The Night Sky: Unfunky UFO

Parliament: Unfunky UFO

[purchase]

“Objects, natural or artificial, real or imagined…” When I posted this week’s theme, I implied that songs about UFOs were fine, but nobody took the bait. Instead, we stuck to natural celestial objects. It made for a great week, but here’s a little taste of what might have been.

When Parliament went out on their 1976 tour for the album Mothership Connection, they created a spectacle. Each show opened with a spaceship landing on stage. A hatch opened, and the band in their outrageous costumes emerge from a cloud of dry ice. I never saw any of these shows, but I heard about them later, and I have seen some pictures. Unfunky UFO could have been their theme song. In the lyric, grooveless aliens from a planet that is dying of unfunkiness come to earth in search of a life-saving groove. Judging from the sound, I would say that they found what they were seeking.