Klaatu
Entry updated 21 August 2012. Tagged: Music.
Canadian pop band, most famous for their song "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft", on the album 3:47 EST (1976), which was notably covered by the Carpenters. More interesting is the band's second release, Hope (1977), a concept album about humanity's near-future encounter with the last survivor of the ancient Venusian "Politzanian" empire. After providing a rapid tour of the cosmos (track 3 is called "Around the Universe in Eighty Days") this survivor dies, but not before entrusting the secret of the universe which turns out, rather feebly, to be "Hope". Musically, it is pleasant if unchallenging fare. Several other albums followed, one (Magentalane, 1981) with considerable sf content, but commercial success eluded the band and they broke up in 1982. The group's name is derived, of course, from the name of the alien visitor in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Beatlesque sound of the group's music, the band members' relative publicity-shyness and the fact that Ringo Starr's solo album Goodnight Vienna (1974) features cover art depicting Starr emerging from a spaceship dressed as Klaatu, lead to the Urban Legend that the group was actually a pseudonymous reformation of the Beatles. This, they were not. [AR]
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