Monday, November 17, 2008 Terrible Spaceship

Stressed out by several weeks of 10-12 hour days at the office, I had trouble sleeping last Wednesday night. I wandered over to the large stack of unread books piling up in the other room and pulled out one at random. War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches is a collection of short stories detailing the activities of various historical personages during H.G. Welles' Martian invasion. I finished a couple of entertaining tales - featuring H.P. Lovecraft, Emily Dickinson, and the Texas Rangers (albeit not together) - before drifting off to sleep.

The very next morning, on the drive in to what would be another long day at work, I was listening to Eight Forty-Eight on WBEZ and heard this:

A Chicago synthpop band whose music is inspired by and heavily samples from the Mercury Theater version of The War of the Worlds! And they'd be on the bill at Martyr's that very weekend! Coincidence? Or a subtle sign from some alien intellect, vast, cool and unsympathetic?

I really tried to make the show. Really. But the long week at work had killed me, and what little energy I had left over was spent attending a Red Cross seminar I had signed up for long before. It sucks to be old.

At the least I can console myself with the live footage from the band's MySpace page and by grabbing the entire Terrible Spaceship album free from last.fm. And now you can, too.

Terrible Spaceship at last.fm