ALSO NOT OF THIS WORLD

My only exposure to Sun Ra prior to seeing him in person was from a cover by NRBQ of his song "Rocket Number Nine", on their first LP. It was weirder than anything on the album, and I made a mental note to check out this Sun Ra character. Several years later in New York, I happened by the annual Halloween parade that wound through Greenwich Village. After seeing outlandish costume after outlandish costume, the parade was ending, and down the street came a marching band, all dressed in purple, followed by Sun Ra, in a horse drawn carriage, wearing a purple velvet cape and one of his skull caps. It was time to dig in.

By the time I got back to the West coast, my brother, also a fan of freak flag flyers, already had a compilation of Sun Ra's early 45s and an LP. I'm here to tell you, those suckers have been gone over repeatedly for years, as has his film, Space Is the Place, and I am not one bit closer to figuring this guy out. And you can gleam just so much out of a biographical profile. At the end of the day, you just want to sit across the table from him, look him straight in the eye, and let out a "Dude. What is up?" Hot shit jazz players are a dime a dozen. Prolific and confounding hot shit jazz players are not. Especially if they have some sort of other worldly agenda that they spend half a lifetime steeped in.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~  

Video:

Space Is the Place, (the entire film) at YouTube
Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet (BBC docunentary) at YouTube
Space Is the Place (another clip) at YouTube 
Listen:
Sun Ra - Angels and Demons at Play mp3 at Destination Out
Sun Ra - the Sun Man Speaks mp3 at Now You're at Songblague 
Sun Ra - Door to the Cosmos mp3 at I'm Waking Up to... 
Sun Ra and the Myth Science Arkestra - Eve mp3 at Now You're at Songblague
Sun Ra and his Astro-Solar Infinity Arkestra -To Natures God mp3 at Avant Avant
Sun Ra and his Astro-Solar Infinity Arkestra - Lemuria mp3 at Avant Avant
Sun Ra - Omnisonicism mp3 at Lost Tones 15 plus minutes that gets progressively further out there 
Sun Ra - Intensity mp3 at Lost Tones
Spoken word:
Sun Ra - This Is the Idea of a Greater Age mp3 at Beware of the Blog 
Sun Ra - Musical Astronauts mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Sun Ra - Live, 1976 at WXPN at  UBU Web 26 cuts, spoken word with musical accompaniment 
Full LP:
Sun Ra - Lanqudity at Deepgoa Full LP streaming
Visit:
Sun Ra at Wikipedia