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ALONG_CAME_RA

                                    December 18, 2002

Plowing methodically through my older brother's
collection of records as a kid, I came across                            
a couple of odd jazz records by "Sun Ra".                                
                                                       Space is 
   I found them very                                   the Place
   dissapointing.                                               
                                                       Night    
      Despite the cool science                         of       
      fictional track titles,                          the
      very few of them had                             Purple Moon
      lyrics.                 
                           


The title track "Space is the Place"
was interesting in some respects, but
it bothered me that it is not                
literally true that "there's no limit        Still something about it
to the things that you can do".              stuck in my mind, that  
                                             distinctive bleep bleep 
  Embarassing fact:  I probably              beep honk "spacey"      
  would have been happier with               introduction on the     
  these records if they had                  piece...
  lyrics like the theme to the 
  "Fireball XL-5" show.
                        

Much later (well, 5-10 years: a big
percentage of a teenager's life), 
I was into making compilation
cassette tapes, and I had this odd 
attitude that the magnetic tape was
really valuable and you shouldn't
"waste" any of it, so if there was 
30 seconds or so at the end of a side,
I would go looking for something I    
could use as filler.


And once on a tape largely composed of late-70s
punk, I decided to fill the end of the tape with
the intro to "Space is the Place".


          Ten years later I couldn't           
          figure out what I'd been thinking.   
                                               
          That little bit of intro struck me   
          as *astoundingly* beautiful.         
                                               
          How could I have passed up the chance
          to tape the whole piece?             

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