A Poll: Your Favorite Science Fiction Band?

I have to say Bowie; the combination of the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth and the classic album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars produce a one two pop culture punch that cannot be denied.

The fact that my first born son wears a dress has nothing to do with my choice whatsoever.

peter schilling!

Hawkwind, of course, had Michael Moorcock occasionally writing and performing with them.

I agree Yes should be included. Jon Anderson also did a solo album called Olias of Sunhillow, which is about an alien race and their journey to a new world. Mind you, his lyrics are usually incomprehensible, so you can’t be sure what he’s banging on about. He’s more on the “astral travelling” than hard sf end of the spectrum, though.

The Moody Blues did a whole album (To Our Children’s Children’s Children) which was partly Apollo stuff (it’s from 1969) and more elegiac cosmic-fantasy.

More modern is Muse. Many of their lyrics are about relationships but they do use a fair number of sf-type metaphors and titles: Supermassive Black Hole, Space Dementia, Citizen Erased, Black Holes and Revelations, Origins of Symmetry &c.

from Starlight:

Far away
This ship is taking me far away
Far away from my memories
Of the people who care if I live or die

The starlight
I will be chasing your starlight
Until the end of my life
I don’t know if it’s worth it anymore

King Crimson (early stuff)
John Williams (the Star Wars soundtracks)

i don’t know if you would recognize buckethead as a sci-fi composer, but i would. in particular his “giant robot” and “monsters and robots” albums, as they are kind of pretty much created around pulp sci-fi and horror.

after that, i would put nine inch nail’s “year zero” up for the offering.

I didn’t mention it before, but my official vote goes to BOC for that single amazing song “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.” Simply awesome.

If I could alter the question to be “Best Artist,” I’d have to say Yoko Kanno, the musician/singer behind the sound of Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell. She’s done a great deal of soundtrack work on Japanese SF/Fantasy movies and anime. You can find her CDs at Amazon and elsewhere. Get ’em, listen to ’em. You won’t be sorry you did.

I ran across the old “Wild Boys” video by Duran Duran yesterday and it reminded me of this post. That was some state-of-the-art stuff work then, and based on a science fiction book to boot…

And looking back at this post I think of all the Klingon bands. That’s pretty hard core science fiction.

you can’t go past AT THE DRIVE IN for hard sci fi;
ONE ARMED SCISSOR
Yes this is a campaign,
slithered entrails
in the cargo bay
Neutered is the vastness
Hallow vacuum check the
oxygen tanks.
They hibernate
but have they kissed the ground
pucker up and kiss the asphalt now
Tease this amputation
splintered larynx
it has access now

cut Away, cut Away
Send transmission
from the one-armed scissor
cut away, cut away

Banked on memory.
Mummified circuitry,
Skin graft, machinery,
Sputnik sickles found in the seats

Self-destruct sequence
this station is non-operational
Species growing
Bubbles in an IV loitering

Unknown origin
Is this the comfort of being afraid?
Solar eclipsed
Black out the vultures
as they wait…….

I mean come on, parts of it are clearly about the death star

Hawkwind Anyone???

What about PIXIES? They got a couple of sci-fi songs.