Hi All,
My real self (Joel McKinnon) is credited with writing words and music for Planet and Sky, a cosmic love story, a rock opera recently released by the Max Wyvern Band (I insist on adding ambiguity to everything by having two personas).
Divide and Conquer, an independent music site, did an email interview and I’ll excerpt the most important question and response below. If you’re sufficiently intrigued, please listen to the album and let me know what you think. You can get it at most of the usual places, but the price to buy it is best at bandcamp:
Q: I often find musical concept albums with a narrative a little hard to follow if it’s just auditory. This is usually because the story isn’t very straightforward in how it’s told. Can you talk about the story and how it’s told in the album Planet and Sky?
A: I don't blame you a bit for finding it hard to follow. It's about as unusual a story as it gets. It's basically a love story wrapped inside a space opera, but the lovers are obviously not human. There are also, in a way, two versions of the story, only one of which - an incomplete version - is told in the lyrics. I'll describe that version first, then at least hint at the other when I discuss the podcast.
In the beginning, explorers encounter a planet where "Something is Dreaming." This is the prologue, and it's external to the love story. They have arrived at a barren, apparently lifeless planet, and discover a data stream emanating from the subsurface. Upon decoding it they discover it's the story of the life of the planet as told from the perspective of the protagonists; the planet itself (Planet), and its atmosphere (Sky). Moving into the heart of the story in "Round," the atmosphere is revealed to be a sentient female character and the planet an obtuse and narcissistic male character who believes he is alone in the universe and likes it that way. Sky seduces him and convinces him of the value of their union. The song begins with Planet singing "I'm round," and concludes with the two of them jubilantly singing together "We're round." The instrumental section in the middle is the million years when Planet considers Sky's offer to become one with her, ultimately relenting.
"Eons of Joy" is the young lust phase of their relationship with lots of confusion, big emotional swings and implicitly lots of sex :). Planet's volcanoes and earthquakes and Sky's storms and nurturing rains represent their physical interactions. Then we get into the lovey-dovey stuff as Planet sings a song about all the ways he loves Sky, "Such is Love." There's just a hint of trouble in Sky's interruption of his song in the bridge ("fail not your precious hold on me"), but he easily blows past that into the joyous crescendo. Listen carefully to Melissa's piano part in the instrumental. It's one of my favorite musical moments in the opera.
Then tragedy strikes as Sky, always the prescient one, informs Planet that she is drifting into space (as apparently happened with Mars' atmosphere billions of years past). Sky's "Planet My Love" is the capstone aria, highlighted by Rebecca Rust's cello solo, interspersed with more gorgeous piano and Melissa's sublime vocals. At the end they agree to cease to exist together, a la Romeo and Juliet. The instrumental "Empty World" follows. There are no voices as all life has left the planet. The parts of this song were originally meant to represent the five stages of grief, but it kind of departed from that. I only wrote the main theme and Melissa devised the rest of the chord changes so I've shared songwriting credit for that one. It should be noted, however, that she had a huge creative part in all of the compositions.
Finally, in "Wake Up!," the scientists - inspired by the story they've decoded - bring the planet back to life with a huge terraforming effort. Planet and Sky awaken and rejoice to be together again, at least for a little while longer. Throughout the story, the travelers - the three voices of the lifeforms that arrived on an asteroid - frame the story. They describe their interstellar journey in "Travelers," the ominous cooling of the planet in "Beautiful Life," (BTW - the tempo reduction symbolizes them getting colder and finally freezing before the resolving final note) and then their awakening from dormancy in the final tune. They have three distinct characters; Byron voices the ambitious, positive thinking first traveler, Melissa the frantic and pessimistic second traveler, and I the contented and imperturbable 'anything goes' third traveler. The sections of Wake Up! describing the terraforming effort are voiced by Byron again as the Chief Scientist.
Full interview.
Album website.