There is a well-known song that never existed. More so, millions of people assumed it exists, desired to listen to it, expected to listen to it, and even came really, really close to listening to the very song - but they could not do it. Because the song does not exist.
And this was one of the biggest cultural disappointments of Generation X. at least in Ol' Europe, the UK, and a few other places.
And chances are, if you meet someone of that generation, and mention this specific topic, they will say "man, I was really looking forward to listening to this song, and then i was so disappointed when it did not happen".
Nut let's move back in time at first.
It's 1996, I was 15 years old, kneeling in front of my family's VHS recorder and semi-anxiously trying to program it to record a regular show aired by MTV.
What had happened?
My generation was still highly critical of commercialism (probably a 60s counterculture legacy), and that includes advertising, and especially radio / tv ads. We would not get swooned by their hollow premises!
But at the same time, advertising spots could become religion. Some companies were clever, and they knew they could hit at the youth by including stuff that our parent generation hated or which was simply too weird for them: punk rock, sci-fi/nerd references, video game stuff, "spicy" topics, or just general weirdness.
These ads then became the talk of the town, on the schoolyards, on the streets...
Levi's scored several times with this approach. And they just did it once more.
Watching tv, one could see a man in glowing / unreal colors, living in what looked like a suburban settlement on the surface of another planet. There were floating fish bubbles, burning spheres, and other oddities. A transmission comes in on a wristwatch.
Then an interstellar object approaches, the man runs outside, the craft touches down - it looks a bit like a mix between an egg and an electric iron.
The "egg" starts to glow, and out comes an alien girl, with glossy, silvery skin, wearing Levi's jeans (of course), taking a walk through the suburban neighborhood, handing our man her interstellar car keys (likely so that he could properly park the vessel), then walking off into the purple landscape and we can see our own planet, earth, is visible in the night (?) sky.
Dude! What the flying fudge?
This amount of space-surrealism was destined to touch our generation's nerves.
But wait! There's more.
Levi's always made sure to not just do killer ads, but to include killer tracks in these ads, too. (A later one was "Flat Beat" by Flat Eric aka Mr. Oizo).
And this time... well how to describe it?
Technically, it was actually close to the happy hardcore by the likes of The Prodigy or other UK acts at that time.
Sped up breakbeats, techno synths, high pitched chanting about a "spaceman"...
Still, it was more than just these technical details.
As a producer / label manager / self-proclaimed music "journalist", I must have listened to hundreds of thousands of songs and tracks in my life.
Yet, this is one of the very few songs that touched me more than anything else I heard.
I felt so emotionally high, as if I've really been lifting off to a utopian planet.
And I was not the only one. *Everyone* started to talk about this song. The visual surreality faded completely into the background (poor video directors!).
Everyone wanted to know what this song was. Who made it? Where could one listen to it? Buy it? Enjoy it, embrace it?
Well, the problem was. Due to it being an ad, the sound could only really be heard for half a minute (if we omit intro and outro).
So one could not just tape the ad and copy it (which would have been illegal anyway!).
The *full* song was just not there.
But soon, signals of hope emerged. The song was by a band called Babylon Zoo and its name was "Spaceman". And, more than that: It would be released as a single!
Talking about "great expectations".
So, the release came, but as it was a UK release, and in 1996, you more or less had to physically walk to a (local) shop if you wanted to buy music, the CD release was not immediately available over here in Ol' Germany.
MTV had a show where they talked about the UK Charts, *and* I knew that "spaceman" hit #1 in these very Charts, *and* that they would play it all full length in this show.
But the show was at nighttime, there was only one main tv and VHS recorder. And my family was likely occupying the living room at that time, so I could not watch it while it aired.
The only option was to set up the VHS recorder.
And I did. And then I played the tape at the next good opportunity.
Talking about "great expectations", eh? The anticipation-anxiety before childhood X-Mas felt like nothing, compared to this!
So, the video started to play, the song I knew from the ad started to play...
And then it slowed down. Went from "UK techno electro happy hardcore" to... something like an indie / sludge / grunge rock band.
Which was perfectly fine with me! Because I loved punk and alternative rock and everything as much as I loved techno and rave music.
So after this "advertising intro", the actual (rock) song started to play. The first verses already felt killer. and it built bigger and bigger from there, every part felt so epic; until the chorus came, now with real guitars and drums and actual singing and... oh my god, I was lifting off to planet utopia again!
This euphoria, this ecstasy, that I felt in this moment is still etched into my memory, like a glowing holographic tattoo in my mind... staying with me forever.
I was happy.
But shortly afterwards. I noticed that, this time, I was the only one. Or rather, one of the few.
Because most people reacted differently to the song's release: they went furious and angry!
It seems they expected to get a "full length" electronic version of it, similar to the sounds of the ad. Now they felt like they had been cheated, having been handed a rock song instead.
They felt that the actual song by Babylon Zoo was a completely different song to the 20 seconds of electric joy in the original Levi's ad.
I never quite understood that. Does it really matter if a song has guitars, or synths, if a song / track is techno, or grunge? Who cares?
When the Rolling Stones did a ballad on a piano no-one said "man, I surely wish they had used their trademark fuzz guitars on this one".
So why all this fuzz now?
Either way, this little "incident" or accidental mix-up completely derailed the promising career of the band, and their frontman, called "Jas Mann".
Because, with all the hype and hysteria surrounding the ad, Babylon Zoo were for one short moment the biggest band in the world (or at least in the UK, Ol' Europe, and a few other places).
It was such a huge hit and cultural phenomena.
But the backlash because they released this "rock version" instead of the promised "actual song" really hit them hard.
The follow-up single, "Animal Army", despite having a much more expensive music video and promotion, completely bombed compared to "Spaceman". The third single of their album "The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes", did not even get a proper release if I recall correctly (a strange, almost Junglistic remix ran on MTV at night a few times - but really only a few times).
And the second album they did - "King Kong Groover" - completely went into nirvana, no-one paid attention anymore.
The band disbanded too, and despite some sightings here and there, Jas Mann never returned to music production - going into the movie production business instead.
And if you look up "Spaceman" on youtube, discogs, or any other site, you will still see the comments... "man, i was so eager to hear the *real version* of spaceman... and then they released this crap rock song instead... it was so annoying...!"
And nowadays, even I have to agree - well, at least to a tiny percent, perhaps.
I loved 'rock version spaceman', but it 'might have been nice' to actually have a full length version of 'happy hardcore spaceman'.
But it never existed.
If you go to some music sites, you will see that in the decades after the original release, plenty of amateur producers tried to "recreate" this imaginary song. Usually by cutting the ad-version into tiny parts and looping them, creating a longer effect, or "pitching and speeding up" some edits of the rock-spaceman.
Nut all of this does not sound like the real thing.
Because it "never existed".
So this was a tale of a band that terminated too early, just because of an error in public perception. A tale of my generation, and a tale of one or more lonely spacemen - one lonely spaceman flying up, up, high above in the skies - and another one, down on earth, in a suburban living room in 1996, kneeling in front of a magic and mystic VHS recorder.
Further Links:
Levi's Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-ntRAV4lg
Actual Spaceman Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCbAEkfXSDE
Animal Army: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJa1NCItbX8
Band Info: https://www.discogs.com/de/artist/50264-Babylon-Zoo
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceman_(Babylon_Zoo_song)
