BOC: Am I alone in thinking this? (was revamped set)

M R Godwin hssmrg at BATH.AC.UK
Fri May 1 12:15:54 EDT 1998


On Fri, 1 May 1998, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
>      You haven't even seen the evil creation I built a few years ago:
> lyrics to my shameless BOC-rip-off song (alas, never recorded because it
> _was_ a sprawling epic) based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of
> Space".
>
>      I called it, "The Colour Out of Space".

Talk about shameless rips-off! I too have a song called
"Color Out of Space"! (my copy of Lovecraft was a US edition).

I recorded it in a local 4-track studio in 1987, with a band called (you
guessed it) Color Out of Space. The band fell apart soon after, but we
have got back together once or twice for reunion gigs. I believe the track
will soon be circulating in a tape from Terrence Marks of the Robyn
Hitchcock list.

Incidentally, there is currently a band in NYC which has put out an album
of the same name..

Here's the lyric, anyway. You can tick off the Lovecraft words and
references easily, but where does the spoken introduction come from?

COLOR OUT OF SPACE by Mike Godwin

(spoken) I'm convinced that by some strange trick of chance, this creature
_does_ exist. And I'm prepared to stake my reputation on it!

The oyster boys are staring through the gambrel window-panes
And when they spy batrachian girls they howl a mad refrain
You'll see them in eldritch depths of harbours made insane
And as they walk the streets at night you'll see in shades of pain

The Color Out of Space, the Shadow Out of Time
The Shadow Over Innsmouth where sunken church-bells chime

Down in the darkest cellar the painter's disappeared
He's left behind some canvases that seem a little weird
The monster's almost real as he treads a secret path
But what's this bloodstained piece of card? It's the monster's photograph!

And now the mad god's waking and the seas are all astir
Cyclopean structures rise above the waves and blur
The angles are unnatural, the rugose cones ascend
And in the Necronomicon you'll once more comprehend

The Color Out of Space etc.

- Mike G.



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