Rockers as Aliens

Today I wandered across bunch of Daft Punk music videos on YouTube.

I later confirmed my suspicion that the videos were from Interstella 5555, Daft Punk's 2003 anime movie.

The plot of the film revolves around a group of four rockers from an alien planet who are abducted, brainwashed and dropped on earth to profit an evil and mysterious man in a tux.

As a somewhat embarassingly devoted fan of P-Funk, I was immediately reminded of the cosmic and indecipherable mythology of that group (it involves, among other things, secrets of Funk hidden amongst the pyramid until a time when Earth would become more groovy).

Of course, it takes three to make a pattern, so I racked my brain until I remembered David Bowie (of course!), specifically The Man Who Fell to Earth.

The plot of 1976 movie, which the makers of Interstella 5555 have certainly seen, revolves around an alien who comes to Earth to save his family from a drought on their planet but becomes distracted by Earthly treasures.

Whenever I meet a girl who loves Labyrinth, I wait until she grows in to a woman and then I tell her to watch The Man Who Fell to Earth (I may have mentioned this once before.)

Why this connection between rockers and aliens?

Music is a subtle way to introduce us to another world, one that can emerge from a single creator and absorb us in a way that goes beyond the limits of, say, a two-hour movie. It's why the original Walkman became so popular - our own private soundtracks created our own private worlds, shared only with their creators.

Maybe being able to express a coherent vision of a world this way lets musicians understand how different they are from the people around them. These are not exactly The Pippettes we're talking about. P-Funk, Daft Punk and David Bowie are all weird enough to be from another planet. Maybe they're just letting us know that they understand that, too.