Podcasts about It Came from Outer Space

Sometimes the podstreams just cross, and this episode is a prime example. When Colin suggested reviewing It Came From Outer Space, the classic 1953 science fiction movie created by Ray Bradbury, it was right up Phil's alley - and so this episode is also going out (slightly modified) as part of his Bradbury 100 pod!The discussion ranges from Bradbury's contribution to the screenplay to the quality of the 3D, and takes in your humble hosts' views on whether or not screen creatures should be revealed or concealed.For more information, check out the show notes at: https://101sf.blogspot.com/2025/05/it-came-from-outer-space-episode-54.html

Text Abby and AlanListen in to the final installment of our Space Horror series. We will conclude with two epic space horror stories for you.Pariah's Last Breath was written by Curtis A. Deeter and narrated by Denali Bartell. Check out Denali's work here. Follow Curtis on Facebook @AuthorCurtisADeeter and Instaram is @Curtis_A._Deeter. Orion Beckons was written by Benjamin Cooper and narrated by Mike Macera. Keep tabs on Benjamin's work here: www.MindofBenjaminCooper.com and listen to Mike's band Beach Therapy on Spotify. Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.Follow us on TikTok, X, Instragram and YouTube. Join the conversation on Discord. Support us on Patreon. Support the show

Text Abby and AlanAbby and Alan discuss the vast history of space horror in film and literature. Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.SourcesA New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik: The War Inside H.G. Wells from 2021New York Times Article by Mekado Murphy: How ‘Alien' Spawned So Many Others from 2017ArtNet.com article by Tim Brinkhof: As Seen on ‘Alien': H.R. Giger's Biomorphic NightmareWar of the Worlds Radio Broadcast transcripts by HG Wells. New Yorker Article by Dan Chiasson from 2018: “2001: A Space Odyssey”: What It Means, and How It Was MadePublicBooks.com article by Eleanor Johnson: Speaking the Monster: Ecofeminism in “Alien” and “Aliens”Follow us on TikTok, X, Instragram and YouTube. Join the conversation on Discord. Support us on Patreon. Support the show

It's inner city vs. outer space when London street urchins battle monsters from another world. Starring John Boyega (in his first feature!), impressive creature effects, and borderline unintelligible slang, this film gives new meaning to the British Invasion. Best of all, Frank Olson returns (see Troll 2, Rodan, and more) to lend his thoughts; plus, Peter Lorre reviews Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three (1925). Thanks for joining us, friends!If you enjoy Camp Kaiju, please leave a rating and review. Or leave a comment at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠campkaiju@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠campkaijupodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Letterboxd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠Instagram (@camp_kaiju)⁠; or call the Kaiju Hotline at ⁠⁠⁠(612) 470-2612⁠⁠⁠.Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/campkaiju⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠campkaiju.threadless.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for perks and merchandise.We'll see you next time for ⁠⁠Gremlins (1984)TRAILERSAttack the Block (2011); The Space Children (1958); The Children of the Damned (1960); The Day of the Triffids (1963); It Came From Outer Space (1953); Invisible Agent (1942)SHOUT OUTS & SPONSORS• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Film Criticism by Matthew Cole Levine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Plays by Vincent S. Hannam⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Novels by Matthew Cole Levine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠•⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Film Friends Movie Trivia with Naomi Osborn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zack Linder & the Zack Pack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Camp Kaiju: Monster Movie Podcast. Attack the Block (2011) movie review. Hosted by Vincent Hannam, Matthew Cole Levine, Frank Olson. Camp Kaiju: Monster Movie Podcast, produced by Vincent S. Hannam; © 2024 Vincent S. Hannam, All Rights Reserved

It's the 2024 Halloween episode in which Derek and Aaron cover the last "IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!!!!!!" themed Season of Spoop film! They talk about the 1988 sci-fi horror remake of "The Blob" (original released in 1958) directed by Chuck Russell and written by Russell and Frank Darabont. They discuss the amazing practical effects, how this remake made the Blob actually scary, and the movie's critiques on society, government and the original movie. They also get into the subversive writing, flipping character roles, and many other aspects of the movie! Derek and Aaron are just guys in plastic suits who show up every time a meteor falls. HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE! Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WatchIfYouDare We are on PodBean, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Goodpods, Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio and CastBox. Please rate, review, subscribe, and share our show. Also, check out our Spotify Music playlist, links on our Twitter and Podbean page. Our socials are on Facebook and Twitter @WatchIfYouDare

We're back to finish off the It Came From Outer Space series with 1986's Night Of The Creeps!! Listen in as we review and revisit this fun scifi-horror movie that knows it's a b-movie by the awesome Fred Dekker and starring Tom Atkins! Come for the slugs, stay for the zombie dates showing up for some miller high life! Check it out now! Released the weekend of 10/25/2024

The "IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!!!!!!" themed Season of Spoop rolls on. Aaron and Derek are joined by James to talk 1985's British science fiction horror flick "Lifeforce" directed by Tobe Hooper, adapted by Dan O'Bannon, and based on the novel "The Space Vampires" by Colin Wilson. They discuss spirituality mixed with science fiction, how many horror subgenres and themes are packed into one movie, and the inconsistent pacing. They also get into the over the top climax, the portrayal of women, Hooper taking a B movie concept to insane heights, and many other aspects of the movie. Aaron and Derek have been in space for six months and James looks perfect to them. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WatchIfYouDare We are on PodBean, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Goodpods, Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio and CastBox. Please rate, review, subscribe, and share our show. Also, check out our Spotify Music playlist, links on our Twitter and Podbean page. Our socials are on Facebook and Twitter @WatchIfYouDare

Yes! vol. 3 is here and it's time for a comedy film in the realm of It Came From Outer Space series. We look back at the final entry in the 3 flavors cornetto trilogy and The Worlds End! We head back to 2013 and see how this one holds up compared to the other 2 films in the series and if it is creepy to go back home and see clones of people you used to know... Check it out now! *Released the weekend of 10/18/2024

Bubbles....depth...deep...Cthulu! We're back with a new episode on our It Came From Outer Space series and 2020's Underwater! Brave the deep with us as we revisit the pandemic released flick and see if the film is worthy of the comparisons with Alien and how claustrophobic you can get all while listening from your own little safe space Check it out now! *Released the weekend of 10/11/2024

2024 Season of Spoop starts now! The movie theme this year is IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE!!!!!!! To begin, Aaron and Derek are joined by Katie the other cohost of the podcast "True Crime Campfire" to discuss 1988's science fiction comedy horror "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" written, directed and produced by the Chiodo Brothers. They talk about the Chiodo brothers experience with special effects, the amazing practicality under low budget circumstances, and how this movie tongue-in-cheek ignores plot. They also get into the missed opportunity of sequels and franchise building, the humor and whether or not it works, and many other aspects of the film. Listen and Follow "True Crime Campfire" Their website: https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/truecrimecampfire/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/ Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WatchIfYouDare We are on PodBean, Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, Goodpods, Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio and CastBox. Please rate, review, subscribe, and share our show. Also, check out our Spotify Music playlist, links on our Twitter and Podbean page. Our socials are on Facebook and Twitter @WatchIfYouDare

Queue the spooky music intro! Yes it's Horror month again on the show and this year we're leaning more into scifi with the "It Came From Outer Space" series! To start we all sat down and watched 1988 remake of The Blob! This beautiful piece of gum colored gore fest has a soft place in our hearts as well as in our trunks with 80's style make shift bars in them ha! Check it out now as we take a stroll back to '88 and see how this one holds up! *Released the weekend of 10/4/2024

Killer brains are on the loose and only the Army can stop them now! Or, at least deny their radiation tests had anything to do with it. Oops. Welcome to the squishy, squelching world of this ‘50s sci-fi romp - it ain't exactly a thinker, but you don't have to be a brainiac to enjoy these "mental vampires"! Thanks for listening, friends. If you like the show, please leave a rating and review; leave a comment at ⁠campkaiju@gmail.com⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠campkaijupodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Letterboxd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠Instagram (@camp_kaiju)⁠; or call the Kaiju Hotline at ⁠⁠⁠(612) 470-2612⁠⁠⁠. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/campkaiju⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠campkaiju.threadless.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for perks and merchandise. We'll see you next time for Planet of the Apes (2001)! CHAPTERS: (46:58) Minya's Mailbox - Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) (51:38) Kaiju Hotline(55:03) Trivia winner! (56:04) Silent But Deadly - The Golem: How He Came Into the World (1920) TRAILERS:Fiend Without a Face (1958); The Devil Doll (1936); Devil Doll (1964); It Conquered the World (1956); It Came From Outer Space (1953); It! (1967) SHOUT OUTS & SPONSORS• ⁠⁠⁠Film Criticism by Matthew Cole Levine⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠Plays by Vincent S. Hannam⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠Novels by Matthew Cole Levine⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠Film Friends Movie Trivia with Naomi Osborn⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Zack Linder & the Zack Pack ⁠⁠⁠ Camp Kaiju: Monster Movie Podcast. Fiend Without a Face (1958) movie review. Hosted by Vincent Hannam, Matthew Cole Levine. Camp Kaiju: Monster Movie Podcast, produced by Vincent S. Hannam; © 2024 Vincent S. Hannam, All Rights Reserved. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/camp-kaiju/support

Continuing the mini-series, Roy and Gina are joined by Caitlyn to chat about two films by Jack Arnold. It Came From Outer Space and Tarantula!

The Fellowship is pleased to present our discussion of the 1999 film The Sixth Sense, continuing with our little Movie Month. It was the start of something, to say the least (spoiler alert lol). Plus our usual crazy talk, geek news, and tangents

We review It Came From Outer Space (1953) on The Atomic Cinema Experiment. This is a sci fi movie podcast. It Came From Outer Space is directed by Jack Arnold and stars Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mildfuzztv twitter: https://twitter.com/ScreamsMidnight discord: https://discord.gg/8fbyCehMTy TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/mildfuzztv Email: mftvquestions@gmail.com Audio version: https://the-ace-atomic-cinema-experime.pinecast.co

In this episode, Andy looks at one of his childhood favorite movies, It Came From Outer Space. The movie was directed by Jack Arnold, who also directed Creature From The Black Lagoon.

The Fellowship is pleased to present our discussion of comics team-ups. Why don't they do them anymore? What are the benefits? Who would we team up? Plus our usual crazy talk, geek news, and tangents

Mit ganzen 4 abgeräumten Oscars ist “Poor Things” wohl ein Überraschungsgewinner der diesjährigen Academy Awards. Und allein die Rede von Emma Stone, die hier für die beste weibliche Hauptrolle ausgezeichnet wurde, war schon irgendwie ein kleines Highlight. Damit kann Giorgos Lanthimos an vergangene Erfolge anknüpfen und mit Sicherheit auch ein neues Publikum erschließen. Denn auch wenn #poorthings die für Lanthimos übliche und zum Teil echt weirde Handschrift trägt, ist dieser Film im Vergleich zu seinem sonstigen Werk doch recht zugänglich. Wir haben uns diese moderne Frankenstein-Adaption mit Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe und Mark Ruffalo mal genauer angeguckt und waren von der offensichtlich feministischen Haltung, die “Poor Things” an den Tag legt, doch mitunter etwas überrascht. Ob uns all das am Ende auch gefallen hat, erfahrt ihr in dieser Folge. Achja, und wir mussten mal wieder hart improvisieren, haben deshalb einen neuen Gast am Start und besprechen den ein oder anderen merkwürdigen Sci-Fi-Film. Viel Spaß! _______________________________________ (00:00) Cold Opener & Intro (02:41) Entoder Weder (27:12) Poor Things (46:56) It Came From Outer Space (01:08:30) Im Staub der Sterne (01:30:16) Gattaca (01:48:52) Ausblick auf die nächste Folge (01:53:31) Spoilerpart zu Poor Things _______________________________________ Hier kannst du uns überall finden: iTunes/Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2TgWvY3 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/34jfB68 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JahierFilmePodcast RSS-Feed: https://jahierfilme.podcaster.de/ Instagram: @jahierfilme Twitter: @jahierfilme Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jahierfilme _______________________________________ Alle unsere Filme im Überblick: https://letterboxd.com/jahierfilme/lists/

Count von Nudo and Schmutt P. Eddler do the time warp back to the musical that started a cult phenomenon exactly 50 years ago - The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show. We celebrate the opening song "Science fiction/Double Feature", which name-checks some of the greatest science fiction and horror films of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s. We have been able to include six of the 11 films mentioned in this theme week. The other five, such as King Kong (1933) and The Invisible Man (1933) belong to big Hollywood studios, making it more difficult for us to get the rights to show them (but we will keep trying).   Tony Sokol over at DenofGeek.com has a great overview of each song and film reference, from which we have stolen, sorry, quoted extensively. Do read his original article for more context and in-depth insights. It is remarkable how well Richard O'Brien knew his B-movies, given that there was no Internet or IMDb back in the days, but that is a sign of true geek fandom. Respect! The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) -  “Michael Rennie was ill the day the Earth stood still, but he told us where we stand.” A science fiction film with a message for earth to get its s#!t together, by the great director Robert Wise.  “Klaatu barada nikto”.Flash Gordon (1936) -  “And Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear”. An episodic cinema serial with Buster Crabbe fighting Ming the Merciless. Familiar from television re-runs and of course the more famous 1980 re-make.  It Came From Outer Space (1953) -  “Then at a deadly pace it came from outer space.” An alien spaceship crash lands in the Arizona desert and people start acting strange. More Cold War paranoia, by director Jack Warner. Originally in 3D but shown here in boring 2D. Doctor X (1932) -  “Dr X will build a creature.” Doctor Xavier doesn't actually build a creature (Frank N Further does tho), in this pre-code color film by Michael Curtiz, who later directed Bogart again in Casablanca (1942).   “See androids fightingBrad and JanetAnne Francis stars inForbidden Planet…”Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohAt the late nightDouble Feature picture show”The Day of the Triffids (1963) - “And I really got hot when I saw Janette Scott fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills.” Or as Tony Sokol put it,  "Vegetarians eat vegetables. Humanitarians, like Doctor X, eat humans. Triffids are vegetables that eat humans, vegetarian or not." So don't look up at meteor showers, or you'll wake up all "28 Days Later." Freddie Francis co-directs. Curse of the Demon aka Night of the Demon (1957) - “Dana Andrews said prunes, gave him the runes, and passing them used lots of skills.” Jacques Tourneur, of Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) fame, directs this British demonic chiller. A special shout-out to RKO Radio Pictures. We have our biggest Spotify playlist EVER, with over 100 songs. 

Gregory and Justin return from two very different conventions, San Diego Comic Con in the U.S., and Pemmi-Con in Winnipeg. Transition clips are from It Came From Outer Space (1953) - https://youtu.be/85xpN_Ohwqs Follow the gang on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gmbchomichuk/ https://www.instagram.com/chasingartwork/ GMB Chomichuk's online store https://www.gmbchomichuk.ca Chasing Artwork's online store: https://www.chasingartwork.com/ Production: Dan Vadeboncoeur Titles: Jesse Hamel & Nick Smalley --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gmb-chomichuk/message

Stare blankly into the abyss with us this week, as we deviate over the dry heat (and dry delivery) of Asteroid City, followed by the Martian (?) panic of It Came From Outer Space.  Hey aliens, if you love the desert so much, why don't you marry it? #asteroidcity #itcamefromouterspace #wesanderson #jackarnold #jasonschwartzman #scarlettjohansson

Did a cosmic death fungus break our genetic code approximately 15,000 years ago? The fungus in question may have hitched a ride on a meteor which would make it an extraterrestrial living artifact. An important concept in space microbiology or astrobiology is ‘habitability', which is essentially an assessment of whether an environment can support the activity of a given organism. Just as one human can change the world, so too, one alien bacteria or virus could potentially change life as we know it. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks about IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. #GroundZero #ClydeLewis #Astrobiology #SpaceFungus https://groundzeromedia.org/4-12-23-it-came-from-outer.../ Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis is live M-F from 7-10pm, pacific time, and streamed for free at groundzero.radio and our online affiliates, talkstreamlive.com, kgradb.com, and unxnetwork.com. There is a delayed broadcast on our local Portland radio station, KPAM 860, from 9pm-12am, pacific time. To leave a message, call our toll-free line at 866-536-7469. To listen by phone: 717-734-6922. To call the live show: 503-225-0860. For Android and iPhones, download the Paranormal Radio app. The transcript of each episode will be posted after the show on our website at groundzeromedia.org. In order to access Ground Zero's exclusive digital library which includes webinars, archived shows/podcasts, research groups, videos, documents, and more, you need to sign up at aftermath.media. Subscriptions start at $7/month. Check out the yearly specials!

Episode Notes Please rate, review, and/or subscribe on Apple Podcasts to help promote this show! You can explore all of my podcasts, including over 200 hours of Patreon content, on my website https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/film-in-focus.html & https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/film-capsule.html LINKS The Shanghai Gesture (1941) by Sheila O'Malley (Film Noir of the Week) http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2010/09/josef-von-sternberg-s-shanghai-gesture.html MY RECENT WORK OTHER PODCASTS Twin Peaks Cinema: Bigger Than Life (Ray's Haunted Fifties #3) https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/09/bigger-than-life-as-twin-peaks-cinema.html & Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Ominous Whoosh author John Thorne, part 1 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPbXHh0Xztk PATREON ($5/month): Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Ominous Whoosh author John Thorne https://www.patreon.com/posts/72584971 ($1/month) Episode 95, part 1: Concluding the 80s... Red Dawn, Do the Right Thing & Hail Mary (capsules on Stranger Things, Top Gun: Maverick, The Goonies, Gremlins, Midnight Run, Scarface + feedback/media/work updates including Encanto & more) https://www.patreon.com/posts/72895154 / EXCLUSIVE advances: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #74, 73 & 71 https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-twin-72238526 PREVIOUSLY ON THIS PODCAST Melodrama, Crime, Fantasy, and War: 17 Classic Capsules including Ah Wilderness!, A Letter to Three Wives, It Came From Outer Space & more https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/09/melodrama-crime-fantasy-and-war-17.html This episode's home page on my site will be published tomorrow, Thursday, October 6 at 8am: https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/10/the-shanghai-gesture-lost-in-movies.html This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

On our third episode of HEY DAN! Dan Pullen welcomes our friend and certified nicest person on the internet, Mr. John Arminio to discuss two films based on the writings of Ray Bradbury: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983) and IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) you can find John Arminio on Twitter at @Quasarsniffer  

As Kevin and Chris embark on the back half of this series, this episode marks a change in the studio's method of production as well as what type of "monster" films they will produce in the future. Change is on the horizon... Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Episode Notes Please rate, review, and/or subscribe on Apple Podcasts to help promote this show... You can explore both public and patron episodes of this podcast here: https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/twin-peaks-cinema.html OTHER LINKS Bigger Than Life (1956) and Its Influence on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) by Tony Dayoub (Cinema Viewfinder) http://www.cinemaviewfinder.com/2010/03/bigger-than-life-1956-and-its-influence.html My most recent Twin Peaks Conversations - Horror & Melodrama in Fire Walk With Me w/ author Lindsay Hallam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqi0SB3W_Vo discusses Bigger Than Life & Part 2 is available to $5/month patrons at https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-part-2-w-70575254 The film also comes up in Finding the Missing Pages, an earlier interview w/ Lindsay Hallam about her Fire Walk With Me book: https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2018/11/finding-missing-pages-interview-w.html Breaking Bad - "Pilot" (season 1, episode 1) from my viewing diary https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2018/03/breaking-bad-pilot-season-1-episode-1.html My first review of Bigger Than Life, written after initial viewing in 2008https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2008/09/bigger-than-life.html MY OTHER WORK ON TWIN PEAKS https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/twin-peaks.html MY OTHER RECENT PODCASTS Lost in the Movies - Melodrama, Crime, Fantasy, and War: 17 Classic Capsules ... brief reflections on Ah Wilderness!, A Letter to Three Wives, Invitation, Morning Glory, Parnell, Little Caesar, Dick Tracy, Nightmare Alley, Gilda, The Woman in White, It Came From Outer Space, Pinocchio, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Enchanted Cottage, The White Cliffs of Dover, The Fallen Sparrow & The Angel Wore Red https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/09/melodrama-crime-fantasy-and-war-17.html Lost in the Movies on Patreon ($1/month) - The 80s in August... Desperately Seeking Susan & Top Gun (capsules on Stranger Things, Poltergeist, Beverly Hills Cop, Witness, The Breakfast Club, Wall Street, Twins, The Hunger, archive reading of Fast Times at Ridgemont High + feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: Civil War & more) https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-94-80s-71329778 & (FREE to the public) Opening the Archive - The 80s Imagination https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-94-bonus-71226358 This episode's home page on my site will be at https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/09/bigger-than-life-as-twin-peaks-cinema.html tomorrow, September 22 at 8am Browse my other podcasts: Lost in the Movies https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/patreon-podcast.html Lost in Twin Peaks https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/lost-in-twin-peaks.html This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode Notes Please rate, review, and/or subscribe on Apple Podcasts to help promote this show! You can explore all of my podcasts, including over 200 hours of Patreon content, on my website https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/film-in-focus.html & https://www.lostinthemovies.com/p/film-capsule.html 0:00 INTRO 6:02 AH, WILDERNESS! (1935) *the Our Town comparison to Twin Peaks is here: https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/02/our-town-as-twin-peaks-cinema-10-podcast.html 10:50 A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949) 14:57 INVITATION (1952) 17:37 MORNING GLORY (1933) 18:58 PARNELL (1937) 20:49 LITTLE CAESAR (1931) 22:13 DICK TRACY (1945) 24:37 NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947) 26:19 GILDA (1946) 28:11 THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1948) 29:30 IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) 31:21 PINOCCHIO (1940) *this inspired a visual tribute to Pinocchio's "little worlds": https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2020/07/four-worlds-in-pinocchio-visual-tribute.html 34:07 THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941) 36:05 THE ENCHANGED COTTAGE (1945) 38:57 THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER (1944) 41:38 THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943) 45:03 THE ANGEL WORE RED (1960) OTHER LINKS My tweet about the "capitalism" speech in Ah, Wilderness! https://twitter.com/LostInTheMovies/status/1163621435711131648 My other Twin Peaks Cinema - "Small Town Blues" episodes: Kings Row https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/01/kings-row-as-twin-peaks-cinema-9-podcast.html & Peyton Place https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/03/peyton-place-as-twin-peaks-cinema-11.html My Patreon podcast w/ a capsule on Midsommar (mentioned w/ Invitation)https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-63c-in-33489777 My video essay "The Full Cinepoem" (including Pinocchio clips) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8wDMyO7NI4 My review of Inside Out https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2019/12/inside-out-unseen-2015.html My review of Affliction (referenced alongside The Sweet Hereafter in The Devil & Daniel Webster capsule)https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2008/07/affliction-1998-was-good-year-for_31.html My Twin Peaks Cinema podcast on The Sweet Hereafter (actually takes place in New York in the book, and Canada in the film) https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/05/the-sweet-hereafter-as-twin-peaks.html My Patreon podcast w/ a capsule on The Silence of Others, a documentary about Franco's Spain https://www.patreon.com/posts/36042992 MY RECENT WORK OTHER PODCASTS Twin Peaks Cinema: Rebel Without a Cause (Ray's Haunted Fifties #2) https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/08/rebel-without-cause-as-twin-peaks.html & Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me book author Lindsay Hallam, part 1 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqi0SB3W_Vo PATREON ($5/month): Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me book author Lindsay Hallam https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-part-2-w-70575254 ($1/month) Episode 94 podcast: The 80s in August... Desperately Seeking Susan & Top Gun (capsules on Stranger Things, Poltergeist, Beverly Hills Cop, Witness, The Breakfast Club, Wall Street, Twins, The Hunger, archive reading of Fast Times at Ridgemont High + feedback/media/work updates including Captain America: Civil War & more) https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-94-80s-71329778 / EXCLUSIVE advances: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #77 - 75 https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-twin-71063594 (FREE for the public) Episode 94 bonus - Opening the Archive: The 80s Imagination (readings of The Brave Little Toaster, The Secret of NIMH, The Last Unicorn, An American Tail, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial & another essay) https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-94-bonus-71226358 PREVIOUSLY ON THIS PODCAST Monkey Business https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/08/monkey-business-lost-in-movies-podcast.html This episode's home page on my site is https://www.lostinthemovies.com/2022/09/melodrama-crime-fantasy-and-war-17.html This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

It Came From Outer Space! (265) Enjoy! https://ia600505.us.archive.org/24/items/mutation-265/Mutation265.mp3

On today's show, the latest on recreational marijuana's status on the ballot. Plus, the Fort Smith Film Festival, It Came From Outer Space, the launch of a new season of Undisciplined, and much more.

A young boy struggles to warn his community about an Alien invasion in this 80's remake. Tune in as Chris talks Tobe Hooper, SFX, & strange offerings as the LSCE screen's the 1986 cult classic “Invaders From Mars.” Join us! Check us out @lscep Or LSCEP.com Works Cited: Ansen, David, Peter McAlevey, and Ed Behr. Hollywood's New Go-Go Boys. Newsweek. Aug 11, 1986. Article Link. Accessed 4/27/22. Darnton, Nina. The Screen: ‘Invaders From Mars.' The New York Times. June 6, 1986. Article Link. Accessed 7/20/22. Friedman, Robert. “Will Cannon Boom or Bust?” American Film. Jul 1, 1986. Article Link. Accessed 4/26/22. Harley, W. “Reviews: Invaders From Mars.” Boxoffice. Vol 122, no 8. (1986):R86. Article Link. Accessed 7/20/22. Hartley, Mark. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films! 2014. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014. 106 Mins. Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Invaded Body: Paranoia, and Radiation Anxiety in Invaders from Mars, It Came From Outer Space, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Extrapolation. Vol 39, No 1. (1998): 26-39. Latham, Rob. “Subterranean Suburbia: Underneath the Smalltown Myth in the Two Versions of “Invaders from Mars.” Science-Fiction Studies 22, No. 2 (1995) 198-208. Lor. “Invades From Mars.” Variety, 323 (1986) Article Link. Accessed 7/20/22 McDonagh, Maitland. “Invaders From Mars.” The Film Journal. Vol. 89(7) 1986, 22. Article Link. Accessed 7/20/22 Medalia, Hilla. The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films. 2014. MVD Visual, 2021. Blu Ray. Trunick, Austin. Cannon Film Guide Volume 2: 1985-1987. Orlando, FL: Bear Manor Media, 2022. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lsce/message

On this edition of The Arts Section, host Gary Zidek takes a closer at the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based organization just handed out 5 awards to support artists of color in the Great Lakes region. He'll catc-hup with one of the winners, a Chicago-based playwright who is partnering with the National Museum of Mexican Art on a new project. The Dueling Critics, Kerry Reid and Jonathan Abarbanel, will join me to review Chicago Shakespeare's premiere IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. Later, Gary talks to the curator behind a new immersive experience that pays homage to the Lourve. And we'll hear about an exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum that highlight's nature's influence on contemporary design.

Episode one hundred and forty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, and the history of the theremin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "You're Gonna Miss Me" by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-four years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of "Good Vibrations". Oddly, the single version of "Good Vibrations" is not on the The Smile Sessions box set. But an entire CD of outtakes of the track is, and that was the source for the session excerpts here. Information on Lev Termen comes from Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky Transcript In ancient Greece, the god Hermes was a god of many things, as all the Greek gods were. Among those things, he was the god of diplomacy, he was a trickster god, a god of thieves, and he was a messenger god, who conveyed messages between realms. He was also a god of secret knowledge. In short, he was the kind of god who would have made a perfect spy. But he was also an inventor. In particular he was credited in Greek myth as having invented the lyre, an instrument somewhat similar to a guitar, harp, or zither, and as having used it to create beautiful sounds. But while Hermes the trickster god invented the lyre, in Greek myth it was a mortal man, Orpheus, who raised the instrument to perfection. Orpheus was a legendary figure, the greatest poet and musician of pre-Homeric Greece, and all sorts of things were attributed to him, some of which might even have been things that a real man of that name once did. He is credited with the "Orphic tripod" -- the classification of the elements into earth, water, and fire -- and with a collection of poems called the Rhapsodiae. The word Rhapsodiae comes from the Greek words rhaptein, meaning to stitch or sew, and ōidē, meaning song -- the word from which we get our word "ode", and  originally a rhapsōdos was someone who "stitched songs together" -- a reciter of long epic poems composed of several shorter pieces that the rhapsōdos would weave into one continuous piece. It's from that that we get the English word "rhapsody", which in the sixteenth century, when it was introduced into the language, meant a literary work that was a disjointed collection of patchwork bits, stitched together without much thought as to structure, but which now means a piece of music in one movement, but which has several distinct sections. Those sections may seem unrelated, and the piece may have an improvisatory feel, but a closer look will usually reveal relationships between the sections, and the piece as a whole will have a sense of unity. When Orpheus' love, Eurydice, died, he went down into Hades, the underworld where the souls of the dead lived, and played music so beautiful, so profound and moving, that the gods agreed that Orpheus could bring the soul of his love back to the land of the living. But there was one condition -- all he had to do was keep looking forward until they were both back on Earth. If he turned around before both of them were back in the mortal realm, she would disappear forever, never to be recovered. But of course, as you all surely know, and would almost certainly have guessed even if you didn't know because you know how stories work, once Orpheus made it back to our world he turned around and looked, because he lost his nerve and didn't believe he had really achieved his goal. And Eurydice, just a few steps away from her freedom, vanished back into the underworld, this time forever. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop: "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Lev Sergeyevich Termen was born in St. Petersburg, in what was then the Russian Empire, on the fifteenth of August 1896, by the calendar in use in Russia at that time -- the Russian Empire was still using the Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world, and in the Western world the same day was the twenty-seventh of August. Young Lev was fascinated both by science and the arts. He was trained as a cellist from an early age, but while he loved music, he found the process of playing the music cumbersome -- or so he would say later. He was always irritated by the fact that the instrument is a barrier between the idea in the musician's head and the sound -- that it requires training to play. As he would say later "I realised there was a gap between music itself and its mechanical production, and I wanted to unite both of them." Music was one of his big loves, but he was also very interested in physics, and was inspired by a lecture he saw from the physicist Abram Ioffe, who for the first time showed him that physics was about real, practical, things, about the movements of atoms and fields that really existed, not just about abstractions and ideals. When Termen went to university, he studied physics -- but he specifically wanted to be an experimental physicist, not a theoretician. He wanted to do stuff involving the real world. Of course, as someone who had the misfortune to be born in the late 1890s, Termen was the right age to be drafted when World War I started, but luckily for him the Russian Army desperately needed people with experience in the new invention that was radio, which was vital for wartime communications, and he spent the war in the Army radio engineering department, erecting radio transmitters and teaching other people how to erect them, rather than on the front lines, and he managed not only to get his degree in physics but also a diploma in music. But he was also becoming more and more of a Marxist sympathiser, even though he came from a relatively affluent background, and after the Russian Revolution he stayed in what was now the Red Army, at least for a time. Once Termen's Army service was over, he started working under Ioffe, working with him on practical applications of the audion, the first amplifying vacuum tube. The first one he found was that the natural capacitance of a human body when standing near a circuit can change the capacity of the circuit. He used that to create an invisible burglar alarm -- there was an antenna sending out radio waves, and if someone came within the transmitting field of the antenna, that would cause a switch to flip and a noise to be sounded. He was then asked to create a device for measuring the density of gases, outputting a different frequency for different densities. Because gas density can have lots of minor fluctuations because of air currents and so forth, he built a circuit that would cut out all the many harmonics from the audions he was using and give just the main frequency as a single pure tone, which he could listen to with headphones. That way,  slight changes in density would show up as a slight change in the tone he heard. But he noticed that again when he moved near the circuit, that changed the capacitance of the circuit and changed the tone he was hearing. He started moving his hand around near the circuit and getting different tones. The closer his hand got to the capacitor, the higher the note sounded. And if he shook his hand a little, he could get a vibrato, just like when he shook his hand while playing the cello. He got Ioffe to come and listen to him, and Ioffe said "That's an electronic Orpheus' lament!" [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Termen figured out how to play Massenet's "Elegy" and Saint-Saens' "The Swan" using this system. Soon the students were all fascinated, telling each other "Termen plays Gluck on a voltmeter!" He soon figured out various refinements -- by combining two circuits, using the heterodyne principle, he could allow for far finer control. He added a second antenna, for volume control, to be used by the left hand -- the right hand would choose the notes, while the left hand would change the volume, meaning the instrument could be played without touching it at all. He called the instrument the "etherphone",  but other people started calling it the termenvox -- "Termen's voice". Termen's instrument was an immediate sensation, as was his automatic burglar alarm, and he was invited to demonstrate both of them to Lenin. Lenin was very impressed by Termen -- he wrote to Trotsky later talking about Termen's inventions, and how the automatic burglar alarm might reduce the number of guards needed to guard a perimeter. But he was also impressed by Termen's musical invention. Termen held his hands to play through the first half of a melody, before leaving the Russian leader to play the second half by himself -- apparently he made quite a good job of it. Because of Lenin's advocacy for his work, Termen was sent around the Soviet Union on a propaganda tour -- what was known as an "agitprop tour", in the familiar Soviet way of creating portmanteau words. In 1923 the first piece of music written specially for the instrument was performed by Termen himself with the Leningrad Philharmonic, Andrey Paschenko's Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra. The score for that was later lost, but has been reconstructed, and the piece was given a "second premiere" in 2020 [Excerpt: Andrey Paschenko, "Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra" ] But the musical instrument wasn't the only scientific innovation that Termen was working on. He thought he could reverse death itself, and bring the dead back to life.  He was inspired in this by the way that dead organisms could be perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. He thought that if he could only freeze a dead person in the permafrost, he could then revive them later -- basically the same idea as the later idea of cryogenics, although Termen seems to have thought from the accounts I've read that all it would take would be to freeze and then thaw them, and not to have considered the other things that would be necessary to bring them back to life. Termen made two attempts to actually do this, or at least made preliminary moves in that direction. The first came when his assistant, a twenty-year-old woman, died of pneumonia. Termen was heartbroken at the death of someone so young, who he'd liked a great deal, and was convinced that if he could just freeze her body for a while he could soon revive her. He talked with Ioffe about this -- Ioffe was friends with the girl's family -- and Ioffe told him that he thought that he was probably right and probably could revive her. But he also thought that it would be cruel to distress the girl's parents further by discussing it with them, and so Termen didn't get his chance to experiment. He was even keener on trying his technique shortly afterwards, when Lenin died. Termen was a fervent supporter of the Revolution, and thought Lenin was a great man whose leadership was still needed -- and he had contacts within the top echelons of the Kremlin. He got in touch with them as soon as he heard of Lenin's death, in an attempt to get the opportunity to cryopreserve his corpse and revive him. Sadly, by this time it was too late. Lenin's brain had been pickled, and so the opportunity to resurrect him as a zombie Lenin was denied forever. Termen was desperately interested in the idea of bringing people back from the dead, and he wanted to pursue it further with his lab, but he was also being pushed to give demonstrations of his music, as well as doing security work -- Ioffe, it turned out, was also working as a secret agent, making various research trips to Germany that were also intended to foment Communist revolution. For now, Termen was doing more normal security work -- his burglar alarms were being used to guard bank vaults and the like, but this was at the order of the security state. But while Termen was working on his burglar alarms and musical instruments and attempts to revive dead dictators, his main project was his doctoral work, which was on the TV. We've said before in this podcast that there's no first anything, and that goes just as much for inventions as it does for music. Most inventions build on work done by others, which builds on work done by others, and so there were a lot of people building prototype TVs at this point. In Britain we tend to say "the inventor of the TV" was John Logie Baird, but Baird was working at the same time as people like the American Charles Francis Jenkins and the Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi, all of them building on earlier work by people like Archibald Low. Termen's prototype TV, the first one in Russia, came slightly later than any of those people, but was created more or less independently, and was more advanced in several ways, with a bigger screen and better resolution. Shortly after Lenin's death, Termen was invited to demonstrate his invention to Stalin, who professed himself amazed at the "magic mirror". [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] Termen was sent off to tour Europe giving demonstrations of his inventions, particularly his musical instrument. It was on this trip that he started using the Romanisation "Leon Theremin", and this is how Western media invariably referred to him. Rather than transliterate the Cyrillic spelling of his birth name, he used the French spelling his Huguenot ancestors had used before they emigrated to Russia, and called himself Leo or Leon rather than Lev. He was known throughout his life by both names, but said to a journalist in 1928 "First of all, I am not Tair-uh-MEEN. I wrote my name with French letters for French pronunciation. I am Lev Sergeyevich Tair-MEN.". We will continue to call him Termen, partly because he expressed that mild preference (though again, he definitely went by both names through choice) but also to distinguish him from the instrument, because while his invention remained known in Russia as the termenvox, in the rest of the world it became known as the theremin. He performed at the Paris Opera, and the New York Times printed a review saying "Some musicians were extremely pessimistic about the possibilities of the device, because at times M. Theremin played lamentably out of tune. But the finest Stradivarius, in the hands of a tyro, can give forth frightful sounds. The fact that the inventor was able to perform certain pieces with absolute precision proves that there remains to be solved only questions of practice and technique." Termen also came to the UK, where he performed in front of an audience including George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, Henry Wood and others. Arnold Bennett was astonished, but Bernard Shaw, who had very strong opinions about music, as anyone who has read his criticism will be aware, compared the sound unfavourably to that of a comb and paper. After performing in Europe, Termen made his way to the US, to continue his work of performance, propagandising for the Soviet Revolution, and trying to license the patents for his inventions, to bring money both to him and to the Soviet state. He entered the US on a six-month visitor's visa, but stayed there for eleven years, renewing the visa every six months. His initial tour was a success, though at least one open-air concert had to be cancelled because, as the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker put it, "the weather on Saturday took such a counter-revolutionary turn". Nicolas Slonimsky, the musicologist we've encountered several times before, and who would become part of Termen's circle in the US, reviewed one of the performances, and described the peculiar audiences that Termen was getting -- "a considerable crop of ladies and gentlemen engaged in earnest exploration of the Great Beyond...the mental processes peculiar to believers in cosmic vibrations imparted a beatific look to some of the listeners. Boston is a seat of scientific religion; before he knows it Professor Theremin may be proclaimed Krishnamurti and sanctified as a new deity". Termen licensed his patents on the invention to RCA, who in 1929 started mass-producing the first ever theremins for general use. Termen also started working with the conductor Leopold Stokowski, including developing a new kind of theremin for Stokowski's orchestra to use, one with a fingerboard played like a cello. Stokowski said "I believe we shall have orchestras of these electric instruments. Thus will begin a new era in music history, just as modern materials and methods of construction have produced a new era of architecture." Possibly of more interest to the wider public, Lennington Sherwell, the son of an RCA salesman, took up the theremin professionally, and joined the band of Rudy Vallee, one of the most popular singers of the period. Vallee was someone who constantly experimented with new sounds, and has for example been named as the first band leader to use an electric banjo, and Vallee liked the sound of the theremin so much he ordered a custom-built left-handed one for himself. Sherwell stayed in Vallee's band for quite a while, and performed with him on the radio and in recording sessions, but it's very difficult to hear him in any of the recordings -- the recording equipment in use in 1930 was very primitive, and Vallee had a very big band with a lot of string and horn players, and his arrangements tended to have lots of instruments playing in unison rather than playing individual lines that are easy to differentiate. On top of that, the fashion at the time when playing the instrument was to try and have it sound as much like other instruments as possible -- to duplicate the sound of a cello or violin or clarinet, rather than to lean in to the instrument's own idiosyncracies. I *think* though that I can hear Sherwell's playing in the instrumental break of Vallee's big hit "You're Driving Me Crazy" -- certainly it was recorded at the time that Sherwell was in the band, and there's an instrument in there with a very pure tone, but quite a lot of vibrato, in the mid range, that seems only to be playing in the break and not the rest of the song. I'm not saying this is *definitely* a theremin solo on one of the biggest hits of 1930, but I'm not saying it's not, either: [Excerpt: Rudy Vallee, "You're Driving Me Crazy" ] Termen also invented a light show to go along with his instrument -- the illumovox, which had a light shining through a strip of gelatin of different colours, which would be rotated depending on the pitch of the theremin, so that lower notes would cause the light to shine a deep red, while the highest notes would make it shine a light blue, with different shades in between. By 1930, though, Termen's fortunes had started to turn slightly. Stokowski kept using theremins in the orchestra for a while, especially the fingerboard models to reinforce the bass, but they caused problems. As Slonimsky said "The infrasonic vibrations were so powerful...that they hit the stomach physically, causing near-nausea in the double-bass section of the orchestra". Fairly soon, the Theremin was overtaken by other instruments, like the ondes martenot, an instrument very similar to the theremin but with more precise control, and with a wider range of available timbres. And in 1931, RCA was sued by another company for patent infringement with regard to the Theremin -- the De Forest Radio Company had patents around the use of vacuum tubes in music, and they claimed damages of six thousand dollars, plus RCA had to stop making theremins. Since at the time, RCA had only made an initial batch of five hundred instruments total, and had sold 485 of them, many of them as promotional loss-leaders for future batches, they had actually made a loss of three hundred dollars even before the six thousand dollar damages, and decided not to renew their option on Termen's patents. But Termen was still working on his musical ideas. Slonimsky also introduced Termen to the avant-garde composer and theosophist Henry Cowell, who was interested in experimental sounds, and used to do things like play the strings inside the piano to get a different tone: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell was part of a circle of composers and musicologists that included Edgard Varese, Charles Ives, and Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, who Cowell would introduce to each other. Crawford would later marry Seeger, and they would have several children together, including the folk singer Peggy Seeger, and Crawford would also adopt Seeger's son Pete. Cowell and Termen would together invent the rhythmicon, the first ever drum machine, though the rhythmicon could play notes as well as rhythms. Only two rhythmicons were made while Termen was in the US. The first was owned by Cowell. The second, improved, model was bought by Charles Ives, but bought as a gift for Cowell and Slonimsky to use in their compositions. Sadly, both rhythmicons eventually broke down, and no recording of either is known to exist. Termen started to get further and further into debt, especially as the Great Depression started to hit, and he also had a personal loss -- he'd been training a student and had fallen in love with her, although he was married. But when she married herself, he cut off all ties with her, though Clara Rockmore would become one of the few people to use the instrument seriously and become a real virtuoso on it. He moved into other fields, all loosely based around the same basic ideas of detecting someone's distance from an object. He built electronic gun detectors for Alcatraz and Sing-Sing prisons, and he came up with an altimeter for aeroplanes. There was also a "magic mirror" -- glass that appeared like a mirror until it was backlit, at which point it became transparent. This was put into shop windows along with a proximity detector -- every time someone stepped close to look at their reflection, the reflection would disappear and be replaced with the objects behind the mirror. He was also by this point having to spy for the USSR on a more regular basis. Every week he would meet up in a cafe with two diplomats from the Russian embassy, who would order him to drink several shots of vodka -- the idea was that they would loosen his inhibitions enough that he would not be able to hide things from them -- before he related various bits of industrial espionage he'd done for them. Having inventions of his own meant he was able to talk with engineers in the aerospace industry and get all sorts of bits of information that would otherwise not have been available, and he fed this back to Moscow. He eventually divorced his first wife, and remarried -- a Black American dancer many years his junior named Lavinia Williams, who would be the great love of his life. This caused some scandal in his social circle, more because of her race than the age gap. But by 1938 he had to leave the US. He'd been there on a six-month visa, which had been renewed every six months for more than a decade, and he'd also not been paying income tax and was massively in debt. He smuggled himself back to the USSR, but his wife was, at the last minute, not allowed on to the ship with him. He'd had to make the arrangements in secret, and hadn't even told her of the plans, so the first she knew was when he disappeared. He would later claim that the Soviets had told him she would be sent for two weeks later, but she had no knowledge of any of this. For decades, Lavinia would not even know if her husband was dead or alive. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] When Termen got back to the USSR, he found it had changed beyond recognition. Stalin's reign of terror was now well underway, and not only could he not find a job, most of the people who he'd been in contact with at the top of the Kremlin had been purged. Termen was himself arrested and tortured into signing a false confession to counter-revolutionary activities and membership of fascist organisations. He was sentenced to eight years in a forced labour camp, which in reality was a death sentence -- it was expected that workers there would work themselves to death on starvation rations long before their sentences were up -- but relatively quickly he was transferred to a special prison where people with experience of aeronautical design were working. He was still a prisoner, but in conditions not too far removed from normal civilian life, and allowed to do scientific and technical work with some of the greatest experts in the field -- almost all of whom had also been arrested in one purge or another. One of the pieces of work Termen did was at the direct order of Laventy Beria, Stalin's right-hand man and the architect of most of the terrors of the Stalinist regime. In Spring 1945, while the USA and USSR were still supposed to be allies in World War II, Beria wanted to bug the residence of the US ambassador, and got Termen to design a bug that would get past all the normal screenings. The bug that Termen designed was entirely passive and unpowered -- it did nothing unless a microwave beam of a precise frequency was beamed at it, and only then did it start transmitting. It was placed in a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States, presented to the ambassador by a troupe of scouts as a gesture of friendship between the two countries. The wood in the eagle's beak was thin enough to let the sound through. It remained there for seven years, through the tenures of four ambassadors, only being unmasked when a British radio operator accidentally tuned to the frequency it was transmitting on and was horrified to hear secret diplomatic conversations. Upon its discovery, the US couldn't figure out how it worked, and eventually shared the information with MI5, who took eighteen months to reverse-engineer Termen's bug and come up with their own, which remained the standard bug in use for about a decade. The CIA's own attempts to reverse-engineer it failed altogether. It was also Termen who came up with that well-known bit of spycraft -- focussing an infra-red beam on a window pane, to use it to pick up the sound of conversations happening in the room behind it. Beria was so pleased with Termen's inventions that he got Termen to start bugging Stalin himself, so Beria would be able to keep track of Stalin's whims. Termen performed such great services for Beria that Beria actually allowed him to go free not long after his sentence was served. Not only that, but Beria nominated Termen for the Stalin Award, Class II, for his espionage work -- and Stalin, not realising that Termen had been bugging *him* as well as foreign powers, actually upgraded that to a Class I, the highest honour the Soviet state gave. While Termen was free, he found himself at a loose end, and ended up volunteering to work for the organisation he had been working for -- which went by many names but became known as the KGB from the 1950s onwards. He tried to persuade the government to let Lavinia, who he hadn't seen in eight years, come over and join him, but they wouldn't even allow him to contact her, and he eventually remarried. Meanwhile, after Stalin's death, Beria was arrested for his crimes, and charged under the same law that he had had Termen convicted under. Beria wasn't as lucky as Termen, though, and was executed. By 1964, Termen had had enough of the KGB, because they wanted him to investigate obvious pseudoscience -- they wanted him to look into aliens, UFOs, ESP... and telepathy. [Excerpt, The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (early version)" "She's already working on my brain"] He quit and went back to civilian life.  He started working in the acoustics lab in Moscow Conservatory, although he had to start at the bottom because everything he'd been doing for more than a quarter of a century was classified. He also wrote a short book on electronic music. In the late sixties an article on him was published in the US -- the first sign any of his old friends had that he'd not  died nearly thirty years earlier. They started corresponding with him, and he became a minor celebrity again, but this was disapproved of by the Soviet government -- electronic music was still considered bourgeois decadence and not suitable for the Soviet Union, and all his instruments were smashed and he was sacked from the conservatory. He continued working in various technical jobs until the 1980s, and still continued inventing refinements of the theremin, although he never had any official support for his work. In the eighties, a writer tried to get him some sort of official recognition -- the Stalin Prize was secret -- and the university at which he was working sent a reply saying, in part, "L.S. Termen took part in research conducted by the department as an ordinary worker and he did not show enough creative activity, nor does he have any achievements on the basis of which he could be recommended for a Government decoration." By this time he was living in shared accommodation with a bunch of other people, one room to himself and using a shared bathroom, kitchen, and so on. After Glasnost he did some interviews and was asked about this, and said "I never wanted to make demands and don't want to now. I phoned the housing department about three months ago and inquired about my turn to have a new flat. The woman told me that my turn would come in five or six years. Not a very reassuring answer if one is ninety-two years old." In 1989 he was finally allowed out of the USSR again, for the first time in fifty-one years, to attend a UNESCO sponsored symposium on electronic music. Among other things, he was given, forty-eight years late, a letter that his old colleague Edgard Varese had sent about his composition Ecuatorial, which had originally been written for theremin. Varese had wanted to revise the work, and had wanted to get modified theremins that could do what he wanted, and had asked the inventor for help, but the letter had been suppressed by the Soviet government. When he got no reply, Varese had switched to using ondes martenot instead. [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ecuatorial"] In the 1970s, after the death of his third wife, Termen had started an occasional correspondence with his second wife, Lavinia, the one who had not been able to come with him to the USSR and hadn't known if he was alive for so many decades. She was now a prominent activist in Haiti, having established dance schools in many Caribbean countries, and Termen still held out hope that they could be reunited, even writing her a letter in 1988 proposing remarriage. But sadly, less than a month after Termen's first trip outside the USSR, she died -- officially of a heart attack or food poisoning, but there's a strong suspicion that she was murdered by the military dictatorship for her closeness to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the pro-democracy activist who later became President of Haiti. Termen was finally allowed to join the Communist Party in the spring of 1991, just before the USSR finally dissolved -- he'd been forbidden up to that point because of his conviction for counter-revolutionary crimes. He was asked by a Western friend why he'd done that when everyone else was trying to *leave* the Communist Party, and he explained that he'd made a promise to Lenin. In his final years he was researching immortality, going back to the work he had done in his youth, working with biologists, trying to find a way to restore elderly bodies to youthful vigour. But sadly he died in 1993, aged ninety-seven, before he achieved his goal. On one of his last trips outside the USSR, in 1991, he visited the US, and in California he finally got to hear the song that most people associate with his invention, even though it didn't actually feature a theremin: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Back in the 1930s, when he was working with Slonimsky and Varese and Ives and the rest, Termen had set up the Theremin Studio, a sort of experimental arts lab, and in 1931 he had invited the musicologist, composer, and theoretician Joseph Schillinger to become a lecturer there. Schillinger had been one of the first composers to be really interested in the theremin, and had composed a very early piece written specifically for the instrument, the First Airphonic Suite: [Excerpt: Joseph Schillinger, "First Airphonic Suite"] But he was most influential as a theoretician. Schillinger believed that all of the arts were susceptible to rigorous mathematical analysis, and that you could use that analysis to generate new art according to mathematical principles, art that would be perfect. Schillinger planned to work with Termen to try to invent a machine that could compose, perform, and transmit music. The idea was that someone would be able to tune in a radio and listen to a piece of music in real time as it was being algorithmically composed and transmitted. The two men never achieved this, but Schillinger became very, very, respected as someone with a rigorous theory of musical structure -- though reading his magnum opus, the Schillinger System of Musical Composition, is frankly like wading through treacle. I'll read a short excerpt just to give an idea of his thinking: "On the receiving end, phasic stimuli produced by instruments encounter a metamorphic auditory integrator. This integrator represents the auditory apparatus as a whole and is a complex interdependent system. It consists of two receivers (ears), transmitters, auditory nerves, and a transformer, the auditory braincenter.  The response to a stimulus is integrated both quantitatively and selectively. The neuronic energy of response becomes the psychonic energy of auditory image. The response to stimuli and the process of integration are functional operations and, as such, can be described in mathematical terms , i.e., as  synchronization, addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. But these integrative processes alone do not constitute the material of orchestration either.  The auditory image, whether resulting from phasic stimuli of an excitor or from selfstimulation of the auditory brain-center, can be described only in Psychological terms, of loudness, pitch, quality, etc. This leads us to the conclusion that the material of orchestration can be defined only as a group of conditions under which an integrated image results from a sonic stimulus subjected to an auditory response.  This constitutes an interdependent tripartite system, in which the existence of one component necessitates the existence of two others. The composer can imagine an integrated sonic form, yet he cannot transmit it to the auditor (unless telepathicaliy) without sonic stimulus and hearing apparatus." That's Schillinger's way of saying that if a composer wants someone to hear the music they've written, the composer needs a musical instrument and the listener needs ears and a brain. This kind of revolutionary insight made Schillinger immensely sought after in the early 1930s, and among his pupils were the swing bandleaders Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and the songwriter George Gershwin, who turned to Schillinger for advice when he was writing his opera Porgy and Bess: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, "Here Come De Honey Man"] Another of his pupils was the trombonist and arranger Glenn Miller, who at that time was a session player working in pickup studio bands for people like Red Nichols. Miller spent some time studying with him in the early thirties, and applied those lessons when given the job of putting together arrangements for Ray Noble, his first prominent job. In 1938 Glenn Miller walked into a strip joint to see a nineteen-year-old he'd been told to take a look at. This was another trombonist, Paul Tanner, who was at the time working as a backing musician for the strippers. Miller had recently broken up his first big band, after a complete lack of success, and was looking to put together a new big band, to play arrangements in the style he had worked out while working for Noble. As Tanner later put it "he said, `Well, how soon can you come with me?' I said, `I can come right now.' I told him I was all packed, I had my toothbrush in my pocket and everything. And so I went with him that night, and I stayed with him until he broke the band up in September 1942." The new band spent a few months playing the kind of gigs that an unknown band can get, but they soon had a massive success with a song Miller had originally written as an arranging exercise set for him by Schillinger, a song that started out under the title "Miller's Tune", but soon became known worldwide as "Moonlight Serenade": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Moonlight Serenade"] The Miller band had a lot of lineup changes in the four and a bit years it was together, but other than Miller himself there were only four members who were with that group throughout its career, from the early dates opening for  Freddie Fisher and His Schnickelfritzers right through to its end as the most popular band in America. They were piano player Chummy MacGregor, clarinet player Wilbur Schwartz, tenor sax player Tex Beneke, and Tanner. They played on all of Miller's big hits, like "In the Mood" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo"] But in September 1942, the band broke up as the members entered the armed forces, and Tanner found himself in the Army while Miller was in the Air Force, so while both played in military bands, they weren't playing together, and Miller disappeared over the Channel, presumed dead, in 1944. Tanner became a session trombonist, based in LA, and in 1958 he found himself on a session for a film soundtrack with Dr. Samuel Hoffman. I haven't been able to discover for sure which film this was for, but the only film on which Hoffman has an IMDB credit for that year is that American International Pictures classic, Earth Vs The Spider: [Excerpt: Earth Vs The Spider trailer] Hoffman was a chiropodist, and that was how he made most of his living, but as a teenager in the 1930s he had been a professional violin player under the name Hal Hope. One of the bands he played in was led by a man named Jolly Coburn, who had seen Rudy Vallee's band with their theremin and decided to take it up himself. Hoffman had then also got a theremin, and started his own all-electronic trio, with a Hammond organ player, and with a cello-style fingerboard theremin played by William Schuman, the future Pulitzer Prize winning composer. By the 1940s, Hoffman was a full-time doctor, but he'd retained his Musicians' Union card just in case the odd gig came along, and then in 1945 he received a call from Miklos Rozsa, who was working on the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's new film, Spellbound. Rozsa had tried to get Clara Rockmore, the one true virtuoso on the theremin playing at the time, to play on the soundtrack, but she'd refused -- she didn't do film soundtrack work, because in her experience they only wanted her to play on films about ghosts or aliens, and she thought it damaged the dignity of the instrument. Rozsa turned to the American Federation of Musicians, who as it turned out had precisely one theremin player who could read music and wasn't called Clara Rockmore on their books. So Dr. Samuel Hoffman, chiropodist, suddenly found himself playing on one of the most highly regarded soundtracks of one of the most successful films of the forties: [Excerpt: Miklos Rozsa, "Spellbound"] Rozsa soon asked Hoffman to play on another soundtrack, for the Billy Wilder film The Lost Weekend, another of the great classics of late forties cinema. Both films' soundtracks were nominated for the Oscar, and Spellbound's won, and Hoffman soon found himself in demand as a session player. Hoffman didn't have any of Rockmore's qualms about playing on science fiction and horror films, and anyone with any love of the genre will have heard his playing on genre classics like The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr T, The Thing From Another World, It Came From Outer Space, and of course Bernard Hermann's score for The Day The Earth Stood Still: [Excerpt: The Day The Earth Stood Still score] As well as on such less-than-classics as The Devil's Weed, Voodoo Island, The Mad Magician, and of course Billy The Kid Vs Dracula. Hoffman became something of a celebrity, and also recorded several albums of lounge music with a band led by Les Baxter, like the massive hit Music Out Of The Moon, featuring tracks like “Lunar Rhapsody”: [Excerpt: Samuel Hoffman, "Lunar Rhapsody”] [Excerpt: Neil Armstrong] That voice you heard there was Neil Armstrong, on Apollo 11 on its way back from the moon. He took a tape of Hoffman's album with him. But while Hoffman was something of a celebrity in the fifties, the work dried up almost overnight in 1958 when he worked at that session with Paul Tanner. The theremin is a very difficult instrument to play, and while Hoffman was a good player, he wasn't a great one -- he was getting the work because he was the best in a very small pool of players, not because he was objectively the best there could be. Tanner noticed that Hoffman was having quite some difficulty getting the pitching right in the session, and realised that the theremin must be a very difficult instrument to play because it had no markings at all. So he decided to build an instrument that had the same sound, but that was more sensibly controlled than just waving your hands near it. He built his own invention, the electrotheremin, in less than a week, despite never before having had any experience in electrical engineering. He built it using an oscillator, a length of piano wire and a contact switch that could be slid up and down the wire, changing the pitch. Two days after he finished building it, he was in the studio, cutting his own equivalent of Hoffman's forties albums, Music For Heavenly Bodies, including a new exotica version of "Moonlight Serenade", the song that Glenn Miller had written decades earlier as an exercise for Schillinger: [Excerpt: Paul Tanner, "Moonlight Serenade"] Not only could the electrotheremin let the player control the pitch more accurately, but it could also do staccato notes easily -- something that's almost impossible with an actual theremin. And, on top of that, Tanner was cheaper than Hoffman. An instrumentalist hired to play two instruments is paid extra, but not as much extra as paying for another musician to come to the session, and since Tanner was a first-call trombone player who was likely to be at the session *anyway*, you might as well hire him if you want a theremin sound, rather than paying for Hoffman. Tanner was an excellent musician -- he was a professor of music at UCLA as well as being a session player, and he authored one of the standard textbooks on jazz -- and soon he had cornered the market, leaving Hoffman with only the occasional gig. We will actually be seeing Hoffman again, playing on a session for an artist we're going to look at in a couple of months, but in LA in the early sixties, if you wanted a theremin sound, you didn't hire a theremin player, you hired Paul Tanner to play his electrotheremin -- though the instrument was so obscure that many people didn't realise he wasn't actually playing a theremin. Certainly Brian Wilson seems to have thought he was when he hired him for "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"] We talked briefly about that track back in the episode on "God Only Knows",   but three days after recording that, Tanner was called back into the studio for another session on which Brian Wilson wanted a theremin sound. This was a song titled "Good, Good, Good Vibrations", and it was inspired by a conversation he'd had with his mother as a child. He'd asked her why dogs bark at some people and not at others, and she'd said that dogs could sense vibrations that people sent out, and some people had bad vibrations and some had good ones. It's possible that this came back to mind as he was planning the Pet Sounds album, which of course ends with the sound of his own dogs barking. It's also possible that he was thinking more generally about ideas like telepathy -- he had been starting to experiment with acid by this point, and was hanging around with a crowd of people who were proto-hippies, and reading up on a lot of the mystical ideas that were shared by those people. As we saw in the last episode, there was a huge crossover between people who were being influenced by drugs, people who were interested in Eastern religion, and people who were interested in what we now might think of as pseudo-science but at the time seemed to have a reasonable amount of validity, things like telepathy and remote viewing. Wilson had also had exposure from an early age to people claiming psychic powers. Jo Ann Marks, the Wilson family's neighbour and the mother of former Beach Boy David Marks, later had something of a minor career as a psychic to the stars (at least according to obituaries posted by her son) and she would often talk about being able to sense "vibrations". The record Wilson started out making in February 1966 with the Wrecking Crew was intended as an R&B single, and was also intended to sound *strange*: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] At this stage, the song he was working on was a very straightforward verse-chorus structure, and it was going to be an altogether conventional pop song. The verses -- which actually ended up used in the final single, are dominated by organ and Ray Pohlman's bass: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] These bear a strong resemblance to the verses of "Here Today", on the Pet Sounds album which the Beach Boys were still in the middle of making: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Here Today (instrumental)"] But the chorus had far more of an R&B feel than anything the Beach Boys had done before: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] It did, though, have precedent. The origins of the chorus feel come from "Can I Get a Witness?", a Holland-Dozier-Holland song that had been a hit for Marvin Gaye in 1963: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Can I Get a Witness?"] The Beach Boys had picked up on that, and also on its similarity to the feel of Lonnie Mack's instrumental cover version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee", which, retitled "Memphis", had also been a hit in 1963, and in 1964 they recorded an instrumental which they called "Memphis Beach" while they were recording it but later retitled "Carl's Big Chance", which was credited to Brian and Carl Wilson, but was basically just playing the "Can I Get a Witness" riff over twelve-bar blues changes, with Carl doing some surf guitar over the top: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Carl's Big Chance"] The "Can I Get a Witness" feel had quickly become a standard piece of the musical toolkit – you might notice the resemblance between that riff and the “talking 'bout my generation” backing vocals on “My Generation” by the Who, for example. It was also used on "The Boy From New York City", a hit on Red Bird Records by the Ad-Libs: [Excerpt: The Ad-Libs, "The Boy From New York City"] The Beach Boys had definitely been aware of that record -- on their 1965 album Summer Days... And Summer Nights! they recorded an answer song to it, "The Girl From New York City": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "The Girl From New York City"] And you can see how influenced Brian was by the Ad-Libs record by laying the early instrumental takes of the "Good Vibrations" chorus from this February session under the vocal intro of "The Boy From New York City". It's not a perfect match, but you can definitely hear that there's an influence there: [Excerpt: "The Boy From New York City"/"Good Vibrations"] A few days later, Brian had Carl Wilson overdub some extra bass, got a musician in to do a jaw harp overdub, and they also did a guide vocal, which I've sometimes seen credited to Brian and sometimes Carl, and can hear as both of them depending on what I'm listening for. This guide vocal used a set of placeholder lyrics written by Brian's collaborator Tony Asher, which weren't intended to be a final lyric: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (first version)"] Brian then put the track away for a month, while he continued work on the Pet Sounds album. At this point, as best we can gather, he was thinking of it as something of a failed experiment. In the first of the two autobiographies credited to Brian (one whose authenticity is dubious, as it was largely put together by a ghostwriter and Brian later said he'd never even read it) he talks about how he was actually planning to give the song to Wilson Pickett rather than keep it for the Beach Boys, and one can definitely imagine a Wilson Pickett version of the song as it was at this point. But Brian's friend Danny Hutton, at that time still a minor session singer who had not yet gone on to form the group that would become Three Dog Night, asked Brian if *he* could have the song if Brian wasn't going to use it. And this seems to have spurred Brian into rethinking the whole song. And in doing so he was inspired by his very first ever musical memory. Brian has talked a lot about how the first record he remembers hearing was when he was two years old, at his maternal grandmother's house, where he heard the Glenn Miller version of "Rhapsody in Blue", a three-minute cut-down version of Gershwin's masterpiece, on which Paul Tanner had of course coincidentally played: [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, "Rhapsody in Blue"] Hearing that music, which Brian's mother also played for him a lot as a child, was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of Brian's young life, and "Rhapsody in Blue" has become one of those touchstone pieces that he returns to again and again. He has recorded studio versions of it twice, in the mid-nineties with Van Dyke Parks: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Rhapsody in Blue"] and in 2010 with his solo band, as the intro and outro of an album of Gershwin covers: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Rhapsody in Blue"] You'll also often see clips of him playing "Rhapsody in Blue" when sat at the piano -- it's one of his go-to songs. So he decided he was going to come up with a song that was structured like "Rhapsody in Blue" -- what publicist Derek Taylor would later describe as a "pocket symphony", but "pocket rhapsody" would possibly be a better term for it. It was going to be one continuous song, but in different sections that would have different instrumentation and different feelings to them -- he'd even record them in different studios to get different sounds for them, though he would still often have the musicians run through the whole song in each studio. He would mix and match the sections in the edit. His second attempt to record the whole track, at the start of April, gave a sign of what he was attempting, though he would not end up using any of the material from this session: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-04-09" around 02:34] Nearly a month later, on the fourth of May, he was back in the studio -- this time in Western Studios rather than Gold Star where the previous sessions had been held, with yet another selection of musicians from the Wrecking Crew, plus Tanner, to record another version. This time, part of the session was used for the bridge for the eventual single: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-04 Second Chorus and Fade"] On the twenty-fourth of May the Wrecking Crew, with Carl Wilson on Fender bass (while Lyle Ritz continued to play string bass, and Carol Kaye, who didn't end up on the finished record at all, but who was on many of the unused sessions, played Danelectro), had another attempt at the track, this time in Sunset Studios: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Sunset Sound 1966-05-24 (Parts 2&3)"] Three days later, another group of musicians, with Carl now switched to rhythm guitar, were back in Western Studios recording this: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-27 Part C" from 2:52] The fade from that session was used in the final track. A few days later they were in the studio again, a smaller group of people with Carl on guitar and Brian on piano, along with Don Randi on electric harpsichord, Bill Pitman on electric bass, Lyle Ritz on string bass and Hal Blaine on drums. This time there seems to have been another inspiration, though I've never heard it mentioned as an influence. In March, a band called The Association, who were friends with the Beach Boys, had released their single "Along Comes Mary", and by June it had become a big hit: [Excerpt: The Association, "Along Comes Mary"] Now the fuzz bass part they were using on the session on the second of June sounds to my ears very, very, like that intro: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (Inspiration) Western 1966-06-02" from 01:47] That session produced the basic track that was used for the choruses on the final single, onto which the electrotheremin was later overdubbed as Tanner wasn't at that session. Some time around this point, someone suggested to Brian that they should use a cello along with the electrotheremin in the choruses, playing triplets on the low notes. Brian has usually said that this was Carl's idea, while Brian's friend Van Dyke Parks has always said that he gave Brian the idea. Both seem quite certain of this, and neither has any reason to lie, so I suspect what might have happened is that Parks gave Brian the initial idea to have a cello on the track, while Carl in the studio suggested having it specifically play triplets. Either way, a cello part by Jesse Erlich was added to those choruses. There were more sessions in June, but everything from those sessions was scrapped. At some point around this time, Mike Love came up with a bass vocal lyric, which he sang along with the bass in the choruses in a group vocal session. On August the twenty-fourth, two months after what one would think at this point was the final instrumental session, a rough edit of the track was pulled together. By this point the chorus had altered quite a bit. It had originally just been eight bars of G-flat, four bars of B-flat, then four more bars of G-flat. But now Brian had decided to rework an idea he had used in "California Girls". In that song, each repetition of the line "I wish they all could be California" starts a tone lower than the one before. Here, after the bass hook line is repeated, everything moves up a step, repeats the line, and then moves up another step: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] But Brian was dissatisfied with this version of the track. The lyrics obviously still needed rewriting, but more than that, there was a section he thought needed totally rerecording -- this bit: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] So on the first of September, six and a half months after the first instrumental session for the song, the final one took place. This had Dennis Wilson on organ, Tommy Morgan on harmonicas, Lyle Ritz on string bass, and Hal Blaine and Carl Wilson on percussion, and replaced that with a new, gentler, version: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations (Western 1966-09-01) [New Bridge]"] Well, that was almost the final instrumental session -- they called Paul Tanner in to a vocal overdub session to redo some of the electrotheremin parts, but that was basically it. Now all they had to do was do the final vocals. Oh, and they needed some proper lyrics. By this point Brian was no longer working with Tony Asher. He'd started working with Van Dyke Parks on some songs, but Parks wasn't interested in stepping into a track that had already been worked on so long, so Brian eventually turned to Mike Love, who'd already come up with the bass vocal hook, to write the lyrics. Love wrote them in the car, on the way to the studio, dictating them to his wife as he drove, and they're actually some of his best work. The first verse grounds everything in the sensory, in the earthy. He makes a song originally about *extra* -sensory perception into one about sensory perception -- the first verse covers sight, sound, and smell: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Carl Wilson was chosen to sing the lead vocal, but you'll notice a slight change in timbre on the line "I hear the sound of a" -- that's Brian stepping into double him on the high notes. Listen again: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] For the second verse, Love's lyric moves from the sensory grounding of the first verse to the extrasensory perception that the song has always been about, with the protagonist knowing things about the woman who's the object of the song without directly perceiving them. The record is one of those where I wish I was able to play the whole thing for you, because it's a masterpiece of structure, and of editing, and of dynamics. It's also a record that even now is impossible to replicate properly on stage, though both its writers in their live performances come very close. But while someone in the audience for either the current touring Beach Boys led by Mike Love or for Brian Wilson's solo shows might come away thinking "that sounded just like the record", both have radically different interpretations of it even while sticking close to the original arrangement. The touring Beach Boys' version is all throbbing strangeness, almost garage-rock, emphasising the psychedelia of the track: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live 2014)"] While Brian Wilson's live version is more meditative, emphasising the gentle aspects: [Excerpt Brian Wilson, "Good Vibrations (live at the Roxy)"] But back in 1966, there was definitely no way to reproduce it live with a five-person band. According to Tanner, they actually asked him if he would tour with them, but he refused -- his touring days were over, and also he felt he would look ridiculous, a middle-aged man on stage with a bunch of young rock and roll stars, though apparently they offered to buy him a wig so he wouldn't look so out of place. When he wouldn't tour with them, they asked him where they could get a theremin, and he pointed them in the direction of Robert Moog. Moog -- whose name is spelled M-o-o-g and often mispronounced "moog", had been a teenager in 1949, when he'd seen a schematic for a theremin in an electronic hobbyist magazine, after Samuel Hoffman had brought the instrument back into the limelight. He'd built his own, and started building others to sell to other hobbyists, and had also started branching out into other electronic instruments by the mid-sixties. His small company was the only one still manufacturing actual theremins, but when the Beach Boys came to him and asked him for one, they found it very difficult to control, and asked him if he could do anything simpler. He came up with a ribbon-controlled oscillator, on the same principle as Tanner's electro-theremin, but even simpler to operate, and the Beach Boys bought it and gave it to Mike Love to play on stage. All he had to do was run his finger up and down a metallic ribbon, with the positions of the notes marked on it, and it would come up with a good approximation of the electro-theremin sound. Love played this "woo-woo machine" as he referred to it, on stage for several years: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live in Hawaii 8/26/67)"] Moog was at the time starting to build his first synthesisers, and having developed that ribbon-control mechanism he decided to include it in the early models as one of several different methods of controlling the Moog synthesiser, the instrument that became synonymous with the synthesiser in the late sixties and early seventies: [Excerpt: Gershon Kingsley and Leonid Hambro, "Rhapsody in Blue" from Switched-On Gershwin] "Good Vibrations" became the Beach Boys' biggest ever hit -- their third US number one, and their first to make number one in the UK. Brian Wilson had managed, with the help of his collaborators, to make something that combined avant-garde psychedelic music and catchy pop hooks, a truly experimental record that was also a genuine pop classic. To this day, it's often cited as the greatest single of all time. But Brian knew he could do better. He could be even more progressive. He could make an entire album using the same techniques as "Good Vibrations", one where themes could recur, where sections could be edited together and songs could be constructed in the edit. Instead of a pocket symphony, he could make a full-blown teenage symphony to God. All he had to do was to keep looking forward, believe he could achieve his goal, and whatever happened, not lose his nerve and turn back. [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Smile Promo" ]

Lidando com visitas nada amistosas de outros planetas, o RdMCast dessa semana te indica 10 ótimos filmes de invasão alienígena! Em 1898, o autor de ficção-científica H.G. Wells imaginou em seu clássico "Guerra dos Mundos" uma reencenação da história humana que colocava o poderoso Império Britânico como vítima de uma invasão extraterrestre. Desde então, inúmeras obras cinematográficas buscaram representar este violento contato entre seres humanos e exploradores de outro planeta. Analisando desde tripods gigantescos e ameaçadores a marcianos zoeiros, preparamos uma lista completa deste subgênero misto entre o horror e a ficção-científica. Dê play neste RdMCast especial e não se esqueça: ETs já aterrorizaram uma festinha de aniversário em Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul. O RdMCast é produzido e apresentado por: Thiago Natário, Gabriel Braga e Gabi Larocca. ARTE DA VITRINE: Estúdio Grim ESTÚDIO GRIM - Design para conteúdo digital Portfólio: https://www.behance.net/estudiogrim Instagram @estudiogrim designgrim@gmail.com PODCAST EDITADO POR Felipe Lourenço SEJA UM(A) APOIADOR(A) Apoie o RdM a produzir mais conteúdo e ganhe recompensas exclusivas! Acesse: https://apoia.se/rdm ou https://picpay.me/republicadomedo Conheça a Sala dos Apoiadores: http://republicadomedo.com.br/sala-dos-apoiadores/ CITADOS NO PROGRAMA O Dia em que a Terra Parou (1951) Invasores de Corpos (1978) Marte Ataca! (1996) Sinais (2002) Guerra dos Mundos (2005) Cloverfield - Monstro (2008) Monstros (2010) Ataque ao Prédio (2011) Sob a Pele (2013) A Rebelião (2019) Menções Honrosas Os Invasores de Marte (1953) Veio do Espaço / It Came From Outer Space (1953) Os Bárbaros Invadem a Terra (1957) Uma Sepultura na Eternidade (1967) O Enigma de Outro Mundo (1982) / O Monstro do Ártico (1951) Critters (1986) Predador (1987) Eles Vivem (1988) Palhaços Assassino do Espaço Sideral (1988) Independence Day (1996) Prova Final (1998) Seres Rastejantes / Slither (2006) Distrito 9 (2009) The World's End (2013) Pacific Rim (2013) No Limite do Amanhã (2014) Vida (2017) Aniquilação (2018) Um Lugar Silencioso (2018) A Vastidão da Noite (2019) Outras citações: Guerra dos Mundos (1898, H.G. Wells) Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction (Rob Latham, 2007) Contatos Imediatos do Terceiro Grau (1977) A Chegada (2016) Vampiros de Almas (1956) Invasores de Corpos: a Invasão Continua (1993) Invasores (2007) O Profissional (1994) O Segredo da Cabana (2011) Episódios RdMCast #318 - Todo Mundo em Pânico RdMCast #331 - Especial Evil Dead RdMCast #317 - O Horror depois de Pânico: Adolescentes nos anos 90 RdMCast #245 - Embate Confinamento: O Iluminado vs O Enigma de Outro Mundo RdMCast #311 - Um Lugar Silencioso: Parte I e II RdMCast #314 - Distrito 9 (2009) e o Apartheid Tem algo para nos contar? Envie um e-mail! contato@republicadomedo.com.br Twitter: @RdMCast Instagram: Republica do Medo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DEFINICIONExtraterrestreEn la cultura popular se denomina extraterrestre a todo ser vivo originario de cualquier sitio ajeno a la Tierra.Invasion extraterrestreEs un tema común en las historias de ciencia ficción en el cual seres de origen extraterrestre con tecnología avanzada a la de los seres humanos buscan conquistar o destruir el planeta Tierra para sus propositos.Dentro del objetivo de conquistar la tierra, pueden emplearse varias formas para llevarlo a cabo, desde el mas tipico ataque directo a la tierra (Independence Day) o la infiltración extraterrestre en la cual los invasores tienen la habilidad de tomar la forma humana y poder moverse libremente en la sociedad humana (Signs, The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers).Es interesante como en la literatura o cine, el tema de la invasión extraterrestre es una forma de representar diferentes peligros que preocupan a la sociedad, como el nazismo, comunismo, terrorismo o guerra nuclear.Las conductas frecuentes de las razas extraterrestres representadas en la literatura o cine, suelen ser militar, observacion y estudio y la indiferencia.HISTORIADespués de la segunda guerra mundial, en los años 50s hubo dos eventos que influenciaron significativamente el género de la ciencia ficción. El desarrollo de la bomba atómica que aumentó el interés en la ciencia y también la ansiedad y miedo de efectos post apocalípticos si hubiese una guerra nuclear. Miedo que hasta hoy en día permance latente. El segundo evento fue el inicio de la Guerra Fría y la paranoia comunista en los Estados Unidos debido al miedo del espionaje de la Unión Soviética. Se generó por las confesiones que salieron a luz de oficiales de gobierno en altos mandos en USA. Otro punto es la batalla al espacio, que derivó la tecnología para ir a la luna. Aquí, también se generó una receta para meterle creatividad al "¿qué pasaría si podemos ir a otros lugares?" y por ende "¿qué pasaría si otros vienen aquí?" Los avances tecnológicos en tantos aspectos como el internet, el hecho de que hay un chorro de basura espacial de tanto satélite que rodea a la Tierra, las expediciones a Marte e incluso las imagenes que recibimos de Plutón. Todo esto genera también un sentido de pertenencia como humanidad de "hasta donde hemos llegado" y "qué podemos hacer". Últimamente, con Elon Musk y su empresa SpaceX donde dicen "queremos mandar a personas a colonizar Marte" - ¿irías Rael? Nos han tocado cambios increíbles en los últimos 30 años. Algunas personas dicen que las invasiones se derivan del miedo a lo extranjero, a lo diferente.Como mencionas, la bomba atómica refleja el miedo que tenemos de ser aniquilados por nuestra misma raza. Si podemos esperar este tipo de comportamientos de los humanos, ¿por qué deberíamos de poner más esperanza en los extraterrestres? Creo que parte de sobrevivir es ser pesimista, esperar lo peor, para poder prepararte para lo peor.ORIGENESUno de los primeros ejemplos fue la novela de ciencia ficcion escrita por H.G. Wells de 1898 "La batalla de los mundos" que describe una invasión marciana a la Tierra.Es la primera descripción conocida de una invasión alienigena y ha tenido una clara influencia sobre los posteriores trabajos sobre el mismo tema.LA ADAPTACION DE ORSON WELLES (1938)En Octubre de 1938 la novela fue adaptada para un programa de radio que llego a crear alarma social, haciendo creer a los radioescuchas que se trataba de una invasián real. Provoco pánico entre ciudadanos de Nueva Jersey y Nueva York.El programa y adaptación fue narrado por el futuro director de cine Orson Welles quien dentro del estilo que estaba desarrollando, inedito para la epoca fue el uso del "documental" dentro de la propia historia.H.P. LovecraftDentro de la obra de Lovecraft, quien desarrollo ampliamente el genero de horror-ciencia ficcion, existen relatos de entidades cosmicas que llegan a la tierra o ya habitan en ella antes que el ser humano. Tales ejemplos como El Color Del Espacio Exterior (1927), El Horror de Dunwich (1929), El Que Susurra En La Oscuridad (1931) y El Morador De Las Tinieblas (1936) por mencionar algunos.¿POR QUÉ SON TAN POPULARES?Desde las primeras películas de horror y ciencia ficción se ha mostrado al extraterrestre de las formas más raras, desde monstruos marinos o en la actualidad partículas extrañas que deforman la realidad y mutan a los humanos. Pero, ¿por qué nos gusta tanto verlos?Las películas con extraterrestres ponen al expectador en una posición donde prácticamente no tiene opción: quieres que gane la humanidad. Somos seres tribales. Nostros contra ellos. Así como una visión globalizada de "nuestro planeta", "nuestro espacio", "nuestra biología". Nos hacen pertenecer a algo más grande. Si nos lo arrebatan, ¿qué queda? NADA. Esa "NADA", el ser borrados, anquilados de la historia, es uno de los miedos más horribles que un humano puede tener.Otra razón por la cuál tememos a lo extraterrestre es porque no sabemos el nivel de su poder. Si pueden venir a visitarnos a la tierra, quiere decir que tienen una tecnología e inteligencia superior a la de nosotros. Eso ya debe preocuparnos y ponernos en apuros.También está la parte mitológica: ¿cuántas veces no hemos escuchado que los mayas tienen ruinas donde aparece un astronauta? Es decir, que cierta tecnología "avanzada" fue otorgada por un lugar ajeno a la Tierra. ¿Qué tanto hemos evolucionado por nosotros mismos? o en otro caso, ¿nos han inducido a evolucionar?. La religión habla de un Dios -pero ese Dios nos ve y manipula con algún fin egoísta? -. Nos gustaría creer que no, pero las películas de horror nos ponen la duda.Un ejemplo es una serie llamada Childhood's End, basada en un libro que lleva el mismo nombre del autor Arthur C. Clarke. Todo comienza con una visita extraterrestre, y cuando se devela su forma, resulta que el enviado está igual a Satanás... o al menos la concepción que tenemos de él en ilustraciones, vaya, estereotípica.It Came From Outer Space (1953)Narra la historia de una nave extraterrestre que cae en la Tierra y un astronomo amateur y su prometida son testigos.Los extraterrestres tienen la habilidad de adaptar formas humanas y asi poder conseguir materiales para reparar su nave y continuar con su viaje.Al ser descubiertos, los extraterrestres toman la decision de autodestruirse, pero los protagonistas los ayudan para que continuen sus reparaciones y puedan regresar a su hogar.The Body Snatchers (1956)Adaptacion de la novela del mismo nombre escrita por Jack Finney publicada un año antes.Narra la historia de como una ciudad de California es invadida por semillas llegadas del espacio exterior, dichas semillas sustituyen a la gente mientras duerme, creando duplicados perfectos que se desarrollan en vainas, mientras sus victimas humanas se convierten en polvo.(¿arma alienigena lanzada para erradicar a los humanos y asi tener el planeta Tierra y sus recursos por una raza superior extraterrestre?)The Blob (1958)Un meteorito cae a la tierra, y contiene a un ser alienigenia similar a una ameba la cual empieza a aterrorizar a una pequeña localidad en Pensilvania.(¿arma alienigena lanzada para erradicar a los humanos y asi tener el planeta Tierra y sus recursos por una raza superior extraterrestre?)Teeneagers From Outer Space (1959).En la película, un joven alienígena llamado Derek abandona a su tripulación para buscar una nueva vida en la Tierra, mientras que uno de sus compañeros de tripulación es enviado a buscarlo mientras intentan erradicar la vida humana.Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)Extraterrestres que ponen en marcha el Plan 9 para convertir cadaveres en zombies aesesions.La razon es porque los humanos ponen en peligro el equilibro de la galaxia con sus invensiones belicas (bomba atomica).The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Musical - (1975)The Colour Out Of Space - AdaptacionesDie, Monster, Die! (1965)The Curse (1987)The Colour From Out Space (2019)The Thing (1982)Rats: Night of Terror (1982) - Miedo a que haya seres que creemos inútiles, que por cuestiones del destino, resultan super inteligentes. El miedo a lo salvaje y después el miedo a la inteligencia. Así como el miedo a la historia, ¿cuánto hemos experimentado con ratas?¿Qué pasaría si ahora ellas nos tienen en sus manos?Night Of The Creeps (1986)Predator (1987)They Live (1988) - Si los extraterrestres son los que controlan la economía, los que tienen el poder en la Tierra. Este es una alegoría a los de las clases más altas quienes de cierta forma pueden hacer lo que quieran y mantienen grupos cerrados para genete con el mismo poder adquisitivo.X-Files (1993)The Tommyknockers (1993)Independence Day (1996)Mars Attacks! (1996)Signs (2002)Altered (2006) - ¿Qué pasaría si atrapamos a un alien sin querer? Esta película sí me da miedo y me recordó al video que platicamos hacia ya varios episodios de la persona que según filmó una autopsia a un extraterrestre.Cloverfield Monster (2007) - Más una película de Kaijus, donde vivimos el miedo a una criatura indestructible, todo lo que le tenemos valor: nuestro hogar, lugares, monumentos, destrucción total.District 9 (2009) - Es una alegoría hacia las personas de diferentes etnias. Los extranjeros en USA, refugiados en Europa.A Quiet Place (2018) - No poder actuar al 100% por pérdida de sentidos como comunidad. Aislamiento.Anihilation (2018) - Horror cósmico - miedos equivalentes a armas biológicas que nos mutan, deforman, nos vuelven locos.Vivarium (2019) - Mezcla de horror fantasmas, surreal con luego un giro a extraterrestres. Aquí básicamente somos presas de sus experimentos y están haciendo análisis sobre nuestro comporamiento social. Me recordó a experimentos que hacemos con chimpancés, por ejemplo.It (2019) - RemakeCréditos:Radio Horror es producido por Caro Arriaga y Rael Aguilar.Edición por Matías Beltrando desde Destek Soporte.Música Closing Theme Hounds of Love por Dan Luscombe (Intro)Insiders por Joe Crotty (Intro)Patchwork por Patchworker f.k.a. [friendzoned] (Spoilers)Nightlong por FSM Team (Outro)★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Jack Arnold, who died at the age of 75 in 1992, was the 1950s master of the science fiction film. Among the films he directed were It Came From Outer Space, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. The Probabilities crew – Richard A. Lupoff, Lawrence Davidson and Richard Wolinsky – received a small stipend from a science fiction convention and flew to Los Angeles to interview Jack Arnold in his office at Universal Studios. The interview is undated but was recorded in around 1980, give or take a year. Arnold's memory was fuzzy on when films were released. IMDb lists It Came from Outer Space, along with two film noirs  in 1953, Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954 and Revenge of the Creature in 1955. The first western, The Man from Bitter Ridge along with Tarantula and his work on This Island Earth also came from 1955. The rest of the westerns, along with The Incredible Shrinking Man and the Peter Sellers classic The Mouse That Roared, came between 1956 and 1959. After that, he directed a couple more A pictures, as he called them, but his primary work moved to television, and from then until his retirement in 1984, he was constantly working on projects for the small screen, interspersed with the occasional film. At the end of the interview, he discusses a remake of Conan Doyle's The Lost World, complete with storyboards. That project never did get off the ground, though it's possible later versions used some of Arnold's pre-planning. And, not to forget, he helped turn Gilligan's Island into a cultural (for better or worse) icon. Remastered and re-edited by Richard Wolinsky in July 2021, this interview has not been heard in forty years, and has never been publicly available in its entirety.     The post Jack Arnold (1916-1992), film director, 1980 appeared first on KPFA.

Glitter is a type of confetti, and we experience the glitter of the future when we watch the 1953 sci-fi classic "It Came From Outer Space." Is it a moral allegory with an anti-Communist message, or just a glittery show of humanity's inability to play well with others?

The Mission v It Came From Outer Space on the roulette, and we chat Cowboy Bebop, Synchronic, Avengers 2, 3, 4, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Willy's Wonderland, Outside the Wire, Earthquake, and much more!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point! This week, Bibbs and Witney find out if IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE! Jack Arnold's sci-fi classic tells the story of an alien spacecraft that crashelands outside a small town in the desert, but are they here to take over the planet, or do they not give darn about humanity whatsoever? Big ideas, amazing visual effects! Subscribe on Patreon at www.patreon.com/criticallyacclaimednetwork for exclusive content and exciting rewards, like bonus episodes, commentary tracks and much, much more! And visit our TeePublic page to buy shirts, mugs and other exciting merchandise!  Email us at letters@criticallyacclaimed.net, so we can read your correspondence and answer YOUR questions in future episodes! And if you want soap, be sure to check out M. Lopes da Silva's Etsy store: SaltCatSoap! Follow us on Twitter at @CriticAcclaim, join the official Fan Club on Facebook, follow Bibbs at @WilliamBibbiani and follow Witney at @WitneySeibold, and head on over to www.criticallyacclaimed.net for all their podcasts, reviews and more!

BIOGRAFIAFecha de nacimiento: 16 de enero de 1948 (72 años).Lugar de nacimiento: Carthage N.Y.Director, productor y guionista, de cine estadounidense y ademas es compositor y músico.Ha trabajado en varios géneros de cine, pero se le asocia mas con el horror, acción y ciencia ficción donde el punto mas alto de su carrera fueron los años 70's y 80's.Entre sus películas mas reconocidas tenemos: Halloween, The Thing, Escape From N.Y., Big Trouble In Little China.Es considerado uno de los mas reconocidos directores del genero de horror, ya que sus peliculas se han convertido en éxitos con el paso de los años y estableciéndose como de culto y un referente en la historia del cine de horror.INICIOSSus padres se mudan a Kentuky, y el se sentía fuera de lugar con las creencias y forma de vida de la sociedad del estado.Este hecho el lo considera como la mayor influencia para dedicarse al cine, ya que se refugiaba en la música y cine por la vida que llevaba en Kentuky.Cuando vio en el cine la película It Came From Outer Space, se asusto mucho pero a la vez le encanto demasiado.Con esta película inicio su fascinación por el cine de horror.También leía comics como Weird science o Tales from the Crypt.Su padre le regalo una cámara de video de 8MM, y con esto aprendió lo básico de las tenias de filmación y quería dedicarse al cine y ser director;  pero su padre le decía que tenia que se dedicara a otra cosa.Estudios1968 toma una decision y se va a la Universidad de California de Sur, ahi aprendió todo sobre la realización del cine.Camara, Iluminacion, Actuación etc.Junto a un compañero de universidad, crearon una banda de rock, y también componían la música de sus pequeñas peliculas de aquel entonces.Una de ellas fue The Ressurrection of Bronco Billy la cual gano un premio Oscar a la mejor película corta.CARRERA EN EL CINEDark Star (1974)Fue su primer cinta, de Ciencia Ficción, pero inicio como una película de estudiantes, pero termino siendo una película comercial.En esta cinta, participo Dan O'Bannon, como actor, co-escritor y efectos especiales.Para Carpenter, esta cinta supuso un gran éxito ya que hacer una película de ciencia ficción que tiene lugar en el espacio era algo inaudito en la escuela de cine, sumándole que era muy joven y con poca experiencia.Assault On Precinct 13 (1976) Es una película de acción, no fue gran cosa, ni obtuvo grandes criticas, pero en los festivales de Europa tuvo buena recepción y supuso el lanzamiento de la carrera de Carpenter.En esta película, es donde conoce y trabaja por primera vez con Debra Hill, como supervisora del guion y con quien seguiría trabajando mas adelante y seria parte esencial para el éxito de las peliculas de Carpenter.Halloween (1978)Rodada con un presupuesto limitado, se convertiría en cierto tiempo el film de terror independiente de mayor éxito de la historia. Y consigue que el genero slasher se integre de lleno en el cine Estadounidense.En propias palabras de George Romero cuando vio Halloween: “Es la película de horror perfecta”. Por lo que transmita, un psicopatía que ira por ti.The Fog (1980)Fantasmas de marineros regresan de la muerte para vengarse de los habitantes de un pequeño pueblo pesquero.Vuelve a participar Jamie Lee Curtis.Escape From N.Y. (1981)Influencia Western, donde el personaje de Snake es este badass del cine, tanto que influencio a Hideo Kojima para su juego Metal Gear.Lee Van CleefThe Thing (1982)Primera cinta de su trilogía y hasta aquí es donde Carpenter había estado conforme con trabajar con un presupuesto bajo.Y aqui es donde Carpenter cambio un poco su idea para apoyarse mas en los efectos especiales y el gore que estaba de moda.Pero recibieron muchas criticas, por la violencia gráfica, lo llamaron el “pornografo de la violencia”Christine (1983)Starman (1984)Derivado de las ciriticas negativa de The Thing la carrera John Carpenter se mueve en diferentes direcciones, es por eso que realizo Starman.Donde quiso demostrar que no solo podia hacer películas de horror, sino una bonita película de ciencia ficción y romance, donde nadie muriera.Otras películas de John Carpenter:Big Trouble In Little China (1986)Prince Of Darkness (1987)Teología, Religión y CienciaThey Live (1988)Memoirs Of An Invisible ManIn The Mouth Of Madness (1994)Village Of The Damned (1995)Escape From LA (1996)Vampires (1998)Ghost Of Mars (2001)The Ward (2010)Actualmente John Carpenter continua en su linea independiente y es un director con una enorme carrera exitosa sin renunciar a sus ideas.INTRODUCCION AL CINE DE HORRORInfluenciaCuando pensó en Michael Myers, Carpenter tenía muy claro que los monstruos eran más efectivos cuando la audiencia tenía menos información sobre ellos. Así que creó a un monstruo el cuál no tenía ninguna característica, una página en blanco. Lo único que lo definía era la maldad. Logró este efecto al tener la máscara sin color y los ojos completamente negros. Al tener su rostro completamente oculto, solo podría tener información sobre su personalidad según sus movimientos, los cuales, prácticamente no existen.. vemos como camina lentamente, no reacciona ante nada. Lo define Carpenter como el viento "está ahí afuera y te va a atrapar".En su película "They Live", a pesar de tener una trama simple hace una crítica social bastante interesante. hacia el consumismo y cómo la gente es influenciada a través de mensajes subliminares. Hay aliens que utilizan estos mensajes para controlarnos. Aquí la audiencia se tiene que cuestionar sobre el horror de vivir en un mundo capitalista y si realmente existe el libre albedrío... o simplemente somos manipulados por otros... otros de este mundo que no son aliens.The Thing utilizó la idea de la Body Culture de la época para convertirla en un arma de horror. Transgredir el cuerpo humano de la forma en que lo hizo y el uso del terror psicológico fue una combinación que en su momento, derribó la película, pero el tiempo la puso en un pedestal. Ahora, este fue un remake. En ese tiempo, los remakes solían ser más fieles a la versión original. El rompió el esquema trayendo una película que en lugar de hablarle a las audiencias del 51, se enfocó en lo que era relevante en los 80s.Además, crea su propia música con sintetizador esde los 70s, comenzando con el corto película Dark Star. Este tipo de música con synth puede verse más recientemente como una influencia en Stranger Things, por ejemplo.La película It Follows, claramente tiene los tintes de Halloween.Otros directores que empezaron en la misma época que él como Martin Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Ford Coppola. A pesar de la gran influencia que Carpenter tuvo en el cine nunca fue fan de la escena de los óscares como éstos otros.Su interés por traer nuevas perspectivas al cine puede verse en las decisiones que toma... por ejemplo, una película Slasher vista desde el punto de vista del asesino.En sus películas, deliberadamente quiere que la audiencia conozca bien la geografía para poner el ambiente en la escena. Para ellos, hace tomas largas y a distancia para que se pueda percibir lo cerca o lejos" de las cosas. Por ejemplo, en The Thing, cierta stomas puedes ver todos los corredores y cómo se conectan, cuántos caben y demás.Otro elemento es el uso de la sangre. En sus películas, trata de limitarlo y extender su aparición para crear una tensión para agregar suspenso. No se trata de cuántos mata, sino la idea de que el asesino puede estar en cualquier lugar, en cualquier momento. Halloween, te mantiene en ese suspenso, en The Thing igual con la paranoia, - includo Tarantino dijo que trató de emular este efecto en Hateful 8- en They Live viendo los anuncios por todos lados... Hasta cierto punto, podrías decir que no te deja respirar como audiencia, no hay lugar seguro.The Purge es una película que su director James De Monaco mismo ha dicho que el sentido de paranoia en The Thing lo inspiró en su película - el guionista escribió el guión mientras escuchaba una y otra vez el soundtrack de la película. Para la secuela, Anarquía, se inspiró en Escape de Nuea York.Los héroes en sus películas se encuenrtan en un estado perpetuo de ansiedad, miedo, e incertidumbre.Otra característica del cine de Carpenter es que debe de colocar algo de humor para liberar la válvula de tod ala tensión que crea. Esto lo hace con humor, en The Thing por ejemplo los comentarios qu etienen entre ellos ayudan.También es común que sus películas son contadas desde la perspectiva de una persona común y corriente, la clase trabajadora. Son quienes ven la realidad tal cual y por eso generan esos momentos chuscos. Traen la naturalidad del ser a la pantalla, son personas en los que podemos reflejarnos.Créditos:Radio Horror es producido por Caro Arriaga y Rael Aguilar.Edición por Matías Beltrando desde Destek Soporte.Música Closing Theme Hounds of Love por Dan Luscombe (Intro)Insiders por Joe Crotty (Intro)Patchwork por Patchworker f.k.a. [friendzoned] (Spoilers)Nightlong por FSM Team (Outro)★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Cult Movie Trailer A-Go-Go returns and like all good third installments it's entirely in 3-D! You will have to imagine the other 2 dimensions. All the film trailers presented here are of films that were originally presented in the theater in 3-D. Plus classic drive-in intermissions. If it looks like it is right in front of you then it must be Cult Movie Trailer A-Go-Go 3-D in 1 Dimension!!! 00:52 It Came From Outer Space (1953) 02:05 Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) 03:45 Robot Monster (1953) 06:45 The Flesh and Blood Show (1972) 09:29 Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968) 11:39 Andy Worhol's Frankenstein (1973) 12:51 The Creeps (1997) 14:26 Parasite (1982) 17:01 Gorilla at Large (1954) 18:01 Dogs of Hell aka Rottweiler (1982) 20:42 A*P*E* (1976) 22:07 Jaws 3-D (1983) 24:21 Gog (1954) 26:09 The Bubble (1966) 27:49 Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) 29:09 Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) 30:15 Starchaser: the Legend of Orin (1986) 34:27 The Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy (1976) 36:25 Prison Girls (1972) 37:23 Wildcat Women aka Black Lolita (1975) 38:10 Dynasty (1977) 38:32 The Man Who Wasn't There (1983) 41:44 House of Wax (1953, portion) 42:10 The Maze (1953) 44:20 Man in the Dark (1953) 45:56 The Mask (1961) 48:41 Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) 52:31 Silent Madness (1984) 54:00 Amityville 3-D (1983) 54:51 Friday the 13th, Part 3 (1982) 56:58 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) Support independent podcasts like ours by telling your friends and family how to find us at places like Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tune In Radio, RadioPublic, BluBrry, Libsyn, YouTube, iHeartRadio and all the best podcast providers. Spread the love! Like, share and subscribe! You can also help out the show with a positive review and a 5-star rating over on iTunes. We want to hear from you and your opinions will help shape the future of the show. Your ratings and reviews also help others find the show. Their "earballs" will thank you. Follow us on Twitter: @InvasionRemake Like and share us on Facebook & Instagram: Invasion of the Remake Email us your questions, suggestions, corrections, challenges and comments: invasionoftheremake@gmail.com Buy a cool t-shirt, PPE masks and other Invasion of the Remake swag at our TeePublic Store!

Xaunviayer and Travis go in depth on the film E.T. This is the first podcast in their "Arrival" or "It Came From Outer Space" theme for August. Give us a listen and find out how devastating that beginning scene with Eliott Stepping on the Pizza box effected Travis.

I'm Brian. And I'm Kevin. And we're the Horror Guys! Episode 81 Summary This week we’ll be watching some more classics. We’ll begin with "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde" from Hammer in 1971. "It Came From Outer Space" from 1953, "Brightburn" from 2019, and the upcoming film "Legend of the Muse," released earlier this summer. We might even sneak in a short film or two! Tales to Make You Shiver, Volume 1: https://amzn.to/2YtHUMz Tales to Make You Shiver, Volume 2: https://amzn.to/3f9wunr Here. We. Go! Links: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) https://www.horrorguys.com/dr-jekyll-and-sister-hyde-1971-review/ It Came From Outer Space (1953) https://www.horrorguys.com/it-came-from-outer-space-1953/ Short Film: Wolfie's Just Fine - A New Beginning (Official Music Video) https://www.horrorguys.com/short-film-wolfies-just-fine-a-new-beginning-official-music-video/ Brightburn (2019) https://www.horrorguys.com/brightburn-2019-review/ Legend of the Muse (2020) https://www.horrorguys.com/legend-of-the-muse-2020-review/ Closing And that’s our show. Thanks for joining us. Stop in during the week at our website for news and horror updates, to comment on this podcast, or to contact us. Get ready for next week, where we’ll be watching some more classics. We’ll begin with “Return of the Vampire” from 1943, do “The Horror of Frankenstein” from 1970, “The Room” from 2019, and finally, “V/H/S” from 2012. We’ll be sure to sneak in another short film or two. Email: horrorguysmail@gmail.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvIqIjVoNO0u78BykYKOMQQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrorguyspodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorBulletin Also http://twitter.com/BrianSchell and http://twitter.com/EightyCoin The web: http://www.horrorguys.com Patreon: http://patreon.com/horrorguys Buy us a coffee at http://Buymeacoffee.com/horrorguys I’m Kevin. And I’m Brian. We’ll see you next time! Theme Music by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com

I'm Brian. And I'm Kevin. And we're the Horror Guys! Episode 80 Summary This week we’ll be watching some more classics. We’ll begin with “The Creature walks among Us,” from 1956, “Mutant” from 1984, “Hands of the Ripper” from 1971, and 2011’s hit, “Attack the Block.” We might even sneak in a short film or two! Tales to Make You Shiver, Volume 1: https://amzn.to/2YtHUMz Tales to Make You Shiver, Volume 2: https://amzn.to/3f9wunr Here. We. Go! Links: The Creature Walks Among Us https://www.horrorguys.com/the-creature-walks-among-us-1956-review/ Mutant https://www.horrorguys.com/mutant-1984-review/ Short Film: Asking for a Friend https://www.horrorguys.com/asking-for-a-friend-2020-review/ Hands of the Ripper https://www.horrorguys.com/hands-of-the-ripper-1971-review/ Attack the Block https://www.horrorguys.com/attack-the-block-2011-review/ Closing And that’s our show. Thanks for joining us. Stop in during the week at our website for news and horror updates, to comment on this podcast, or to contact us. Get ready for next week, where we’ll be watching some more classics. We’ll begin with "Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde" from Hammer in 1971. "It Came From Outer Space" from 1953, "Brightburn" from 2019, and the recently film "Legend of the Muse." We’ll be sure to sneak in another short film or two. Email: horrorguysmail@gmail.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvIqIjVoNO0u78BykYKOMQQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrorguyspodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorBulletin Also http://twitter.com/BrianSchell and http://twitter.com/EightyCoin The web: http://www.horrorguys.com Patreon: http://patreon.com/horrorguys Buy us a coffee at http://Buymeacoffee.com/horrorguys I’m Kevin. And I’m Brian. We’ll see you next time! Theme Music by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com

We look at some of our favorite abominations from outer space in this week's episode! From sci-fi cult classics like "It Came From Outer Space" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space" to modern movies like "Slither", "Mars Attacks" and "A Quiet Place"!

Fantastic sights leap at you with IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) with another film in 3D! Director Jack Arnold brings stars Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush to the screen with an alien design you have to see to believe! Will this Universal attempt at science fiction end well? What role does author Ray Bradbury play in this film? All this and more awaits you in this week's episode! Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 39:52; Discussion 53:18; Ranking 1:14:10

En el audio de hoy hablamos con nuestro invitado José Rafael Gómez sobre la vida la extraterrestre, defensa planetaria y muchos otros temas. No te lo pierdas.  Música:  - Invaders from Mars - The Thing  - It Came From Outer Space

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE.... Or maybe another dimension? I guess it could be a robot from some lab... Heck, it could have just come from its nest! Whatever the Flatwoods Monster is, we are talking about it this week. And, it's dangerous to go alone so Art from Mr. Bunker's Conspiracy Time Podcast stops by ForthHand Studios in the Lower 4th Dimension to help get to the bottom of this mystery. All that and more on the podcast that has never seen a Flatwoods Monster, but we live with a robot one everyday - Hysteria 51Special thanks to this week’s research sources:Research Assistant - Raymond Walden IVBooks / PublicationsFlying Saucers from Outer Space | Major Donald E. KeyhoeFate - "The Monster and the Saucer" Vol. 6 no. 1. pp. 12–17. | Grey BarkerSunday Gazette-Mail State Magazine "The Phantom of Flatwoods" 1966 | Holt ByrneGamesFallout 76 - https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/games/fallout-76VideosFallout 76: Flatwoods Monster Origins - https://youtu.be/oZW5bPMHeRwWebsitesWV Culture - https://bit.ly/2DRByeEHistory - https://bit.ly/2rhnBnqJoe Nickell Wikipedia - https://bit.ly/2Rpgu7mFlatwoods Monster Wikipedia - https://bit.ly/2PkOtLdSkeptical Inquirer - https://bit.ly/2YnsdEYFlatwoods, West Virginia - https://bit.ly/2YmVejYFind More Great PodcastsForthHand Media - http://forthhand.com/shows/ And make sure to follow Mr. Bunker's Conspiracy Time Podcast:Listen: https://link.chtbl.com/mrbunkerspodWebsite: https://www.mrbunkersconspiracytime.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrbunkerpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrbunkerpod/ Support the showSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Silhouettes” by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I’ve also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley’s life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley’s music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on “The Flying Saucer”, for backers who’ve not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let’s talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like “Flying Disc Man From Mars”, “Radar Men From The Moon”, “It Came From Outer Space”, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term “flying saucer” had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold’s experience has entered into legend as the canonical “first flying saucer sighting”, mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person — or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he’d seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation — religious fanatics who saw in Arnold’s vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold’s sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn’t want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes — and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard’s terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can’t understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, “the Flying Saucer”, I’ve actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here — it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, “The Flying Saucer”] And there’d been “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer” by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer”] But today we’re going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time — for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn’t know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws’ house in Arkansas to his parents’ house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald “Slim” Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he’d started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business — Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor — he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn’t be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace’s band as well as Epley’s. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources — they’d use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money — while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they’d been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace’s wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace’s wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn’t actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley’s talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn’t actually built the studio — he’d bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn’t quite got round to making Wallace’s garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn’t think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who’d played on Elvis’ last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, “Rock With Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, “Rock With Me Baby”] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement — rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label — second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn’t liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a “Heartbreak Hotel” knockoff called “Trouble Bound”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Trouble Bound”] That was much more to Sam’s liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley’s first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun’s stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions — usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There’s one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis’ first single, a cover version of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms”. That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn’t play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Crazy Arms”] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley’s guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we’re going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don’t want to talk too much about him here, but you’ll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on “Matchbox”. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people’s lives. So while this isn’t an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley’s career. He’s just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it’s his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley’s first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more — it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn’t have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios — just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together — but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention — they’d only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn’t seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was “one of the weirdest of early rock ‘n’ roll records – and early rock ‘n’ roll records were weird!” — and he’s right. “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said “Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!” — and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley’s backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky’s on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley’s stage show was — at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing — except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley’s next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy “the Kid” Emerson, in 1955. “Red Hot” had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy “the Kid” Emerson, “Red Hot”] While “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of “Red Hot” would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Red Hot”] The song was recorded either at the same session as “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist — accounts vary — but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”, and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on “Take Me To That Place” by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, “Take Me To That Place”]  Rhythm guitar on “Miracle of You” by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, “Miracle of You”] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of “Red Hot”, which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area — the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that “Red Hot” hadn’t been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson’s version of Little Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby”, another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after “Red Hot”, credited to Thompson “with Billy Lee Riley’s band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘pumping piano'”: [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, “Love My Baby”]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. “Red Hot” should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn’t it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for “Red Hot” come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album — and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips’ latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label — that just wouldn’t make any sense. He said ““Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, “I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn’t last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” called “Rockin’ on the Moon”, which I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Rockin’ on the Moon”] But that wasn’t a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on “Shimmy Shimmy Walk” by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of “You Don’t Love Me”: [Excerpt: The Megatons, “Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1”] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn’t play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, “Green Onions”] But we’ll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months’ time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he’d been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Ronda”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Help Me, Ronda”] And on Dean Martin’s “Houston”: [Excerpt: Dean Martin, “Houston”] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales — and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis’ career. That song, Tony Joe White’s “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby” started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby”] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley’s version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley’s old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform “Red Hot” with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, “Red Hot”] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the “Musicares person of the year” award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It’s one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you’ll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won’t quote all of it, but I’ll quote a short section: “He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor’s bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn’t be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Flying Saucers Rock 'n' Roll" by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Silhouettes" by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I'm relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I've also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley's life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley's music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on "The Flying Saucer", for backers who've not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let's talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like "Flying Disc Man From Mars", "Radar Men From The Moon", "It Came From Outer Space", "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers", and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term "flying saucer" had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold's experience has entered into legend as the canonical "first flying saucer sighting", mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person -- or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he'd seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation -- religious fanatics who saw in Arnold's vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold's sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn't want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes -- and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard's terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can't understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, "the Flying Saucer", I've actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here -- it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, "The Flying Saucer"] And there'd been "Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer" by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer"] But today we're going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll"] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time -- for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn't know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws' house in Arkansas to his parents' house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald "Slim" Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he'd started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business -- Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor -- he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn't be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace's band as well as Epley's. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources -- they'd use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money -- while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they'd been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace's wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace's wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn't actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley's talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn't actually built the studio -- he'd bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn't quite got round to making Wallace's garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn't think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who'd played on Elvis' last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, "Rock With Me Baby": [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, "Rock With Me Baby"] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement -- rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label -- second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn't liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a "Heartbreak Hotel" knockoff called "Trouble Bound": [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "Trouble Bound"] That was much more to Sam's liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley's first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun's stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions -- usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There's one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis' first single, a cover version of Ray Price's "Crazy Arms". That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn't play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Crazy Arms"] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley's guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we're going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don't want to talk too much about him here, but you'll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on "Matchbox". Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people's lives. So while this isn't an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley's career. He's just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it's his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley's first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more -- it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn't have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios -- just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together -- but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention -- they'd only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn't seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll"] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was "one of the weirdest of early rock 'n' roll records - and early rock 'n' roll records were weird!" -- and he's right. "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said "Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!" -- and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley's backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky's on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley's stage show was -- at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing -- except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley's next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy "the Kid" Emerson, in 1955. "Red Hot" had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy "the Kid" Emerson, "Red Hot"] While "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll" had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of "Red Hot" would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, "Red Hot"] The song was recorded either at the same session as "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll" or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist -- accounts vary -- but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll", and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on "Take Me To That Place" by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, "Take Me To That Place"]  Rhythm guitar on "Miracle of You" by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, "Miracle of You"] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of "Red Hot", which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area -- the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that "Red Hot" hadn't been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson's version of Little Junior Parker's "Love My Baby", another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after "Red Hot", credited to Thompson "with Billy Lee Riley's band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis' 'pumping piano'": [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, "Love My Baby"]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. "Red Hot" should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn't it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for "Red Hot" come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album -- and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips' latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label -- that just wouldn't make any sense. He said "“Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, "I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn't last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll" called "Rockin' on the Moon", which I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "Rockin' on the Moon"] But that wasn't a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on "Shimmy Shimmy Walk" by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of "You Don't Love Me": [Excerpt: The Megatons, "Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1"] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn't play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, "Green Onions"] But we'll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months' time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he'd been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys' "Help Me Ronda": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me, Ronda"] And on Dean Martin's "Houston": [Excerpt: Dean Martin, "Houston"] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales -- and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis' career. That song, Tony Joe White's "I've Got a Thing About You Baby" started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, "I've Got A Thing About You Baby"] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley's version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley's old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform "Red Hot" with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, "Red Hot"] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the "Musicares person of the year" award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It's one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you'll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won't quote all of it, but I'll quote a short section: "He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don't stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who's got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor's bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn't be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

    Episode fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and at the flying saucer craze of the fifties. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Silhouettes” by the Rays, and the power of subliminal messages. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. I’ve also relied on a lot of websites for this one, including this very brief outline of Riley’s life in his own words.   There are many compilations of Riley’s music. This one, from Bear Family, is probably the most comprehensive collection of his fifties work.  The Patreon episode on “The Flying Saucer”, for backers who’ve not heard it, is at https://www.patreon.com/posts/27855307 Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them?   ERRATUM I mistakenly said “Jack Earl” instead of Jack Earls at one point.   Transcript   Let’s talk about flying saucers for a minute. One aspect of 1950s culture that probably requires a little discussion at this point is the obsession in many quarters with the idea of alien invasion. Of course, there were the many, many, films on the subject that filled out the double bills and serials, things like “Flying Disc Man From Mars”, “Radar Men From The Moon”, “It Came From Outer Space”, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, and so on. But those films, campy as they are, reveal a real fascination with the idea that was prevalent throughout US culture at the time. While the term “flying saucer” had been coined in 1930, it really took off in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a Minnesotan pilot, saw nine disc-shaped objects in the air while he was flying. Arnold’s experience has entered into legend as the canonical “first flying saucer sighting”, mostly because Arnold seems to have been, before the incident, a relatively stable person — or at least someone who gave off all the signals that were taken as signs of stability in the 1940s. Arnold seems to have just been someone who saw something odd, and wanted to find out what it was that he’d seen. But eventually two different groups of people seem to have dominated the conversation — religious fanatics who saw in Arnold’s vision a confirmation of their own idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible, and people who believed that the things Arnold had seen came from another planet. With no other explanations forthcoming, he turned to the people who held to the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being comparatively the saner option. Over the next few years, so did a significant proportion of the American population. The same month as Kenneth Arnold saw his saucers, a nuclear test monitoring balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A farmer who found some of the debris had heard reports of Arnold’s sightings, and put two and two together and made space aliens. The Government didn’t want to admit that the balloon had been monitoring nuclear tests, and so various cover stories were put out, which in turn led to the belief in aliens becoming ever more widespread. And this tied in with the nuclear paranoia that was sweeping the nation. It was widely known, of course, that both the USA and Russia were working on space programmes — and that those space programmes were intimately tied in with the nuclear missiles they were also developing. While it was never stated specifically, it was common knowledge that the real reason for the competition between the two nations to build rockets was purely about weapons delivery, and that the civilian space programme was, in the eyes of both governments if not the people working on it, merely a way of scaring the other side with how good the rockets were, without going so far that they might accidentally instigate a nuclear conflict. When you realise this, Little Richard’s terror at the launch of Sputnik seems a little less irrational, and so does the idea that there might be aliens from outer space. So, why am I talking about flying saucers? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that, among other things, this podcast is a cultural history of the latter part of the twentieth century, and you can’t understand anything about the mid twentieth century without understanding the deeply weird paranoid ideas that would sweep the culture. The second is that it inspired a whole lot of records. One of those, “the Flying Saucer”, I’ve actually already looked at briefly in one of the Patreon bonus episodes, but is worth a mention here — it was a novelty record that was a very early example of sampling: [Excerpt: Buchanan and Goodman, “The Flying Saucer”] And there’d been “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer” by Ella Fitzgerald: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, “Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer”] But today we’re going to look at one of the great rockabilly records, by someone who was one of the great unsung acts on Sun Records: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Billy Lee Riley was someone who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time — for example, when he got married after leaving the army, he decided to move with his new wife to Memphis, and open a restaurant. The problem was that neither of them knew Memphis particularly well, and didn’t know how bad the area they were opening it in was. The restaurant was eventually closed down by the authorities after only three months, after a gunfight between two of their customers. But there was one time when he was in precisely the right place at the right time. He was an unsuccessful, down on his luck, country singer in 1955, when he was driving on Christmas morning, from his in-laws’ house in Arkansas to his parents’ house three miles away, and he stopped to pick up two hitch-hikers. Those two hitch-hikers were Cowboy Jack Clement and Ronald “Slim” Wallace, two musicians who were planning on setting up their own record company. Riley was so interested in their conversation that while he’d started out just expecting to drive them the three miles he was going, he ended up driving them the more than seventy miles to Memphis. Clement and Wallace invited Riley to join their label. They actually had little idea of how to get into the record business — Clement was an ex-Marine and aspiring writer, who was also a dance instructor — he had no experience or knowledge of dancing when he became a dance instructor, but had decided that it couldn’t be that difficult. He also played pedal steel in a Western Swing band led by someone called Sleepy-Eyed John Epley. Wallace, meanwhile, was a truck driver who worked weekends as a bass player and bandleader, and Clement had joined Wallace’s band as well as Epley’s. They regularly commuted between Arkansas, where Wallace owned a club, and Memphis, where Clement was based, and on one of their journeys, Clement, who had been riding in the back seat, had casually suggested to Wallace that they should get into the record business. Wallace would provide the resources — they’d use his garage as a studio, and finance it with his truck-driving money — while Clement would do the work of actually converting the garage into a studio. But before they were finished, they’d been out drinking in Arkansas on Christmas Eve with Wallace’s wife and a friend, and Clement and the friend had been arrested for drunkenness. Wallace’s wife had driven back to Memphis to be home for Christmas day, while Wallace had stayed on to bail out Clement and hitch-hike back with him. They hadn’t actually built their studio yet, as such, but they were convinced it was going to be great when they did, and when Riley picked them up he told them what a great country singer he was, and they all agreed that when they did get the studio built they were going to have Riley be the first artist on their new label, Fernwood Records. In the meantime, Riley was going to be the singer in their band, because he needed the ten or twelve dollars a night he could get from them. So for a few months, Riley performed with Clement and Wallace in their band, and they slowly worked out an act that would show Riley’s talents off to their best advantage. By May, Clement still hadn’t actually built the studio — he’d bought a tape recorder and a mixing board from Sleepy-Eyed John Epley, but he hadn’t quite got round to making Wallace’s garage into a decent space for recording in. So Clement and Wallace pulled together a group of musicians, including a bass player, because Clement didn’t think Wallace was good enough, Johnny Bernero, the drummer who’d played on Elvis’ last Sun session, and a guitarist named Roland Janes, and rented some studio time from a local radio station. They recorded the two sides of what was intended to be the first single on Fernwood Records, “Rock With Me Baby”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee RIley, “Rock With Me Baby”] So they had a tape, but they needed to get it properly mastered to release it as a single. The best place in town to do that was at Memphis Recording Services, which Sam Phillips was still keeping going even though he was now having a lot of success with Sun. Phillips listened to the track while he was mastering it, and he liked it a lot. He liked it enough, in fact, that he made an offer to Clement — rather than Clement starting up his own label, would he sell the master to Phillips, and come and work for Sun records instead? He did, leaving Slim Wallace to run Fernwood on his own, and for the last few years that Sun was relevant, Cowboy Jack Clement was one of the most important people working for the label — second only to Sam Phillips himself. Clement would end up producing sessions by Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. But his first session was to produce the B-side to the Billy Lee Riley record. Sam Phillips hadn’t liked their intended B-side, so they went back into the studio with the same set of musicians to record a “Heartbreak Hotel” knockoff called “Trouble Bound”: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Trouble Bound”] That was much more to Sam’s liking, and the result was released as Billy Lee Riley’s first single. Riley and the musicians who had played on that initial record became the go-to people for Clement when he wanted musicians to back Sun’s stars. Roland Janes, in particular, is someone whose name you will see on the credits for all sorts of Sun records from mid-56 onwards. Riley, too, would play on sessions — usually on harmonica, but occasionally on guitar, bass, or piano. There’s one particularly memorable moment of Riley on guitar at the end of Jerry Lee Lewis’ first single, a cover version of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms”. That song had been cut more as a joke than anything else, with Janes, who couldn’t play bass, on bass. Right at the end of the song, Riley picked up a guitar, and hit a single wrong chord, just after everyone else had finished playing, and while their sound was dying away: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, “Crazy Arms”] Sam Phillips loved that track, and released it as it was, with Riley’s guitar chord on it. Riley, meanwhile, started gigging regularly, with a band consisting of Janes on guitar, new drummer Jimmy Van Eaton, and, at first, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano, all of whom would play regularly on any Sun sessions that needed musicians. Now, we’re going to be talking about Jerry Lee Lewis in a couple of weeks, so I don’t want to talk too much about him here, but you’ll have noticed that we already talked about him quite a bit in the episode on “Matchbox”. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of those characters who turn up everywhere, and even before he was a star, he was making a huge impression on other people’s lives. So while this isn’t an episode about him, you will see his effect on Riley’s career. He’s just someone who insists on pushing into the story before it’s his turn. Jerry Lee was the piano player on Riley’s first session for Sun proper. The song on that session was brought in by Roland Janes, who had a friend, Ray Scott, who had written a rock and roll song about flying saucers. Riley loved the song, but Phillips thought it needed something more — it needed to sound like it came from outer space. They still didn’t have much in the way of effects at the Sun studios — just the reverb system Phillips had cobbled together — but Janes had a tremolo bar on his guitar. These were a relatively new invention — they’d only been introduced on the Fender Stratocaster a little over two years earlier, and they hadn’t seen a great deal of use on records yet. Phillips got Janes to play making maximum use of the tremolo arm, and also added a ton of reverb, and this was the result: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”] Greil Marcus later said of that track that it was “one of the weirdest of early rock ‘n’ roll records – and early rock ‘n’ roll records were weird!” — and he’s right. “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” is a truly odd recording, even by the standards of Sun Records in 1957. When Phillips heard that back, he said “Man that’s it. You sound like a bunch of little green men from Mars!” — and then immediately realised that that should be the name of Riley’s backing band. So the single came out as by Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, and the musicians got themselves a set of matching green suits to wear at gigs, which they bought at Lansky’s on Beale Street. Those suits caused problems, though, as they were made of a material which soaked up sweat, which was a problem given how frantically active Riley’s stage show was — at one show at the Arkansas State University Riley jumped on top of the piano and started dancing — except the piano turned out to be on wheels, and rolled off the stage. Riley had to jump up and cling on to a steel girder at the top of the stage, dangling from it by one arm, while holding the mic in the other, and gesturing frantically for people to get him down. You can imagine that with a show like that, absorbent material would be a problem, and sometimes the musicians would lie on their backs to play solos and get the audiences excited, and then find it difficult to get themselves back to their feet again, because their suits were so heavy. Riley’s next single was a cover of a blues song first recorded by another Sun artist, Billy “the Kid” Emerson, in 1955. “Red Hot” had been based on a schoolyard chant: [Excerpt: Billy “the Kid” Emerson, “Red Hot”] While “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” had been a local hit, but not a national one, Billy was confident that his version of “Red Hot” would be the record that would make him into a national star: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley and the Little Green Men, “Red Hot”] The song was recorded either at the same session as “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll” or at one a couple of weeks later with a different pianist — accounts vary — but it was put on the shelf for six months, and in that six months Riley toured promoting “Flying Saucers Rock and Roll”, and also carried on playing on sessions for Sun. He played bass on “Take Me To That Place” by Jack Earls: [Excerpt: Jack Earls, “Take Me To That Place”]  Rhythm guitar on “Miracle of You” by Hannah Fay: [Excerpt: Hannah Fay, “Miracle of You”] And much more. But he was still holding out hopes for the success of “Red Hot”, which Sam Phillips kept telling him was going to be his big hit. And for a while it looked like that might be the case. Dewey Phillips played the record constantly, and Alan Freed tipped it to be a big hit. But for some reason, while it was massive in Memphis, the track did nothing at all outside the area — the Memphis musician Jim Dickinson once said that he had never actually realised that “Red Hot” hadn’t been a hit until he moved to Texas and nobody there had heard it, because everyone in Memphis knew the song. Riley and his band continued recording for Sun, both recording for themselves and as backup musicians for other artists. For example Hayden Thompson’s version of Little Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby”, another rockabilly cover of an old Sun blues track, was released shortly after “Red Hot”, credited to Thompson “with Billy Lee Riley’s band [and] Jerry Lee Lewis’ ‘pumping piano'”: [Excerpt: Hayden Thompson, “Love My Baby”]  But Riley was starting to get suspicious. “Red Hot” should have been a hit, it was obvious to him. So why hadn’t it been? Riley became convinced that what had happened was that Sam Phillips had decided that Riley and his band were more valuable to him as session musicians, backing Jerry Lee Lewis and whoever else came into the studio, than as stars themselves. He would later claim that he had actually seen piles of orders for “Red Hot” come in from record shops around the country, and Sam Phillips phoning the stores up and telling them he was sending them Jerry Lee Lewis records instead. He also remembered that Sam had told him to come off the road from a package tour to record an album — and had sent Jerry Lee out on the tour in his place. He became convinced that Sam Phillips was deliberately trying to sabotage his career. He got drunk, and he got mad. He went to Sun studios, where Sam Phillips’ latest girlfriend, Sally, was working, and started screaming at her, and kicked a hole in a double bass. Sally, terrified, called Sam, who told her to lock the doors, and to on no account let Riley leave the building. Sam came to the studio and talked Riley down, explaining to him calmly that there was no way he would sabotage a record on his own label — that just wouldn’t make any sense. He said ““Red Hot” ain’t got it. We’re saving you for something good.’ ” By the time Sam had finished talking, according to Riley, “I felt like I was the biggest star on Sun Records!” But that feeling didn’t last, and Riley, like so many Sun artists before, decided he had a better chance at stardom elsewhere. He signed with Brunswick Records, and recorded a single with Owen Bradley, a follow-up to “Flying Saucers Rock & Roll” called “Rockin’ on the Moon”, which I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear had been an influence on Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “Rockin’ on the Moon”] But that wasn’t a success either, and Riley came crawling back to Sun, though he never trusted Phillips again. He carried on as a Sun artist for a while, and then started recording for other labels based around Memphis, under a variety of different names. with a variety of different bands. For example he played harmonica on “Shimmy Shimmy Walk” by the Megatons, a great instrumental knock-off of “You Don’t Love Me”: [Excerpt: The Megatons, “Shimmy Shimmy Walk Part 1”] Indeed, he had a part to play in the development of another classic Memphis instrumental, though he didn’t play on it. Riley was recording a session under one of his pseudonyms at the Stax studio, in 1962, and he was in the control room after the session when the other musicians started jamming on a twelve-bar blues: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, “Green Onions”] But we’ll talk more about Booker T and the MGs in a few months’ time. After failing to make it as a rock and roll star, Billy Riley decided he might as well go with what he’d been most successful at, and become a full-time session musician. He moved to LA, where he was one of the large number of people who were occasional parts of the group of session players known as the Wrecking Crew. He played harmonica, for example, on the album version of the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Ronda”: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, “Help Me, Ronda”] And on Dean Martin’s “Houston”: [Excerpt: Dean Martin, “Houston”] After a couple of years of this, he went back to the south, and started recording again for anyone who would have him. But again, he was unlucky in sales — and songs he recorded would tend to get recorded by other artists. For example, in 1971 he recorded a single produced by Chips Moman, the great Memphis country-soul producer and songwriter who had recently revitalised Elvis’ career. That song, Tony Joe White’s “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby” started rising up the charts: [Excerpt: Billy Lee Riley, “I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby”] But then Elvis released his own version of the song, and Riley’s version stalled at number ninety-three. In 1973, Riley decided to retire from the music business, and go to work in the construction industry instead. He would eventually be dragged back onto the stage in 1979, and he toured Europe after that, playing to crowds of rockabilly fans In 1992, Bob Dylan came calling. It turned out that Bob Dylan was a massive Billy Lee Riley fan, and had spent six years trying to track Riley down, even going so far as to visit Riley’s old home in Tennessee to see if he could find him. Eventually he did, and he got Riley to open for him on a few shows in Arkansas and Tennessee, and in Little Rock he got Riley to come out on stage and perform “Red Hot” with him and his band: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Billy Lee Riley, “Red Hot”] In 2015, when Dylan was awarded the “Musicares person of the year” award, he spent most of his speech attacking anyone in the music industry who had ever said a bad word about Bob Dylan. It’s one of the most extraordinarily, hilariously, petty bits of score-settling you’ll ever hear, and I urge you to seek it out online if you ever start to worry that your own ego bruises too easily. But in that speech Dylan does say good things about some people.He talks for a long time about Riley, and I won’t quote all of it, but I’ll quote a short section: “He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry—a condescending term—as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him.” Dylan went on to talk about his long friendship with Riley, and to say that the reason he was proud to accept the Musicares award was that in his last years, Musicares had helped Billy Lee Riley pay his doctor’s bills and keep comfortable, and that Dylan considered that a debt that couldn’t be repaid. Billy Lee Riley gave his final performance in June 2009, on Beale Street in Memphis, using a walking frame for support. He died of colon cancer in August 2009, aged 75.

Christian and Ian are reunited and it feels so good.  Ian is back in his chair and we have movies and politics to talk about. Our new movie review is for the WW2 zombie(?) movie, OVERLORD. For our Universal Horror Monster Mash segment we dig into the surprisingly patient 50s alien movie, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. We also discuss time zones, Pocahontas, and Microsoft Outlook.  We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or any requests you have. You can contact us at: ItsOnlyFeedback@gmail.com and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd. 

The B-Movie Podcast is back! This episode we have a special guest from The U.K. – Photographer and all around cool human Mark Mawston!  Mark, Mary and Nic take a look a real Sci-Fi classic on this week’s episode when the gang tackles “It Came From Outer Space”!  This Universal Pictures film was the studio’s […]

It's a new year which means a new special monthly series in The Spoiler Room. This year is "IT CAME FROM THE 50s". We will be looking at monster films from the 1950s. To kick off our special and our first episode of the year, the Crew sit down and discuss "It Came From Outer Space". Pull up a chair and listen in as they discuss this sci-fi horror from 1953. Crew in the Room: Paul, David, Scotty D and Mark "the Movieman" Don't forget to subscribe to us on Itunes, twitter @specialmarkpro and @spoilerroompdcs. Email us at spoilerroom.smp@gmail.com

It's a creature feature double-feature. Two classics from the golden age of cinema science fiction. Aliens and giant ants in the desert threatening humanity with utter destruction. "It Came From Outer Space" and "Them!" are classics that bring back a lot of great memories for both of us. And Bob surprises me with his rating of Them!

Join Chris Dicker and Paul McWhirter as they discuss 1953's classic It Came From Outer Space.  They explore one of the most common horror tropes in recent film history, why certain people got such high billing and applaud the lungs of the films leading lady. Sound design and editing by James Ashelford Follow us on socials @itmompod and send us your suggestions for future films, hate mail or the like to itmompod@gmail.com  

In this episode Mike tells you what to watch for episode seven. The MDX Crew will watch IT Came From Outer Space (1953) and The Thing (1982). We have a bonus mini review for you guys! A lot of people asked for a Power Rangers episode and Mike delivered... a review for the new movie. He broke it into two parts, a general spoiler free review and a spoilerriffic segment.  SPOILERS @ 00:05:40! SPOILERS Like and review Remake Rewind on iTunes! Support us on Patreon.com/MDXpods and help get Mike his webshooters and microphone stands!  Check us out on Instagram and Twitter @MDXpods. We are on Facebook.com/MDXpods. Check us out at MDXpods.com Also listen to Ruin My Childhood, our second podcast hosted by Kat and Mike!

   An Appetizing Review:    “Arrival", the new movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.    Based on the short story "The Story of Your Life" by Tim Chaing, Arrival is a metaphysical alien to Earth story which tells the story of a linguist who is recruited to help the government deal with an alien visitor.   We asked the question: What if humans had a simultaneous consciousness and could discern the future? If we know the future and there is no free will how does one exist with the knowledge of knowing what life indefinitely has in store for you?  Live in the now and be an alien in your own skin and look at the world and life with curiosity and the propensity to learn.    Scene Again: The Story of Your Life by Ted Chaing      The Main Course Movie Dish:    It Came From Outer Space (1953) is a movie about what? Aliens who have come to earth for some reason or another and only one person from the town nearby their landing spot knows of their arrival.      Twilight Delight:    The Monster Are Due on Maple Street is a quite enjoyable episode of the Twilight Zone about a different arrival of aliens from outer space. These aliens are clever and use humans to ultimately destroy themselves.    Suggestions and Comments   Call 520-775-1690 to leave a voicemail on Google VoiceEmail: feedback@talkingwithburritos.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/talkingwithburritos/ Twitter: @talkingburritos Snapchat: talking with burritos

Herman Stein contributed music to more than 200 films, including some of the 1950s’ best-known monster movies: Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, It Came From Outer Space, The Mole People, Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man. He also composed for television, most memorably the Family Theme for “Lost In Space.” He was […]

Programa dedicado al cine de Ciencia Ficci+on de los 50, con películas como "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "It Came From Outer Space" and "Them!". Además, con las habitua les secciones de Estrenos, Noticias y Banda Sonora

Programa dedicado al cine de Ciencia Ficci+on de los 50, con películas como "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "It Came From Outer Space" and "Them!". Además, con las habitua les secciones de Estrenos, Noticias y Banda Sonora

This week, Mark Daniels returns with a look at "It Came From Outer Space." Another classic Sci-Fi film the great era of the 1950's. Listen to Mark as he reviews another classic tale of monsters, mayhem, and screaming girls! Enjoy the show!

This week we put together a show that ties into our site's cover story theme, "It Came From Outer Space." Join host Jose Otero along with guests Bob Mackey, Marty Sliva, IGN's Ryan McCaffery for games discussion. And check out a special interview segment with Marcus Lindblom, one of the localizers behind a beloved Super Nintendo game called Earthbound.

This week we put together a show that ties into our site's cover story theme, "It Came From Outer Space." Join host Jose Otero along with guests Bob Mackey, Marty Sliva, IGN's Ryan McCaffery for games discussion. And check out a special interview segment with Marcus Lindblom, one of the localizers behind a beloved Super Nintendo game called Earthbound.