WFMU's Beware of the Blog

RAELity Bites!

If there is anything that I am very sympathetic to, it would be space mysticism. In elementary school I would devour any book I came across dealing  with the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, ancient aliens, Atlantis, etc. In the fourth grade my best friend Per-Johan and I vowed to spend our 30s in Tibet searching for the Yeti, convinced they were part of a tribe that would have access to the mothership. (We lost touch at some point but every day I wake up expecting him to knock on my door ready to go. Per Johan, if you read this - only two years left!) In my teens I discovered the music of Hawkwind and Coil, and have been on a steady diet of cosmic sound ever since.

I came across theebradmiller.blogspot.com a couple of weeks ago, specifically to the page dedicated to Psychic TV Live at Fondation Raelienne, making me wonder what was up with those wacky Raelians , haven't really thought about them since they said they were cloning people a few years ago. Bouncing around Google I discovered that within a week they would be celebrating their New Year in Strawberry Fields, Central Park, so I reached out to some friends and made plans to meet there. If you need some background on the Raelians you can find it here, this post is going to go on a bit too long already....

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny Friday afternoon. I rolled into Strawberry Fields to find Greg and Alexandra waiting for me on the grass a short distance from the where the Raelians were having their celebration. Greg said that I had just missed a ritual using tuning forks and it looked pretty wild. They were now meditating with a gatekeeper standing guard. Anytime anyone would come up to ask a question he would politely shoo them  away. Curiosity got the better of me so I approached him and asked him what was going on. He whispered that I should come back in a few minutes and I would know when. Eventually everyone stirred and I thought, ok, this is the time.

I approached the crowd while there was a rite going on that seemed like a baptism. A Raelian named Kelvin came up to me and we chatted a bit, he explained that it was the "Transmission of the Cellular Plan," essentially the baptism into the Raelian faith where my DNA would be  sucked into the priestess, processed in her internal computer and transmitted to an alien satellite. VALIS? I have no idea what came over me  but I had to do this. I had to take part in the Raelians most sacred ceremony. Eventually it was my turn. I stood before a priestess named Sylvie, she was from Montreal. Her assistant was next to her holding a bowl of water. Sylvie made me agree to some specifics, as in that I came there on my own free will, there is no "God", and their main cult leader Claude Vorilhon was the last prophet. Ok, well, yeah, I came there on my own, God to me is indescribable and every religion thinks their main guy is the last one, it would be kind of weird if they didn't say that so I'm cool with that, so yeah. Sure.

She dipped her hands in the water and placed them on my forehead and neck. A feeling of calm came over my body, a warm wave of  everything being right in the world. It felt amazing to be alive, in the a field in Central Park, having my DNA sent to outer space...

Dumbo is Down in the Lab, Talking to Dracula & His Krewe

The Rich Cultural History of AlternaBlasts seems to have struck at least a small nerve, a few comments either finding joy in the blasts or dismissing them outright. I was happy to hear from everyone, but there was one that really stood out. It was from a reader who posts around here fairly often and goes by the name of K. K explored my personal blog a bit and made a statement expressing the idea that Frank Luntz & Rush Limbaugh were kindred spirits to a popular occult organization. Mindzappers! That train of thought pushed me towards other famous occultists, at least ones that admit to it.

Sure, traditionally you have your Jimmy Pages, Kenneth Angers and Jack Parsons (founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory!) William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin both used the tech of their time to cast spells. Gustav Jung had esoteric interests and tendencies. In the present day we have NPR's Margot Adler, a witch; comic book superstars Alan Moore and Grant Morrison are both practicing wizards. Daryl Hall had interest in Aleister Crowley and recorded a song with Fripp based on his teachings. Oo-ee-oo. Fairuza Balk, famous for her starring role in the movie The Craft was once owner of Panpipes Magickal Marketplace, the United States' oldest occult store. Even hip hoppers are into it! Jay Z, Kanye West & Beyonce have all been linked to the satanic illuminati conspiracy! Or not!

So yeah, these people are all in plain view, but the very word occult means hidden so there must be others that aren't that open about their interests... Some think it is such a vast conspiracy you could just pull a name out of the air. What about, say, Walt Disney?

Years ago I was an active member of the online community Barbelith, a gathering place for geeks cut to a certain cloth to discuss weird stuff in general. Lots of members were Philip K. Dick freaks and in an discussion of the movie inside the book Valis an interesting post appeared:

The Rich Cultural History of AlternaBlasts

The nineties were a dark time for popular music, a quagmire of overproduced hard rock whitewashed with the term "alternative" to make the masses believe there was something new. Little did they realize that kids raised on this stuff would eventually see it for what it was and rise up to destroy it.

AlternaBlast al·ter·na·blast - verb - To Destroy, mangle and fuck up nineties alternative, chin, & butt rock with the express purpose of exposing the saccharine mess that lies at its very core.

This isn't your daddy's Plunderphonics & Negativland , or the mash-ups popular at the start of this century. This is the sound of kids that just couldn't take it anymore.

Ryan Kuen (aka Balloony Tunes) is one of the leaders of the movement, and his YouTube channel is filled with video after video of him wrecking the foundations of nineties radio. I asked him about the origins of the blasts. "Well, a few years ago Big John and I would be driving home from shows on I-90 and we would entertain each other by singing the stupidest parts of the stupidest songs we grew up on. Things just spiraled out of control from there." From this sprang Hot Air Balloon Ride, Kuen's collaboration with the aforementioned Big John, otherwise known as John Elliot of Cleveland's Emeralds. Elliot's take on it is this: "Hey man, these bands damaged us when we were kids, this is just a way of us burning some sage to clear out the demons they left behind."

The first AlternaBlast I heard was Hot Air Balloon Ride's Oktoberfest, issued on Deception Island in 2007. I asked label head Chris Madak his thoughts. "You have to remember that this is completely misanthropic, the opposite of the hypnagogic pop idea of misty eyed crawling back into the womb. This is more of a Back to the Future as Terminator, going back in time to exact revenge."

So with no more further ado, my top 5 AlternaBlast videos -

Smash Mouth - "All Star" or "Dumbass play the fuckin video" - Lifephaser

Pearl Jam - Vowel Movement - BalloonyTunes

Korn Megablast - Lifephaser

Limp Bizkit Fred Durst Megablast - BalloonyTunes

Hot Air Balloon Ride STRAIGHT NOISE BANGER #2

Bonus - Grease - BalloonyTunes (Although technically not an AlternaBlast I commissioned this for a piece I wrote about the esoteric nature of the opening credits to the movie Grease.)

So hey, hope you dug my first post for WFMU, I look forward to posting my second one soon with either a list of my top five botanicas in Brooklyn or an essay about the ancient wisdom hidden in the headlines of the New York Post.