I thought I was going to see UFOs in Seattle, circling low over the various mountain ranges, dropping off or picking up Bigfoot on a zorbing mission. But I never did.

I guess it makes sense, in retrospect, that they not only do appear in Los Angeles, they’re thicker n flies on wine. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, you should talk to the fruitbat.

Anyhoo, one of these here Flying Saucers (so-called, though actually they come in many shapes and sizes - common designs being film cannisters, flying spliffs, cellular phones, mp3 players, titanium laptops, compact discs and dildos, all of which are mainly driven by movie stars or music producers) did accost me as I traversed Elysian Park one twilit eve. The pilot, an up-and-coming young producer from the Horsehead Nebula, had somehow heard I was from Neptune, and kept a blog. They wanted a review.

I’m going to do them one better.

The errant spin of a musical planet has been corrected, if not for the ages then at least for the now. A shining knight has ventured into the dangerous wastes of conceptual no-man’s-land and returned with a cultural artifact. A wyrmwhole has been drawn between distant plateaus: the garage (basement, bedroom, low-rent guerilla-style home-studio assemblage) and the Phatty Spread of the celebro-core jetset; the DIY and the do-it-for-me; the 70s, the 90s and the Blanks (for we are truly in the throes of the Blank generation); a wyrmwhole in which irony, post-irony, and a certain timorous sincerity collide like muons in a particle-accelerator; the connective tissue nano-braided from strands of the (collective) creative will and a hearty “This rocks!”

The knight? Jasper Johns.

The artifact?

“Jasper Johns Plays The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.”

Every part on every instrument is performed by Jasper himself. Many of the instruments are toys or household objects. Some are “actual” guitars. Some are kazoos. This is a note-for-note remake in which a true heartfelt appreciation for the original artifact is demonstrably apparent, and in which also a genuinely rebel spirit howls and gripes and mutters and yawps, then swiffles away to lounge in a state of ambient hysteria until it’s time for the next round of eggregiously vari-speeded vocal overdubs, oohs and aahs and “Suffragette City! Quite alright…”s. Joy and devotion attend every homegrown note.

And now you yourself may dig the word and decide for yourself if Jasper is the Nazz or just Jiving Us That He Is Voodoo:

download “Jasper Johns Plays The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars”  

…for more information please inspect: Jasper on Murdochspace