“Into Outer Space” with Lucia Pamela Gulfstream Records (1969). Read the liner notes here. Read Lucia’s NY Times Obit for more.

Lucia insists Into Outer Space was recorded on the moon. Not only that, she’s not entirely happy with lunar acoustics. “The air is so thin everything sounds different up there”, she once noted in an annoyed tone.

How to explain the sound of Into Outer Space? For starters, one critic called Lucia the “missing link between Sun Ra and the Shaggs”. That’s a start, but it’s nowhere near the complete story. Lucia isn’t nearly derivative enough to be neatly pigeonholed between other artists, no matter how out-there they may be.

Approximate the following and come to your own conclusions. Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela is the sound of a ragtime band lost in another galaxy, hopelessly whacked out on alien hallucinogens, desperately trying to pull together history’s strangest concept album.

Which is exactly what Into Outer Space is — a startlingly weird concept album.

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