John Michael Greer recently wrote a post on Music as a Magical Language. Towards the end of the essay he wrote that “it wouldn’t be too hard to work out classic rock numbers for every planet and element.”
To that end I posted a list of musical pieces as they related to each element last week. Again, there is classic rock that I enjoy, but in the spirit of dissensus my list was very heavy on the ambient, jazz and contemporary classical as those are some of my favorite genres. For this list of songs used to invoke the energies of each of the nine planets I tried to actually try to be a bit more eclectic.
We start by following the actual rules for once, picking a classic rock song, and setting our controls for the heart of the sun. This song is unique in the Pink Floyd catalog for featuring all five band members on the recording, with both Syd Barrett and David Gilmour playing guitars. Roger Waters meanwhile took some of the lyrics from a poem by Li He, a sickly Tang Dynasty poet. The poem was titled in English, “Don’t Go Out of That Door,” but we’re not going to follow that advice today. Instead we are going to knock on the door.
The sun is the planet of the self, of personal identity, of the individual and their will. As such a great solar song comes from no other than Moondog, and his song “Do Your Thing.”
“Do your thing! / Be fancy-free to call the tune you sing / Don't give up! / That's not the way to win a loving-cup / Do your best / And Opportunity will do the rest / Don't give in! / Capitulation is the greatest sin / Do what's right / What's right for you, to do with all your might / Don't regret! / What might have been, you might as well forget.” Moondog certainly lived up to his own ethos. In Robert Scottos` biography of Moondog he writes about the musicians life as true American original and “one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century: a blind and homeless street musician becomes a legendary eccentric in New York City and rises to prominence as a major-label recording artist and internationally respected composer. He became an honorary member of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in the late 1940s. His unique, melodic compositions were released by the Prestige jazz label, and the late 1960s Viking-garbed Moondog became a pop music sensation on Columbia Records.” Moondog had become blind when at age sixteen he found a dynamite cap in a field, and not knowing what it was, it blew up in his face. He lost his sight, but his older sister Ruth enriched his life by reading to him every day for many years. She read to him philosophy, science and myth and he took all of this deep into his central core. When she read him The First Violin by Jessie Fothergill, he found his mission and embarked on the path of becoming a composer.
he dulcimer and guitar playing songwriter Pantaleimon offers a mystical take on the sun, with her track “I Am (Solar Dust)” It’s from her wondrous 2008 album Heart of the Sun.
One way to listen to this piece is as a way of tapping into the “I Am” concept used so often in New Thought. “I Am the Stars and the Seas I Am” she recites in the background as a kind of affirmation or mantra -and its not a bad one at all to use and sing along with.
In astrology the Moon is considered as a planet, and it rules the changing tides of our emotions and the astral plane. Considering that dreams are a part of astral plane phenomena, “The Dreamer Is Still Asleep” by Coil seems an appropriate song to invoke the energies of the moon. This song comes from their 1999 album Musick to Play in the Dark. This record signified yet another change in Coil’s amorphous discography. In this case it was a change from being a “solar” oriented music project to a “moon” oriented music project, and the songs were meant to be listened to as “moon music.”
An alternate choice might be “Lunar Phase” by the Heavenly Music Corporation. This album had been a commission for the St. Giga ambient music satellite in Japan that broadcast its programs according to a tide table.
Speaking of satellites, Mercury is the ruler of communications, writing, radio, transportation, and thieves, among other things. As such, this classic 1962 hit by The Tornados and produced by Joe Meek is a fitting song to invoke the energies of communication.
Telstar 1 was the first of a new breed of communications satellites, launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It lived up to the star in its name via the successful transmission through the vacuum of space the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images, and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. In the spirit of communication Project Telstar was also part of a multi-national agreement. It is reminiscent of the way ham radio encourages cooperation and communication between nations. AT&T, Bell Labs and NASA were all part of the U.S. team working to get it into orbit, while in the General Post Office in the U.K. and the National Postes, Télégraphes et Téléphone in France tackled the experimental satellite communications across the pond. Any project of this size needs a team to see it birthed from the dream and into reality. Headquartered in Bell Labs, John R. Pierce helmed the project and Rudy Kompfner invented the special traveling-wave tube transponder while James M. Early designed the transistors and the solar panels. Those panels drank in the sunlight to keep the bird alive and capable of generating 14 watts of electrical power. Pierce was an early proponent of computer music and collaborated with the likes of Max Mathews, as talked about in my book The Radio Phonics Laboratory. The instrumental was launched on the radio waves and in the record shops in December of 1962, just as the satellite it was named after was experiencing its technical difficulties due to all the bombs the superpowers were exploding in the atmosphere. Telstar soared to number one in the US Billboard Hot 100 that month and also number one in Meek’s home country on the UK singles chart. It remained in the US charts for sixteen weeks and in the UK for 25. It is still heard with fondness or even religious zeal by Meek devotees to this day. What gave Telstar some of its unusual appeal and staying power as a still weird song, was the use of a Clavioline or Univox. It’s hard to know which is which as the two were possibly overdubbed together in the mix on this piece. That’s the lead keyboard instrument carrying the thrilling melody. Invented by the French engineer Constant Martin the Clavioline consisted of a keyboard and a separate amplifier and speaker unit. The keyboard usually covered three octaves, and it had a number of switches to alter the tone, add vibrato, and other effects. The Clavioline used a vacuum tube oscillator to produce a solid buzzing waveform, almost a square wave. Using high and low-pass filtering, as well as the vibrato, it could be made to sound very unique. Its amplifier also lent to its signature tone with deliberate distortion, something Joe would have loved.
Many people would think of the planet Venus as a woman, and they wouldn’t be wrong. It is the ruler of females, their causes and issues, as well as being the planet of art and beauty. A beautiful woman such as Bjork, however, can think of "Venus as a Boy". This song is an embodiment of Venus as a male lover out to please and pleasure the woman he is with.
Another Bjork song that could be used to invoke the powers of Venus is her number, Big Time Sensuality, recalling the halcyon days of clubbing in the nineteen nineties, loaded up on the love drug, MDMA. This song is more about the hook up. “I don’t know what is going to happen after this weekend / and I don’t want to.” Use with caution.
Perhaps her best invocation with regards to Venus is that of love itself in “All is Full of Love.” This bright and powerful song can be put to all around use. From her third studio album Homogenic, it still speaks to all of those who’ve had their hearts broken, which is to say all of us. Beyond it is healing and the love that streams from the universe itself.
As I write this, I began to think that Bjork herself might very well be an avatar of the planet. And while that may not be exactly the case, I do feel she is a transmitter of its energies.
It seems to me the martial energies might best be stirred by the varieties of hard rock, metal and punk. These genres have typically been favored by men, not that there aren’t women musicians and fans who can throw down like a Valkyrie. Mars as a girl, in other words.
To that end we will start with something from doom duo Year of the Cobra. Their track “Into the Fray,” which I got to hear live last summer at the Southgate House Revival, is the kind of thing you’ll want to listen to as you put on your armor and head into battle.
"Woodpecker from Mars", is another to listen as you prepare to engage. This hard alternative rock instrumental still sears after all these years. I had this on a cassette tape not long after it came out in 1989. It was an album that shaped my leaning into sounds that were just a little bit different. Faith No More provided a wide array of songs on that classic record.
Jupiter is the planet of kings, queens, and benevolent rulers. It’s a planet of wisdom, law, and orderly growth and expansion.
The track “King” from Swiss folk metal band Eluveitie does a good job, through the lyrics, of invoking divine kingship. Listening to this and singing along should do a good job of tapping into Jovian energies. The fiddle and flute solos alongside pounding drum rhythms are enough in themselves to lift the spirits, something Jupiter is known to do. “I, high king, sovereign and servant / Holder of divine, regality bestowed in the Omphalos grove / My kingship, the song of the gods / Thou shalt know me by my fruits, the abundance in which we grew”
Music for Jupiter was harder for me to determine. “On Jupiter” by Sun Ra seems like another good choice, even though Sun Ra is from Saturn (though it seems clear to those who know his music that he has explored the solar system). Piano, synthesizer and lyrics in swing evoke a planet of royalty guiding their kingdoms in wisdom.
The planet Saturn, is among other things, the planet of melancholy. One of the saddest songs I know is “A Sadness Song” by Current 93. It evokes the spiritual dryness of that state.
David Tibet sings about being “we're wrapped inside our troubles / And we're wrapped inside our pain / And wracked with fires with longing / And our eyes are blind with night / With our fingers clutching coins / And our thoughts burning with ‘I’ ” That notion of “burning with ‘I’” seems so true to depression, when our introspections turn morbidly on ourselves.
One way out of the grip of melancholy is to apply oneself to meaningful work. Saturn is also the planet of hard limits, hard work, dedication and discipline. Sun Ra was a Saturnalien who knew discipline. He rehearsed for hours and hours and hours every day with his Arkestra. Discipline was such an intrinsic part of his everyday life that he made an ongoing series of pieces called “Discipline.” So here is “Discipline 27-II parts I-IV” by Sun Ra.
Uranus was one of our latter day planetary discoveries, coming to us only in the year 1781 as the world continued to be wracked by revolutionary waves, including the one that established America. Uranus is thus considered to be the planet of sudden switcheroo’s and the unexpected. Change in general is ushered in when Uranus comes into play. Uranus also deals with rules, freedom, and originality, as showcased by it’s discovery during the years of revolutionary fervor.
David Bowie is a Uranian par excellence and his song “Changes” can be used when thinking on Uranian themes. Those changes might even be sex changes and reversals of gender.
Those changes might even be sex changes and reversals of gender. Uranus is the planet that rules the LGBTQ+ movement. Back in the day gay men were sometimes called Uranians. Before Uranus was discovered, homosexuality as such did not exist as a specific movement and subculture, but after its discovery, it has made inroad after inroad to being a part of our common experience. With this in mind, the song “Rebel Rebel” also by Bowie, can be used, as can the number by his friend Lou Reed, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.”
Neptune was the next planet to be discovered by adventurous astronomers. The way the planets are named is interesting. The planet Neptune doesn’t really deal with the ocean, as you might expect it to when named after a god that does control the literal tides of the sea and rules over its life. Neptune does deal with another kind of ocean though, the ocean of our collective unconscious, and rules over things such as dreams and fantasy. As such, prog rock and its variants are particularly Neptunian, especially in the way that so many prog bands have used themes from fantasy literature as part of their music.
There is a dark side to Neptune, though. In as much as it deals with fantasies, it also deals with the illusions of the drug user. In the same way that the discovery of Uranus initiated the beginnings of queer culture, Neptune initiated the beginnings of drug culture. Neptune was discovered in 1846. Morphine had been made from opium at the beginning of the 19th century and heroin came in the 1870s, all under the orbit of Neptunes dark side. The song par excellence, of this dark side of Neptunes energy, comes from the Velvet Underground, with “Heroin.”
On the positive side of Neptune, the famous track “Soothsayer” from guitarist Buckethead taps into the aspect of the planet that is visionary, prophetic and sees beyond the veil.
To top all this off I’ll give you my favorite pop song about astrology from grungy outfit Slothrust. This is off the album Parallel Timeline where Leah Wellbaum gives an introspective and relational suite of songs, this one being “Strange Astrology” about the topic many people want to know about with astrology, what’s your sign, and are we compatible. Here those themes are turned into a fine number. This song should have been in the top forty, but we all know that system is rigged.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Justin Patrick MooreAuthor of The Radio Phonics Laboratory: Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis, and the Birth of Electronic Music. Archives
August 2024
Categories
All
|