Out of the Blue

I was staindin' in the jungle
I was feelin' alright
I was wanderin' in the darkness
In the middle of the night
The moon began to shine
I saw a clearing ahead
But what's that goin' on
I think I'm out of my head

Chooka chooka hoo la ley
Looka looka koo la ley

A hundred animals were
Gathered round this night
And they were singin' out
A lovely song under
The pale moonlight

mmhmm, mmhmm

I stood and stared for quite a while
Then a lion sang to me and smiled
'Come and join us if you so desire

Chooka chooka hoo la ley
Looka looka koo la ley

I said now please explain
The meaning of this song you sing.

mmhmm, mmhmm

Wondrous is our great blue ship
That sails around the mighty sun
And joy to everyone that rides along.

Pretty soon I knew the tune
And we sat and sang under the moon
And the jungle rang
In joyful harmony

Wondrous is our great blue ship
That sails around the mighty sun
And joy to everyone that rides along.

--Jungle, Electric Light Orchestra

The seventies were the decade when the suffix "ing" was magically shortin'd. It was also the age of the rock opera and the concept album. Amongst the musical epics of this era, the great, juke-box shaped spaceship of ELO's Out of the Blue sits like a majestic monolith to the art of LP packaging.

You have two records, with lyrics on the inserts, a fold-out poster of the band, the spectacular inner sleeve graphic (pictured above), and a die-cut cardboard insert that can be assembled into a 3-D model of the ELO flying saucer; all of which I picked up for fifty cents at the thrift shop!

The songs are about journeys, adventures and visions. Someday, when the Fakiegrind sound system is no longer stationed in an unbearably moldy unfinished basement, I'll listen to the whole double album in one sitting. For now, I wanted to celebrate the funky rhythm and Jungle Book lyrics of the song cited above. Where would we be without the animals? Lonely, impoverished and on the brink of extinction, I think.

The plants and animals are our sage companions and fellow travelers on this spaceship Earth, even if we aren't always wise enough to listen to their language. They have as a native inheritance the knowledge of eternal life, an understanding that we too will share when we finally make our way, as Joni Mitchell foretells, back to the Garden.

We might tamper with genetic structures in laboratories in an attempt to bend creatures according to human needs, but our always incomplete knowledge will never be able to replace the wisdom that the earth has cultivated through slow eons, and deposited in the complex structures and relationships that support life on our planet. Let's hope and pray that we learn to respect and value our natural heritage before it is laid to waste by careless human shortsightedness.