Songs for Pluto

The year 2006 is more than half over and Pluto is no longer a planet. Pluto was my favorite planet, a little sphere of ice doing its own thing way the fuck out there, but the news last month didn’t make me sad. Rather it made me feel empowered, like I was perched on the edge of a cultural precipice with the weight of historical significance at my back, staring into an unwritten era. 2006 is the future, we are living in the future right now. People should just start wearing space helmets all the time. It’s the turn of the century, the first chapter in future history books, and we should fucking act like it! Granted we don’t have robot bartenders or laser boots yet, but we do have those stupid Japanese robot dogs and laser eye surgery, and cell phones that can play pornography. Scientists also grew an ear on the back of a mouse, and that wasn’t even recently.

Pluto’s a rebel who the old scientists and their rules COULDN’T handle. It did what it damn well pleased. And if an incorrect assumption that multiple generations held as an objective fact their entire lives isn’t true, then a whole bunch of other things are probably bullshit too. So let’s reevaluate everything, tear some shit up. We can write our own ticket now, start something hot like a hot pocket, like naming future children ‘Sodium’ or ‘Pen,’ voting libertarian, or letting a hamburger have YOU for lunch. Dig your hands deep into the cultural goop and smear it all over the place, get yourself real dirty. Pluto it still there, kickin’ ass, but the puny rules and values of humanity have changed. Thank you Pluto for setting us free. Here are a couple of songs dedicated both to Pluto and the future, which again is right now. Set phasers on kill.

Interstellar Overdrive (original version) - Pink Floyd

The version of Interstellar Overdrive above is the first recording Pink Floyd ever made. It’s off the soundtrack to Peter Whitehead 1967 experimental documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London which was rereleased in the late 80s. It’s hard to live in a world without Syd Barrett, but let’s try to make him proud.

Livin’ Astro - Kool Keith

Kool Keith is one of the sweetest rappers of all time. A true eccentric genius, out there on the cutting edge of insanity yet far too talented and clever to drop off. This ever evolving legend is the perfect prophet to lead us over the cratered surface of the new millennium. This track is off 1999’s Black Elvis/Lost in Space. He’s got a new one out called Nogacto Rd. (which is his former alias Dr. Octagon spelled backwards), and the 4 or so tracks I’ve heard off it were all really good.