Caught in the Carousel

Glen Phillips

By Alex Green

"Treading the soil of the moon, palpitating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra—these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known."
—Vladimir Nabokov

"I'm into outer space, I think it's just fantastic…"
—The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy
"Southern Mark Smith"

Glen Phillips

Aside from being a classic pop song, David Bowie's "Space Oddity" manages to eerily penetrate the layers of loneliness and isolation of outer space. While the Thin White Duke's end-of-the-line lullaby reports a haunting interstellar rally between Ground Control and the doomed astronaut Major Tom, in the process it also reveals the unbearable solitude that every space explorer must face.

How good is "Space Oddity?" It's so good that in 1983 the German pop singer Peter Schilling scored a hit with the big-chorused "Major Tom (Coming Home)," a cascading number that effortlessly piggybacked Bowie's track and re-captured that aforementioned loneliness and isolation in one big new wave flurry. But aside from Schilling's sonic befriending, there have been very few songs or albums about outer space. Of the former, of course there's Elton John's "Rocket Man," or Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'" and of the latter, Brian and Roger Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks or The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, but for the most part, outer space and pop music haven't dined together on a regular basis. Which is a pity, by the way, because they make excellent bedfellows. Think of The Beatles' "Across The Universe" or Ash's "Girl From Mars" or Scruffy The Cat's "Moons Of Jupiter"—there's something about the vastness of the Cosmos—and conversely, the frustratingly finite nature of the earth—that, in the context of a pop song, is both profound and poignant.

Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips is quite familiar with the known world, having toured it throughout the '90s with his band Toad The Wet Sprocket. But it's the unknown world that seems to be on the Santa Barbara singer/songwriter's mind lately and his new E.P. Secrets of The New Explorers is a testament to his ongoing intellectual curiosity about space travel.

Recorded over a five-day period with friend and collaborator John Askew, Secrets Of The New Explorers is a six-song mediation about the immensity of the universe, private space travel and cosmic radiation poisoning. While Phillips' chosen subject matter may not be found in your typical pop song of 2008—it's hard to imagine The Hills closing with a number about Cepheid variables in the Virgo Cluster—Phillips' focus and interest in space and space exploration give each of the six tracks a melodic, sometimes even haunting resonance. "They'll Find Me" is a lucubrative mid-orbit reflection; the rock and sway of "Return To Me" conjures the tomb-like quietude of outer space through a revealing inner monologue of a lost astronaut ("The heavens are my kingdom/The galaxies my home"); "The Spirit Of Shackleton" shimmers with bravery and resolve and "Solar Flare" has all the spare buoyancy of Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia," but while the latter is all about coming together with a girl, the former is all about getting torn apart by the universe.

Two very different things, indeed.

At the end of his three month Spring tour, which took him from Boston all the way back home to Santa Barbara, Phillips sat down with Caught In The Carousel and not only gave us two top ten lists, he spoke with us briefly about Secrets Of The New Explorers:

Glen Phillips' Consummate Top Ten Favorite Outer Space Films

Hmm. Not as easy as "favorite sc-fi". For instance, I can't say Blade Runner, 'cause it all happens on Earth.....hmm. It also rules out Starman, Cocoon, Buckaroo Bonzai, the Iron Giant, the Matrix, and maybe Close Encounters. I also can't do "Battlestar Galactica" or "Firefly", as they aren't movies (but I can at least cheat with the latter).

1. Galaxy Quest
2. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Actually a pretty mediocre movie. The books, though, were the center of my life for years)
3. Star Wars (the original trilogy—can that count as one?)
4. 2001
5. Pitch Black
6. Serenity (well...really "Firefly." Forgive me)
7. Sunshine
8. Dune
9. Alien/Aliens
10. Contact

Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips' Consummate Top Ten Favorite Facts About Outer Space

1. It's endless. When they pointed the Hubble at the darkest, emptiest spot in the sky it captured an image of a vast field of thousands of galaxies.
2. I love that distance is measured in time. Just saying "light years" makes me happy. The fact that there are nebulae 100s of light years wide is frightening and wonderful.
3. No one can hear you scream.
4. Jupiter is a slushee, or at least I want it to be. Great Red Spot has been churning for about 200-300 years.
5. I was just sent an email telling me I should get out of California because Santa Barbara will be incinerated by an asteroid in 2024. It was not one of my astrophysicist friends, so I'm not worrying (yet).
6. Supernova 2005ap, discovered last November, was an explosion 300 times greater than any supernova ever seen. It was 4.7 billion light years away.
7. A light year is 5,878,625,373,183.61 mi.
8. There's too much stuff out there—the mass of the universe is greater than the mass of detectable stuff in it. The leading solution to the conundrum is dark energy (75%) and matter (25%)—which has gravitational pull but does not react to electromagnetic radiation.
9. Black holes suck.
10. By the time an astronaut reached Mars, 50% of his/her DNA would be sliced apart by radiation. Long-range spacecrafts will likely be fitted with a small radiation-resistant safety bunker to hide in during solar flare blasts or other unpleasant space weather.

Glen Phillips

Glen Phillips talks to Caught In The Carousel about Secrets Of The New Explorers:

Caught In The Carousel: The subject of outer space in popular music often evokes a sense of loneliness—Bowie's Major Tom, for example, seems to be drifting away all alone. What is it about space travel that summons this kind of poignancy?

Glen Phillips: Well...it's just that lonely out there. I feel isolated when my kids are at school and my wife is at work. I think I'd go a little crazy if it was just me, a little aluminum and Kevlar, and a vast empty expanse of instant death. Our atmosphere is paper thin, and it's the only place we can survive. Space is a reminder of how fragile we are.

CITC: For you, what are some of the most intriguing elements about space travel?

GP: I'm mostly interested in the questions that scientists have to ask to make it possible. Putting a flag on a planet doesn't excite me, but getting the flag there is one of the most fascinating things I can imagine.

CITC: How did you find the experience of recording six songs that were so thematically linked?

GP: It was superfun. The characters made themselves apparent almost immediately, and there were a few settings I knew I had to use: Bigelow's inflatable space stations and dream of contacting alien life, a Branson/Allen hybrid wooing a woman in zero-g, and a bored, horny space elevator operator.....it all just fell into place.

CITC: One thing about Shackleton, who you evoke on "The Spirit of Shackleton," is that after his almost fateful, yet nevertheless disastrous journey to Antarctica, many of his men returned to the region where they almost perished. What is it about the spirit of the explorer that is so intrepid and inextinguishable? And do you think it sometimes overrides good sense?

GP: Shackleton did everything right, if you just count survivors. He was also insanely lucky. Part of what makes that story so incredible is just the dumb luck factor, combined with a heroic will to live. Not all of them did, of course (Scott, for instance). I also like Shackleton because he wasn't there to exploit the natives. The dark underbelly of most earthly exploration is slavery and syphilis. That's one of the great things about space exploration—no people to exploit.

CITC: What are the secrets you speak of in the title of the album? What secrets do the new explorers hold that the old ones may have lacked?

GP: The secrets are always the same. Lust, greed, irrational dreams of cities of gold...people are pretty consistent that way.

CITC: "Solar Flare" has received a stamp of approval from NASA—that may not seem like a very rock and roll moment on paper, but it's just about the coolest thing I've heard in a long time. How did you feel when Harlan Spence confessed to being a fan?

GP: I was over the moon, so to speak. I almost got to meet him at Goddard Space Center, but he wasn't well. I did get to see the technicians install his solar flare detector on the LRO spacecraft, though. I feel like my dad would have been particularly proud of me for this record. He was a physicist, and getting to talk to these brilliant scientists at NASA reminds me of him. I love people who have the capacity for intense fascination, and who actively expand their base of knowledge in order to explore and broaden their interests. The people at NASA are in love with their work—I got to spend about 6 hours asking what I'm sure were bonehead questions, and they were happy to educate me all day long. It was one of the best days of my life.

CITC: Was it hard to locate the melodies for the subject matter?

GP: No. They just kind of popped up.

CITC: In 1989 Toad The Wet Sprocket did an acoustic set on my radio show in Moraga, California. You guys did "Way Away" "Liars" and a cover of "I Walk The Earth." We were both kids—I was 19 at the time, and you were 18. I remember being impressed by how articulate and intelligent you were—if you could go back in time and tell that kid anything, what would it be?

GP: I'm sure I've made whatever mistakes I've needed to make. I'd probably tell him to invest in tech and get out before the crash.

Glen Philips Discography:

(Solo)
Secrets Of The New Explorers, 2008
Mr. Lemons, 2006
Unlucky 7, 2006
Winter Pays For Summer, 2005
Ghosts of the Abyss, 2003
Abulum, 2001

(With Toad The Wet Sprocket)
Welcome Home: Live At The Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara 1992, 2005
P.S.: A Toad Retrospective, 1999
Coil, 1997
In Light Syrup, 1995
Dulcinea, 1995
Fear, 1991
Pale. 1990
Bread And Circus, 1989

Internet
http://www.myspace.com/glenphillips
www.glenphillips.com

Secrets Of The New Explorers is out now on Umami.