the most straightforward interpretation possible.

Remember this album was released only two years after the Ra series finished. In 80's pop/rock music, record albums were usually recorded about a year before release (to leave time for master editing, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing). And songs were usually written some time before recording (to leave time for arrangements, rehearsals, setting up synthesizer sounds, etc.). Tracing it backward, the Ra-compatible song ideas might have been percolating in Stephen's case right about the same time as the Ra contact was in its final months, thousands of miles away on the other side of the country.

There are some musicians who obviously try to connect to Cosmic Consciousness in metaphysical meanderings... Jon Anderson of Yes is a great example. Yet here is someone whose goal was to provide a modern-day parable about the Bible, and yet his parable is all about what was even more of an obscure, fringe part of society than today.

If this topic still doesn't catch anyone's fancy that's fine, but I hope that this expanded view may resonate.

[Namaste]

but I hope that this expanded view may resonate

It has done exactly that, I'll give this a listen when time permits.

From listening to a few seconds of the first track, it reminds me of 80's rock cartoon music (think Transformers The Movie). Ah, the memories :¬)