Lucia Pamela
Into Outer Space With Lucia Pamela (Arf! Arf! 037)

Of all the freaked-out crap I've ever heard, and I have heard a lot of wacko crap, this must certainly be the craziest thing ever recorded. Don't misunderstand me, I am not given to lavish hyperbole (okay, so there was the time I said that Johnny Galecki was the greatest actor of all time, but even so). This is like William Shatner's The Transformed Man if William Shatner had been psychotic – well, more psychotic.

Lucia Pamela was apparently an ex-Vaudevillian who got it into her mind to "record an album on the moon." This was decades after her fifteen minutes of fame had passed; sonically, the album is virtually impossible to date. Thirteen tracks of old-timey dixieland/Tin Pan Alley malarkey drenched in impossible reverb (for that authentically lunar sound, I presume), punctuated by spoken word introductions and interludes.

The lyrics go anywhere from encountering farm animals while "Walking On The Moon," doing the "Flip Flop Fly" immediately before flying to the moon, to singing the "Indian Alphabet Chant" at the Indian wedding ceremony Lucia stumbles across while on the moon.

All this might be quaint if Lucia Pamela were an accomplished performer, it might be the sort of novelty Dr. Demento specializes in. However, given the singer's ferocious nursing-home resident approach, the whole thing is enormously unsettling. It really makes you feel like you've left our planet and will never return. Not that it succeeds in transporting you to the moon, it just scares the hell out of you like nothing on this planet.

Don't miss Lucia's vision of life "In the Year 2,000!!!" (As far as I can tell, we're still on the moon, playing football.) The album closes with an announcement/warning : "Watch for Lucia Pamela's next record, coming out soon!" I know I'm not ready for that one.

Available from Arf! Arf! Records.

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Review by Kimberley Meow