Monday, September 19, 2011

The Martian Hop

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And speaking of music... after I put the Onion article about Springsteen's fake Mars album on my blog, I got a mild barrage of emails filled with space-themed songs, not the least humorous of which was The Martian Hop. How did I miss this? The song begins with the unlikely message:
We have just discovered an important note from space
The Martians plan to throw a dance for all the human race


As alien conspiracy theories go, it's the most benign extra-terrestrial intention for humanity, but by far the worst-dressed.


Rocky Sharpe & the Replays (1980)

WARNING: This is two minutes of your life you will never have back again, and once you see it, it cannot be UNSEEN. Watch at your own risk and understand you will have a certain amount of brain cells commit suicide.

Horrifically, this wasn't just early 1980s tragedy. This version by Rocky Sharpe and The Replays was a cover tune of an earlier Doo-Wop era song by The Ran-Dells.


The Ran-Dells (1963)

The sound effects in the original are particularly amusing. Papa ooh mir mir papa ooh mir mir papa ooh mir mir papa ooh mir mir! Catchy, huh? They couldn't name a single dance the Martians couldn't do. So this was what American teenagers imagined in 1963? Awesome. I'm impressed. I can't do the twis or the locomotion. I'm not even sure how.

The Martian Hop
Perhaps it's time for another remake.

I wouldn't put this one past Lady Gaga.