Story #13: "Space is the place" -- Sun Ra

*Outer Space Is a pleasant place. A place that's really free,
There's no limit to the things That you can do. Space is the place. *

Let's begin by saying Sun Ra is to jazz what abstract expressionism is to art, or Sgt Pepper is to 1950's music or The Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk is to transportation before it.

Sun Ra is a demarcation line. Not a tiny line drawn in the sand but a giant ditch the size of the Great Wall of China. You either get Sun Ra or you don't.

You can't separate the artist from the times. For a lot of his career, Herman Poole Blount, had to endure Jim Crow and rampant racism not to mention what I suspect is a rejection from others in the jazz community who didn't appreciate the boundaries he was expanding.

David Bowie may have made it mainstream. But the idea of creating a persona as a shield against terrible realities while at the same time channeling an unusual strain of creativity might have originated with Sun Ra at least in music. Put another way: There would have been no Ziggy Stardust without Sun ra, and there couldn't have been a P-Funk Mothership without the Arkestra.

Ra was fiercely independent with his releases, too, which made him a serious businessman as well as a fearless musician, putting out dozens upon dozens of releases for a discerning audience that would eventually find them.For every queasy masterpiece like "Space is the place," Sun Ra released some music that was so challenging, I used to describe it as the sound of twenty different musicians playing in isolation from one another.

Sun Ra was a pioneer when it came to electronic keyboards, too, but like any great band leader, chose the musicians and singers who made up his "Arkestra," well.

So while it's true after a hard day of work I'm probably not apt to throw on the majority of his work except for say, the singles collection or My Brother The Wind, Vol 2. when the mood strikes, I put on this live version and let all twenty-one minutes wash over me.

In A-Sides and B-Sides, "Space is the place," is a story about a woman who works as a flight attendant on the same flight that D.B Cooper hijacked, only it's decades later. Also I wanted to challenge myself a bit by telling a story in one location, a la Hitchcock and Rear Window or something.

There are many conspiracy theories about Cooper and his disappearing act. It's one of the more incredible unsolved mysteries out there. I'm glad I could finally solve it for everyone.

A-Sides and B-Sides is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.

June Tyson's voice is incredible, the constant chanting becoming another other-worldly instrument while the others chant behind and the drummer sings and the horns blow and squonk and screech.