Volume 12 - Rockin' the Cosmos

 

So after 11 great albums of all original music, I created Volume 12 - Rockin' the Cosmos with one minor difference. It became a "concept" album. But it was not as if I wrote each individual song with a concept in mind. I wrote the songs like I always did, one after another and completely independent of each other. And after ten songs, like all the ones before, I decided to stop and write the lyrics. And it was then I started to realize I had a concept album in the works.

Song #1 turned out to be about an astronaut blasting off into outer space. I really didn't write the music with that in mind, but as the lyrics came into my head, and as I wrote them down, I realized this was going to be a concept album.

So Sensurround began the journey of a lone astronaut being launched into space and then getting lost "in a warping hole of time" as the lyrics explain.  And from there anything and everything was possible. Including the hallucination of a Green Lady dancing "along the edge of the wing" in song #2.

From there our space traveler laments the fact that he had been cut off from humanity In This Place as in song #3. And in song #4, his engines are dead, and he is drifting in a solar wind when he witnesses the Death of the Supermen, as he sees from his spaceship window a huge fleet of alien starships get wiped out by some unknown cosmic force.

But the alien space fleet was not the only thing affected. Our lone astronaut, being in the middle of the onslaught is somehow absorbed into the force and finds himself Merging with it in song #5.

In song #6, our protagonist realizes he is no longer what he used to be: a simple Spaceman. He is something else, with omniscient and omnipotent abilities to see everything and go anywhere.

And yet it wasn't so wonderful to him. In fact it was more Like a Curse, as he realizes in song #7 the consequences of being part of a life force that was so completely different than what he had known, that he has no ability to control its actions or the subsequent results of those actions.

And it was a realization that was most troubling in song #8. Because although this entity had the limitless power to create, its actions were almost always destructive. And considering the vast expanse of not only the galaxy, but of the universe, these actions were going to be Never Ending. 

Which meant there could be only one end result. Sooner or later this cosmic entity of which he had become a part would find its way to earth. And when it did, the fear of the consequence was a sobering thought to our protagonist. When that inevitable day occurred, he realizes in song #9 all he could say to his fellow human beings would be I'm Not the Bad Guy. 

Yet that day was years away. And after So Many Years, that day would finally arrive. But how many years had passed? So many, in fact, that the human race was hardly recognizable to our man. And thus the album ends in song #10 with that day approaching.

So even though I just listed the songs in italics above, the playlist is as follows:

Sensurround

Green Lady

In This Place

Death of the Supermen

Merging

Spaceman

Like a Curse

Never Ending

I'm Not the Bad Guy

So Many Years

Yes, this is the album I had in the right margin over the last couple of years. But the singing was so bad, I'm hoping no one listened to it. I have remade the songs now, editing a couple of them and re-singing all of them. That doesn't mean the singing is all that much better. Maybe it is a little bit. But I did eliminate that annoying saxophone track that had been on there.

And the album is available to be listened to now, posted in the right margin of this blog along with Volume 11 and my only other concept album, Volume 13, which I'll write about next.