The Boys From Modesto searching for a Crystal Lake
Do you remember a guy that’s been, in such an early song?
A postscript to the Record Collector piece I posted yesterday, and specifically the Grandaddy discography, is the mention of similarities in concept between David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ and Grandaddy’s ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s The Pilot’. I have to admit that this isn’t the first time this has been pointed out to me. Here’s what the magazine said:
“…Eight seconds short of nine minutes, the track’s structure and subject matter is, presumably, the basis for descriptions of Grandaddy as “the American Radiohead”, and has also drawn comparison with Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. On the track, Lytle imagines a pilot – “2000 man” – adrift without maps and plans, apparently presenting an allegory of the vague sense of loss, misplacement and anti-climax that many people found came with the new millennium. I wonder where the band’s recurrent use of space imagery comes from? “I don’t know,” admits Fairchild.”
This theme isn’t new to Grandaddy. ‘Everything Beautiful Is Far Away’ from ‘Under The Western Freeway’ deals with a stranded shuttle pilot, doomed to spend the remainder of his life in a cave on a non-specific planet, with faded photographs of his loved ones back on Earth as the only reminder of the place from whence he came.
“Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do”…Beautiful.