SONG: “Nine Lives to Rigel Five (a penitential Game Theory cover)”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: This is not based on scientific research; it’s a penitential cover for missing the November song. It was originally by Game Theory, but also had a nice twee cover by Gaze.
ABSTRACT: Musically speaking, I was having a pretty good 2025, but various real life things happened near the end of the year that threw things right off.
So this is a very slow cover … is there a name for this style, by the way? A kind of Americana, the reverb-heavy dream pop that looks back to whatever was going on after rock and roll but before the British Invasion, but also looks back to the bands that looked back? It seems like a lot of the end-title music for the final season of Twin Peaks did this thing, and so does Cigarettes After Sex (but prettier). Gotta have a reverbed tambourine on the fours…. Anyway, this is very slow cover of a twee cover from the 90s of a power-pop song from the 80s, when there was a veritable Golden Age of songs about science and science fiction, even though that was still the domain of nerds, and nerds were not yet entirely cool. They were the inverse of cool – so still operating on a cool axis, but in unexpected ways.
Rigel Five, or Rigel V, would be the fifth planet orbiting Rigel, a star that makes the left foot of Orion. Rigel V is a location in the original Star Trek series. The song is not exactly fan-rock, since it’s not really referencing much about the old episode. “Nine Lives to Rigel V” is I think a reference to how long it would take to get there at sub-light speeds, probably in cryogenic stasis of some kind. The narrator is leaving home permanently. In the original song, he’s kind of happy about it. It’s a sort of forced jollity, I think.
Anyway, there’s something brooding and meditative in there, too. Freezing void, crossing 850 light-years to land… someplace you hope is there.
I wonder if “Joan Jones” is just an alliterative name or is meant to be a reference to The Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz – an alien, the last of his kind, wandering a planet that’s not his own.
I wish I had the voice of Cowboy Junkies, at least for this. But here we are. Now it exists.
May the solstice just passed bring more balance to your life.
LYRICS
Side by side slide by space and time
The Neil Armstrong telecasts of Nineteen Sixty-Nine
Proportion distortion I saw in those shoes
And I learned a kind of ego that I doubt I’ll ever loseIt’s nine lives to Rigel Five
Nine lives to Rigel Five
And I’ve waited nine lives for Rigel Five
With nothing to say when I arriveJoan Jones proposed that we leave our homes
Like runaway gnomes in the twilight zone
They said, baby, when you’re grown it all means more
I said, let’s get out the twister game and get down on all foursIt’s nine lives to Rigel Five
Nine lives to Rigel Five
And I’ve waited nine lives for Rigel Five
With nothing to say when I arriveBR:
Well I know a problem that physics won’t resolve
A cover that acid won’t dissolve (Dm)
A place that’s just (E) too far(F), I think, for us to go(G)Now is wise to have a hope so strong
For real-time answers to real-world wrongs
Oh Susanna if you’ve got to cry for me
Send me back to Alabama with a banjo on my kneeAnd nine lives to Rigel Five
Nine lives to Rigel Five
And I’ve waited nine lives for Rigel Five
With nothing to say but go-od-bye