“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.

(19 votes, average: 3.79 out of 5)

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Edgar Allan Poe keeps you up at night.

(19 votes, average: 3.58 out of 5)

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Larry Corner & Sis.   A brother-sister act out of Pennsylvania.   He plays the accordian.

(16 votes, average: 2.75 out of 5)

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Why superimpose your head coming out of a woman’s nostril?!

(23 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Outsider musical hero Ron Schmeck. “Easy Living The American Way” featuring my personal favorite “I’m Proud to Own a Mobile Home”. Maybe some day I really will.

(15 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)

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From Show and Tell Records.   Check out Will’s many rad DIY covers here!

(17 votes, average: 2.47 out of 5)

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Garry Hunter and Rusty.

(14 votes, average: 1.93 out of 5)

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“When I found your website I thought I’d died and gone to my own personal heaven, which is an endless street of charity shops full of the most amazing record covers.   I have to share one of my own collection with you which I purchased in Swansea Town, South Wales and is an equally good record as the cover suggests.   All the best, Major Lloyd (retired)”

(13 votes, average: 1.77 out of 5)

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Oh the irony.   I’m fascinated by this kind of faith-inspiring story put to vinyl and wonder if people found comfort in knowing that a crippled little girl found “an” answer (not however “the” answer) through prayer. I don’t know what the question was (but I’d guess “why me?”).

(30 votes, average: 3.23 out of 5)

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