EVERY GENRE PROJECT - September 26 - Space Age Pop
Genre of the Day - Space Age Pop
Album of the Day - Mother Earth’s Plantasia by Mort Garson (1976)
In spite of the nuclear specter besetting America’s anxieties, an eagle-eyed march towards economic prosperity and technological advancement ultimately characterized the American 1950s. If jets could race the growing middle class over to Hawai’i or even more far-flung locales, surely space might be next. That other continents and space are the two dominant themes of exotica music, a parallel genre I previously covered, is no coincidence: it reflects the unfettered expeditionary imagination of the Space Age, a brief bubble of astronautical aspirations that quietly ended with Apollo 17’s final exploration of the moon in 1972. Space age pop musically immortalizes those times of endless possibilities and upwards, heaven-bound movements.
Space age pop’s origins lie in real-time progressions in music technology as much as its visions see forth to more fantastical innovations. The 1950s saw leaps forward in recording and sound technology such as reel-to-reel audio tape recording and more sophisticated amplifiers; commercially, these improvements were defined by home players and records that wore the glamorous word “high-fidelity.” The home listening experience was now relatively up-to-par with that of going to a concert, so composers’ focuses turned towards this market. It’s a curious contrast that a turn towards the domestic musical experience would engender music that was so starry-eyed and far-off, but it spoke to technology’s growing integration with people’s personal lives and imaginations.
In the 1950s, space age pop was synonymous with lounge music, a form of light, easy listening jazz that is also commonly referred to as bachelor pad music. Composers like Les Baxter on 1958’s Space Escapade vividly imagined alien adventures through zippy strings and Débussy-esque piano yearning for the cosmos. The catalyst to space age pop defining its era, though, was the rise of synthesizers. Robert Moog’s family name could’ve easily belonged to a Star Trek alien race, and fits his most important contribution to music perfectly. The Moog synthesizer was the first such machine on the market in 1964. To say it was commercially available is a bit misleading, as the machine was massive with its dozens of module knobs. That size, though, afforded a massive array of never-before-accessed sounds. As rockets bounded into the sky and eventually met with the Moon, earth-bound musicians hitched a ride via sonic potentialities, creating future-probing melodies with the Moog’s power and making space age pop a trailblazing genre in electronic expressions. By the late ‘70s, humans had stopped going to space and space disco briefly filled that gap of astronomical yearning in a new musical context, but space age pop has persisted long past the space age. It saw a rise in popularity in the 1990s as a new generation uncovered the strangeness of fifties optimism.
The conquest of space implies the possibility of terraforming other planets in the image of earthly verdancy. House plants, then, are a start. It is a little miracle that we can pluck a plant from any part of the world and make it flourish, provided your thumb is sufficiently green. Mort Garson was the producer of “Our Day Will Come,” a defining 1962 hit with a cosmically optimistic skew: “Our dreams have magic because / We'll always stay / In love this way / Our day will come.” He eventually turned his talents towards visionary personal Mooging whims, and 1976’s Mother Earth’s Plantasia is a stroke of creative genius, even if its exclusive marketing strategy relegated it exclusively to cult classic status. The album was intended to aid houseplants’ growth, and was fittingly only available for purchase at one chic plant store on Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue. A part of me pines for an LA so whimsical. Less TikToking, more frustratingly esoteric music marketing, please.
Plants may not be able (for now) to express their appreciation of this music, so I guess I’ll have to try my best to photosynthesize my listening experience into my own flowery language. The title track blooms first, opening with fluttering, dazzling softness before thicker blasts of sound zoom into view, moving with the grace of a waltz but with an arresting robotic-meets-spectral beauty thanks to the liquidity of the Moog. “Symphony for a Spider Plant” is rather baroque, as spindly and intricate as the narrow fronds of the titular plant. “Baby’s Tear Blues” boasts excellent, though mechanized and thereby a bit limited, bass movement and funk overtones; the rhythmic wealth driving “Ode to an African Violet” seems a visionary foreshadowing of techno. “You Don’t Have to Walk a Begonia” seems a tongue-in-cheek parody of the sleek yet gorgeous commercial jingles of the ‘50s, showing how space age pop was already something of a nostalgic endeavor also reflected in the bossa nova-tinged cosmopolitan shuffle of “Swingin' Spathipyllums.” To reference such an array of classical and modern popular sounds utilizing only the Moog is a truly astounding feat. The adventurous, decaying synths of “Music to Soothe the Savage Snake Plant” promises an entire universe of electronic musical exploration, that may one day be played to hitherto undiscovered alien flora.
