Lucia Pamela: Walking On The Moon

This is my entry for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday.

Over the years that I have written the Radio Faux Show, I have rarely focused on one of my favorite categories of music – Outsider Artists. Recently, I posted some Holiday music by some Outsider Artists, and I think I need to do so more frequently. To fully understand Outsider music, you should do some investigating on your own. There are several great resources on the web, many due to WFMU deejay Irwin Chusid. Chusid brought the concept of Outsider music to popular culture about 30 years ago, and has since released dozens of recordings through his Songs in the Key of Z compilation series. He also published the book Songs in the Key of Z, which is definitive reading for anyone interested in understanding this wonderful world of music that falls far outside the mainstream. Some of the more famous Outsider artists have occasionally drifted into mainstream recognition. For example, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Wild Man Fischer, and Tiny Tim all found various levels of success 50 years ago on shows such as Laugh In. Daniel Johnston was recognized by dozens of his contemporaries over the last 40 years through covers of his songs and occasional gigs. The most well-known Outsider Artist in modern times is the soprano Florence Foster Jenkins (who recorded in the early 1940s) thanks to the 2016 film starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant.

For today’s No Theme Thursday post, I have selected one of the greatest Outsider Artist albums ever recorded. Into Outer Space by Lucia Pamela is a concept album that is loosely centered around a trip to the moon and the various people and animals who live there, but this is Outsider music so the concept is unimportant. What matters is that Pamela delivers these thirteen songs with more joy, earnestness, and love than almost anyone who ever recorded a song. Self-recorded in 1969, with instrumentation that includes piano, drums, accordion, clarinet, and dozens of unidentified objects for percussion, these tunes are a wonder to behold. Of all the Outsider music ever recorded, this is the best album to introduce people to the concept. Much like Outsider Art of all forms, do not listen to this if you are going to make fun of it or can’t feel empathy for people who see the world from a different point of view than you. I wasn’t there, but I can’t help but imagine that Pamela was told by a lot of people that she was crazy to record and release this music, and I can only hope that she gave them all a big “F YOU!” and followed her heart. If she hadn’t of done so, we wouldn’t have these incredible songs to enjoy.

Lucia Pamela lived an amazing life that included many more accomplishments than this album, so feel free to read about her. If everyone in the world aspired to create art with the joy that Pamela did, and understood that people like Pamela could do a better job running the world than the idiots who keep getting voted into office and the assholes who run the few corporations that control our lives, maybe we would all be a lot better off. They certainly couldn’t do a worse job.

Ha ha ho ho, I’m so full of ideas, and here’s a good one! – Lucia Pamela, “You and Your Big Ideas”

To listen to more songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

• Song of the Day (2025)