loving the aliens

Driving through the heartland of South Kildare with Miss Lily.
Aka, the lady known as Lil.
Aka, the Lildebeest.
Aka, the Mammy.
I am playing my alien CD.
This is a compilation featuring songs about visitors from other planets.
It seems a suitable theme to mark the three year anniversary of The Kilcullen Incident.
The sample is varied.
Jas Mann singing that sublime Spaceman thing from the trousers ad.
It was Jas Mann's song before the trews people got their hands on it, we must stress.
Ah it's a classic.

"Spaceman, Spaceman.
I've always wanted you to go,
Into Spaceman.
Intergalactic craft."

Jas Mann insisted they release the version of the song he wrote and performed, and not just the souped up advertisement version, and the ad execs had to agree because Jas Mann owned the song.
Not many people know that.
Well, it's a work of art in any form.
But I wish they'd run with the ad version.
The video featuring Jas Mann is a work of art in itself by the way. Great linear narrative. Courageous too because it's so very odd. Needed a few more jokes maybe. And less of the man in the dress.
Lil and me drive on as Spaceman ends.
It's followed by Planet Claire by the B52's.
This also is an oddity.
The bloke from the B52's theoretically should have no place in popular music.
Because, er, he can't sing.
Don't get me wrong.
He's brilliant nonetheless.

"She came from planet Claire.
I knew she came from there.
She drove a Plymouth Satelite,
Faster than the Speed of Light."

Now this is what I call music.
Even if he can't sing.
Planet Claire ends after a while.
It's a short song by B52's standards.
Only about fifteen minutes long.
We head past the town of Athy.
Now David Bowie is singing.
His song is called Space Oddity.
Of course it's odd.
They're all odd.

"Ground Control this is Major Tom.
I'm feeling very lonely.
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way.
And the world looks very different today.
Here am I floating in my tin can.
Far across the world.
Planet earth is blue.
And there's nothing I can do..."

This is the last song on the tape.
"What do you think Ma?" I ask as we pull up to Caitriona Edgar's Gargoyles Cafe on the banks of the Grand Canal.
"I think," said my eighty year old mother, "Bowie is still the best of them."
And there our story ends.