"Oh I know what the book says, I just abso-fucking-lutely refuse to curse this world with Edgar Winter burlesque. Even I know when it's going too far and I've made a disco album for crying out loud. So get on the phone and get me the choir so we can just pretend I misunderstood."
Sometimes it really just takes having a soul and a good heart to make good music, I know it sounds lame and hokey but I swear it’s true. Karen Carpenter had both. She absolutely sold the hell out of ‘Calling Occupants’ as a genuine, heartfelt welcome and a plea for peaceful coexistence with extraterrestrial life.
On the theme, I'd also recommend "Space Metal" by Star One, which is one of Arjen Anthony Lucassen's many spinoff projects. Every song on the album is inspired by a sci-fi novel or movie. If you like anthemic euro-prog-metal it's a lot of fun.
@@ImpendingRiot83 You could tell me Karen Carpenter was the sweetest lady on earth, and I'd definitely, 1000% believe you, and I wasn't even born at the time. I was born in 1993. But if you told me tomorrow, that she was the sweetest woman to have ever lived, yep, I'd totally believe you, 10,000,000% agree with you on that. Just saying.
Kind of a note to be aware of: Scientology can not really sue people for slander or libel because they would have to prove in court what they do behind closed doors. They might send people to harass or attack you or defame you, but they will not sue you for defamation or libel. I know its about a year later after this video, but worth stating.
My dad was an insatiable consumer of pulp fantasy and sci fi, he would read and reread books until they literally fell apart. There is a full set of Mission: Earth in my basement that looks almost brand new because he read them once and never touched them again. Given my dad’s high tolerance for crap writing that’s a damning indictment.
I used to take the audiobooks out of the library and my friends and I would put them on to listen to as we got high in the basement. They are hilariously bad.
He wasn’t super bad when he started out but by the 80s, when he was rich and powerful within the church. He kinda just wrote whatever the hell he wanted and no one close to him was willing to tell their messiah he was shit.
I'm mesmerized by the fact that somehow L Ron Hubbard and Edgar Winter collaborating turned into an album consisting entirely of theme songs for scientology based family sitcoms.
If you want a good laugh, look up the song "Thank You For Listening". It's a song Hubby sang himself that he ordered to be played at his funeral. It's basically him going "Fuck you I'm right" from beyond the grave over an 80's sitcom track.
@@FionavanDahl I'm more specifically talking "character who looks like an actual child/teenager, but is actually 1000 years old and probably a dragon". It's usually a Japanese trope, admittedly.
L. Ron Hubbard notoriously used to knock out his novels while tripping on speed. Many of his peers have said this, and have also admitted that that was not unusual in the early Science Fiction/Fantasy/Pulp scene. Need to make rent on Monday? Down a fistful of uppers and get to work on Tuesday, knock out a novel by Thursday, Sell it to a publisher Friday, sleep it off on the weekend, pay your rent in cash Monday, then repeat.
Cujo and the Tommyknockers specifically IIRC. There was a period in the 80's where Stephen King was doing just about anything he could get his hands on. @@leonidtimofeev1178
A friend of mine was looking into Scientology. He even tried dragging me along, but when I said no, he decided he didn't want to do it alone and decided against the whole thing entirely. I like to think L Ron Hubbard shook his fist in anger at me that day.
L. Ron snarls with his weird gravestone teeth at all critics of Scientology, because he can’t zap them out of existence with his Space Powers from beyond the grave.
First off: herculean effort, for which we are all grateful. Second, I had to look up how his book did in the 1987 Hugo awards when I saw it was against Count Zero, Orson Scott Card and Vernor Vinge. And I wasn't disappointed: out of 5 books in the running, Hubbard placed ~sixth~, behind a 'No Award' vote meaning people intentionally voted to make sure his book didn't even place.
The "No Award" is mostly used by voter's when they look at the entire block and go "You know what? Fuck this!" and decide none of the nominee's deserve a reward. So it's not that they deliberately voted "No Award" to spite Hubbard, it's more that votes for Hubbard were greatly outweighed by the number of votes for *Literally Nothing!*
If George R. R. Martin is to be believed, the audience at the Hugo Awards booed out when L. Ron Hubbard's name was called out among the list of nominees.
@@EngineerLume it’s a ranked vote, so you can easily rank the deserving works above no award, then no award, and finally rank the works that you think shouldn’t be on the ballot. Targeting specific works is definitely common when people suspect vote manipulation has taken place, but it’s not particularly common to see people throw out the whole ballot, especially in best novel, and further especially considering how legitimately popular Gibson was at the time.
I asked my mother if she knew that Edgar Winter had done an album for the Scientology guy. Her response: "No, but considering acid did Edgar Winter during the eighties, I'm not that surprised".
6:40 And remember kids, if your local record store has their Edgar Winter records between Mötley Crüe and Tom Petty then something seriously wrong has happened to their alphabetised filing system.
@@dark_fire_ice Surprisingly he never once had any allegation of sexual abuse. I don’t believe he never sexually abused anyone but nobody has ever come forward. Absolutely a strange man.
Hell, even the book covers look off. I don’t want to buy anything that could fund his estate, and knowing that he was also promoting his cult through his work poisons it further.
I was thinking about that... imagine the gear works and mechanics of the mind to read that part of the book and produce that song? talk about running that through a few filters lol
Well, I don't usually leave comments but as a former Scientologist, this one hits different. I have very distinct memories of being forced to listen to this album (along with the rest of the Scientology albums - fun fact, there's like 10 more albums of music either produced by or based on poems by L Ron). Watching this one was a real trip. Thanks man.
Sending hugs. Cuz I am sure like many former Scientology members you have some serious stories to tell. I had a run in with them as a kid, but they said I was beyond help because they couldn't get a reading on me. Of which, I was glad. The people I talked to, they creeped me out. But, I was lucky on that day...my notoriously cheep ex adoptive dad (abusive bastard) saw that price tag of their help and was like Nope, nope, nope. Lol. One of the few times I was ever grateful for him being around. So I can only imagine if my one time run in with them as a kid was bad, how it must be for someone who spent years involved in it must have felt and the crazy things that happened. So my heart goes out to all of you who have left.
My father was a science fiction specialist and wrote a SF dictionary when I was about 5. In it, there was of course a Ron Hubbard entry where he made a very sarcastic critic of the quality of the work... including the fact that Hubbard was apparently still writing and publishing after having died which made him a better Sci-Fi subject than author. Scientology people started threatening us, showing up at our flat and calling at all times of the night. It ended after my father, a very very quiet and calm man, completely lost his shit at them screaming he would bludgeon them to death if they ever came again. Looking back, I think we were really lucky we weren't living in the US, so the scientology community wasn't as powerful and interested in us as they could have been over there... Time has passed since then, so hopefully there will be no problem after this video. ^^'
@@lucasoheyze4597Kind of interesting that even with four initial commandments specifically about how to treat the deity, "Thou shalt not kill" makes the sixth slot on the original list. And here ... well ...
I don't think the ancients had a Buzzfeed understanding of what things ordered in a list meant. Instead they were more topical, first about things having to do with your relationship with God, followed by things having to do with your relationship with others. Murder is only #2 on the relationship with others, and I suspect that's because the first is about parents, making for a good authority-figure segue. I don't know about Scientology's ordering, though.
@@calmbbaer As you alluded to in your final sentence, we do have a sort of "Buzzfeed understanding" of what a list ordering means in the modern day. So it's weird for Scientology to do it.
The community college that I went to in the early 2000s had a giant Mission Earth display, complete with cardboard cut-outs and supplemental material. I think they were donated to the library by Scientology shortly after the books came out. One day, I picked up a random book and started flipping through. I immediately realized that I was first person to actually open the damn thing. I then started looking at the other books. One had some wear and tear, but easily could be considered near-mint. Two definitely had a few people pick it up (though less than one). The rest? Pristine. Let me say that again: a book series was on display at a college library for FIFTEEN YEARS and never touched. That should tell you something.
This reads like a Community bit where the Dean mistakenly gets involved with the Church of Scientology in an attempt to cut costs or to make Greendale more credible.
If I had a nickel every time a trainrecords album had an up beat song about heroin I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.
Now I'm wondering if that place still has the CCTV files of Todd doing that right outside. They're probably watching it wondering what in whatever strange planets they conjure up is going on.
To date, there has been only one OHW shorter than the song it's covering (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida) and only one Trainwreckord longer than the album it's covering (Mission Earth).
@@againstthepods4316 How on earth are they stereotyping all Asian people by saying it’s unsurprising that Todd in particular likes Joy City? Haslett is just commenting on Todd’s personal taste, which is known to everyone who’s a long time watcher of him.
@@againstthepods4316 I know he’s Asian. But acknowledging that him liking Joy City is very in line with his taste is not stereotyping all Asian people, or even just him as an Asian person. Joy City is good either way, but am I supposed to avoid it as a part Southeast Asian person because it would be “making a stereotype of myself”? You’re showing that you’re not much of a fan of Todd at all if you think saying it’s not surprising that he likes Joy City means anything other than it not being surprising that he likes Joy City. You’re honestly coming off more like a troll in trying to turn innocuous comments from long-time fans of Todd into accusations of racial stereotyping. You definitely don’t come off as an fan. But if you are, maybe don’t be so rude to other fans who aren’t doing anything wrong. I’m sure there are some fans who are, so go bother them. Either way Todd is Asian, but he’s also an Internet personality that is very candid about the things he likes. Not just on TH-cam, he’s constantly putting out tweets that give a clear view into his personal tastes and opinions on everything. His takes aren’t just his about his musical taste and the tons of adorable pictures of Amydog. You should know that if you follow him like most fans do, because his Twitter is just as much of a joy as his videos. You’re missing out if you don’t follow him there.
I think this album only proves Edgar Winter as a musical genius because I can't imagine anyone else making those horrible lyrics sound listenable in the least.
This is late, but westerners using African polyrhythms goes way back to the early 70s in the Krautrock scene with bands like Embryo and Amon Duul II Also Miles Davis would incorporate African music in some of music from the fusion era , most notably On The Corner
@@andrei11dr some of Duke Ellington's late-period work, notably his album Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, would begin to introduce North and West African elements to "popular" Western music in the 1950's.
The reason Hubbard's books such as Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and Battlefield Earth are on the best sellers list, is because apparently the Church of Scientology buys back their own books. Therefore the book stores have to keep re-ordering Scientology books and they're kept artificially on the best sellers list. I was talking to an employee of a very large book store in Toronto. He told me that every Saturday two people from the local Church of Scientology would come in to the store and buy every single copy in stock of Scientology books. This is just one way that Scientology manipulates the public. The Church of Scientology is a money making cult disguised as a church and religion. L. Ron Hubbard committed one of the biggest scams of all time.
@@theunknowngamer5477 "You don't make the big bucks writing science fiction. You make the big bucks starting a religion." - L. Ron Hubbard. The man might have been majorly fucked in the head, but he definitely knew what he was doing.
This is a common practice to get political books on the NYT best sellers list as well. For example, there were thousands and thousands of copies of Donald Trump Jr.'s book purchased using PAC political donation money to artificially boost him to the top. At least $300,000 dollars spent by the RNC went to Jr.'s company in exchange for a ton of copies of his book, which were then sent to donors, and not necessarily because the donors wanted his book. It's a mostly legal form of corruption.
@@drpibisback7680 What about Parsons and the Babylon Work against all of Western politics/God clubs? A timeline of the growing thing is good, not trying to BS you.
"Todd in the Shadows risking a lawsuit to make a 45-minute video on a mediocre rock album which was only made because one of the most legendary music industry lifers of all time didn't want to let down the founder of Scientology" is literally one of the most excellent possible combinations of words in the English language.
Especially since I get the impression he's so hard on Mission Earth partly because he's (probably) not going to get sued for shitting on those books and is tired of walking on eggshells. (I believe him about the books being unreadable. A ten book series that was never edited, ever, sounds like a nightmare. I just mean I think Todd was very glad to have a target he could just hit with a sledgehammer as often as he felt like after everything he had to tiptoe around.)
@@Talisguy a ten book series with no edits? The only comparable thing I can think of is Left Behind. So, dangerous cult texts are just like that, I guess.
Maybe he's hoping no one from the church will watch the whole video but I dunno, they probably have whole teams of people whose job is to look up anything bad anyone on the internet has to say about their religion, they're thorough motherfuckers.
@@Jurgan6 I remember reading all 12 of the Left Behind books in middle school. There are a lot of negative things I can say about that series, but I don’t remember it being unedited or incoherent.
Over the course of Trainwreckords, we've seen records fail because the artist didn't understand their strengths (Jewel, The Human League) or because they just had a career-endingly bad idea for an album (Styx, Billy Idol). Having a career end because of Scientology's influence, however--that's just sad. It's genuinely a little upsetting to see how many desperate celebrities fell (and continue to fall) under the sway of Scientology.
To be fair, Edgar Winter's career was kind of on the back burner anyway, so it's not like the album could really ruin it. If he'd released it at the height of his popularity, it probably would have killed that career dead.
Don't forget artists destroying themselves after starting to believe their own hype as an infallible creative force, a la Oasis. Also, cocaine. *so much cocaine.*
Something I didn't realise until I read about it was that metallica's master of puppets was about drugs. The entire song made sense. The fast tempo being a heartbeat caused by the crack. The line about self destruction being about how while the drug is destroying the users health, its the user whos administering the drug voluntarily. The bridge being an angry come down from the high as the user briefly realises the effects of the drug and how its supposedly improving their life but really its killing them slowly and the lack of help from anyone in the users life being equivalent to someone getting amusement out of their misery. What I'm trying to say is, there's a way to make a drug addiction song good and fitting for the subject matter, This album does not do that
I'm fairly sure Master of Puppets is about powder cocaine rather than crack, given the line "chop your breakfast on a mirror." You don't chop crack because it's in the form of rocks, you just put a rock in your pipe and smoke it. You chop powder coke with a razor or other sharp and flat instrument (credit card is also common) on a flat surface (which is why mirrors are good for it). My dad told me it was about drugs when I was a kid, maybe 12 years old? He was an old school fan. He smokes a lot of weed but doesn't like alcohol or any other drugs. Anyway, it's not surprising that there are good songs about addiction that also happen to be fast and loud (in contrast with the Velvet Underground writing a slow and sad song about addiction with "Heroin"). Hetfield himself is well known for struggling with alcohol addiction.
You know, I never knew that, I assumed it was about Military and how the soldiers are the puppets, and the general is the master, granted I assume that from the album art rather than the lyrics given they ain't Megadeth, they're not gonna make it easy to hear
Some say he was so deep in his work producing his magnum opus "TRAINWRECKORDS: Edgar Winter and L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth"" that there were rumours that he had died. Now, your more cynical observers have disagreed with this version of events, saying that he had actually disappeared because he was in hiding from various world governments for various crimes, that he was tightly in control of his twitter account, and that he had never even liked 80's music and only returned to it because he wanted some of that youtube ad revenue
My husband introduced this review to me back in November while we were on our honeymoon in northern Michigan and we actually spent some time looking more into the album and giggling and some of the goofiness we found. So to me, Mission Earth brings back lovely memories of my honeymoon with my dorky and amazing husband 😂😂
@@janjanbinks1710 Thanks so much! We’re doing great and planning an overnight trip for our first anniversary. We’re going to listen to the review again on the way there 😂❤️
"Joy City" sounds like an 80s TV intro to a series about a family running a dilapidated theme park with quirky accidents, ramshackle attractions and questionable morals. I think, I should write a series of 10 books about that (and maybe found a religion on its basis).
What happens when Danny Zuko and Danny Masterton inherit a spooky old sci-fi theme park?! Oh those summer nights....of sexual assault and hook-ups with your male pilot buddies under the watchful eye of the groundskeeper who just might be Xenu. Only on Fox.
I think so, kind of in the same way that his One-Hit Wonderland video on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is shorter than THAT song (the full version, anyway). Then again, there's so much to say on the history of this album and on all the songs, I guess it could justify being this long.
Yeah I was really surprised by the length when he went over all the songs. Something's that sold as a rock opera type theme album I would expect to be longer
@@merchantfan Right? Especially considering this is supposed to be some kind of album adaptation of these books, and a lot of these songs are about things that might as well be outtakes! Though I have to wonder if that's on account of a lot more of the actual books' content being way more leaning towards Scientology, and Winter wanted to make this album accessible to everyone as well or something? Who knows.
I read the series in high school in the 90s (knowing nothing about LRH or Scientology) and rooted for Soltan Gris the entire way through thinking that's how it was supposed to be read. Jet Heller (even his name, jeez) was too much of a football jock/pretty boy/Flash Gordon that was always too perfect to like. Gris was the underdog working man literally just doing his job. Was very disappointed in the end.
I suspect the reason Edgar Winter is so reluctant to pin himself down re his position within the Church is because they (officially don't) have a policy of "Disconnection," where if you badmouth them, everyone in the Church has to completely shun you, regardless of whether they're a friend, relative, spouse or whatever. Plus they have a tendency to use information disclosed in auditing sessions against former members.
Hi! Masochist here! I read all ten volumes of this mess in the late 80s (I was in my early teens and was still hadn’t quite figured out what “good” science fiction was yet). At the time the sex and violence was really over the top (and as a dumb kid, that’s probably what enticed me to read it through to the end). I hadn’t known what the deal was with Scientology at the time and figured it was just some kind of self-help thing. Years later, when I learned more about the “religion”, the subtext in Mission: Earth (including the anti-Psych stuff) stood out like a neon sign. I also owned a cassette copy of the album (which I bought in 1989, if that helps in the “Did it come out in 1986 or 1989” argument), so a lot of these songs are indelibly etched into my grey matter. The album seems closer to Douglas Adams than L Ron Hubbard though, in that they’re “Mostly Harmless.”
One thing Todd forgot to mention about the 2nd heroin song is that Edgar's brother was hopelessly addicted to heroin for most of his life. I feel like that might've had some more influence from Edgar than elron
Reminds me of how my sister watched our VHS copy of Ernest Saves Christmas so much she wound up not only breaking the tape but also the player while trying to “fix it”…ah, good times
THE OUTSIDERS: Ponyboy Dallas Johnny Cherry Sodapop Darrell Two-Bit Steve Bob Six Pack Dad E.T. Bumblebee Tuna Clamshell Inspector Gadget Payless Shoes Death Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 Kid Cuisine & Johnny, played by Johnny Cash
I mean it wouldn’t be impossible if a few people on their social media team tried an unsuccessful downvote campaign, they had an information war with Wikipedia that got them IP banned
We're talking about a guy who was able to pump out a novel within 24 hours. You don't do that with a backlog of synonyms and antonyms. (yes, I wish I was joking...)
@@FusionFullForce - words cannot describe how bad his writing was. Or maybe it was brilliant. Don't think of it as a story, because there isn't any story. His writing is what depression feels like. If you are depressed and someone in your life doesn't understand what that is like have them read Battlefield Earth. They will understand. And possibly commit suicide. I think in complete honesty that L Ron Hubbard's writing was attempted murder. He was trying to murder his readers with psychotic boredom.
I've read about as much of Mission Earth as Todd has, and let me tell you, he's not kidding about how weird and bad it is. Do not subject yourself to it, it's not the fun kind of bad.
He mentioned the Dragonriders series. If everyone wants to experience mid twentieth century sci fi/fantasy I'd say read those and leave it at that. Mission Earth may be the low point but a lot of the rest is closer to Hubbard than McCaffrey.
@@GriffinPilgrim What about Dune? The first Dune novel was published in 1965 and is still one of the best ever written. People still know quotes from Dune without even knowing that's where they're from.
@@WinterReflections I overstated it, there are few other good ones. Personally I found Dune a bit dry (pun entirely intended) but I don't deny the quality. But I do think the majority of the speculative fiction literature produced from the 60s to the 70s was pretty samey and bad, especially compared to what came before (Verne, Lovecraft, Tolkien) and what came after (Pratchett, Moore, Gaiman).
Yeah. The premise is pretty good but the execution is woof. I know I read the first one and I quit when whats-his-name got involved with a sado chick and he got a new dick. This is a thing that happened in these books.
In my very early 20's when "Battlefield Earth" came out, I fell in love with that book (I was, and remain, a fan of Pulp Fiction as a genre), and to this day, it is the only thing by Hubbard that I actually finished. Because, based on my love for that book, I ran right out and bought the hardcover release of "Mission Earth" Volume One "The Invaders Plan" ... and I couldn't believe it was written by the same author. I tried getting into it several times, but just couldn't. Simply put, it was awful. I can't even recall now anything about it. That book killed any interest I had in acquiring any of his older writings. This was before I knew anything about his involvement in Scientology, as I was pretty naive. A few years later, a girlfriend started gushing to me about a book she was reading called "Dianetics". What she was saying about it sounded vaguely interesting, but highly unusual, and a bit suspect. She then dropped the author's name, and I said, "Wait. Who?!?" To this day, I still have trouble believing that the author of one of my favorite pulp sci-fi books could write such horrible dreck and be such a bad person to boot.
@@coredumperror Yeah, Linkara's still good with most of the ex-Channel Awesome members himself. I know he's mainly disappointed by The Cinema Snob for staying with Doug's brand, though.
39:15 = You know, I've been enjoying Todd's videos for a while now. Watched a bunch. And for the life of me, I still can't figure out his taste in music. Music I'm certain he'd like he ends up despising, and music I think he (or anyone) would hate, he loves. I routinely fail to predict how he'll respond...like here. I'm glad this song sparks joy in Todd, but good God Almighty that is the cheesiest of cheeseball songs...it's like saying you can't stop rocking out to the opening theme of Growing Pains.
Legit, I was surprised too. Not even judging, it's cheery and I'm sure it's fun to listen to if you're into it, but I also was left wondering if it's just cuz I was born in the latter half of the 90s and that sound was dated to me even as a kid, if I just couldn't appreciate good music cuz I'm a filthy gen Z. I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who is like, "....Yeah, Todd?"
I am Todd's age and....I kinda...sorta get it?? But I wouldn't die on a cross for it. I would call it 'pleasant', not 'revolutionary', I think thats along the lines of what he means here too...? There is just a warm nostalgic feeling to it. The cheese sound and lyrics kinda makes it have that. It has a bland but just upbeat dated enough feel, like, a long forgotten late night diner or hotel chain tv ad from your childhood that you haven't seen in years. Or like something you hear every time you go in a CVS or grocery store akin to Toto's "Rains in Africa", or other such cozy light jazz/Soft Rock trash. It isn't something you're gonna likely put on your Spotify list by conscious choice. But if it comes on while you shop, you might be able to smile a bit and hum a few bars.
@@avosmash2121 Yeah that's what I'm assuming I missed here. Lord knows I, a 25-year-old woman, am still endeared to songs from Disney channel originals from the 2000s, and the Bratz Rock Angelz soundtrack, but couldn't defend that to anyone who wasn't a kid in that specific time range. Sure there were 80s reruns in there, but I think I just can't get into the mindset. You definitely do a good job of explaining it though.
Todd's tastes seem to lean more towards pop music with slick production. He's definitely a lot more lenient towards the echo-chambered, auto-tuned numbers that dominate modern pop and hip-hop. He and I often agree on which songs are bad, but it's a crapshoot when I go through his "10 best" lists as to whether I'll agree with him. It's probably also a generational thing, I'm older than Todd by a good amount and have more of a rock background.
In case anyone is curious, the person who voices the Narrator in this video is Linkara and the person who recites the burlesque song lyrics is Maggie Mae Fish.
I once heard that during the recording of Power of Source, The Apollo Stars had to pay L. Ron Hubbard a dollar for every mistake they made. Power of Source is a jazz record. Fucking stonks.
Heard about that too from the "This Exists" series. Also talks about a Kidz Bop version of "Teach Me" with children vocals. Sounds after school special-esque, but now knowing of the lyrics origins, is just jarring.
the segment at about ten minutes in where todd delves into the l. ron hubbard foundation book is genuinely one of the creepiest things i've ever seen on this show. like literally everything venerating him is some of the most cringey, disturbing televangelism i've ever seen. and the "psychiatry kills" garbage was nauseating to listen to. thank you for doing all the research for this video. i'm sure it wasn't easy to get through. well done, todd.
@@supernintendo182 yeah at least the Kim's have some level of competence I'm not really sure what they're competent in but certainly they are more competent than Hubbard
There's the South Park episode where Chef joins Scientology, and they explain it in brief. Even though they flashed "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" across the screen, I thought there was no way. They must be messing with us, right? I'm still a bit baffled that something like this exists.
Everything they said about what Scientology believes is true. You only find out what their creation myth is and most of the crazy alien shit when you reach OT or Operating Thetan level III. By that point you have to have been in the church for years and have to have spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on auditing. So sunk cost fallacy keeps most people from leaving at that point. They tell people that learning the truth before you are prepared with years of "proper" auditing can actually give you pneumonia and/or kill you. When you learn about Xenu they lock you in a room and then bring in a locked briefcase which has a photocopy of Hubbard's actual handwritten notes on Xenu and Teegeyak. They basically leave you in the room to figure it out. But to be honest South Park wasn't lying at all. You can read the source materials for yourself they were leaked onto the internet in the early nineties if memory serves. Even the part about spaceships looking like DC8s is in there.
I have written this on previous videos as well, but Todd is one of the few creators on TH-cam that shows visible improvement with every new video, which is so impressive for someone who's been doing this for over a decade now.
Even more impressive when you consider Todd's life changes through his career and his struggles with depression. It seems his struggles have made him stronger and more determined.
I feel like Todd is very aware of his weaknesses and strengths and can therefore really hone in on what he’s good at, play to his strengths, and make some killer content
Yep, it's very telling if you go back to his Channel Awesome pop reviews. Those were very much of their time and i'm so glad he got away from the yellman schtick & the unfunny skits.
@@joshthefunkdoc Completely agree. I'm glad almost everyone who was involved Sir-Yells-A-Lot and his unfunny skits had left too. Doog was fun to watch at one point, but the dude's lost his magic, and lost his way. Definitely sounds like he's lost his mind too. I once had major respect for Doog, because he was able to bring together so many talented people and have them all interacting with each other in one way or another, and them managing to carve out unique followings for each of themselves and their work, but now, it's just a huge disastrous mess for Doug. What a shame. He's become the "But The Chart Says", guy now. Glad to see that most of the individual former ca members are doing well. Like Todd, Joe, Rap Critic, Linkara, Film Brain(I think?) etc., and they're each doing better than ever WITHOUT Doug's stupid attempts of having them do boring, unfunny skits which NOBODY liked. It was like struggling to watch bad, rejected SNL skits. Which doug STILL doesn't understand to this day. I think everyone prefers the less screamy Todd who has actual funny skits. Again, Doug just can't comprehend how to do funny skits right. He just shows his lack of understanding and knowledge about something, screams about it for way too long, makes these skits that bore you to tears and make your ears bleed, and doug just shows no self-awareness and is way too full of himself, and just desperately throws shit at the wall and sees what sticks and just throws basic knowledge that anyone watching would already know, back at you. It's painful to watch and why I haven't gone back to see Doug's reviews, in some time. And why I'm done with his shit. It's childish and painfully unfunny. While the other former associates of ca have for the most part, matured, and shown that they didn't need doug to succeed, doug keeps pretending, also screaming and flailing his arms around, like he's trying to be the Wacky-Waving-Inflatable-Arm-Flailing-TubeMan, which is just annoying and obnoxious. It was funny... when I was 15. Not anymore. It's time doug realized that, but since it's "The Doug Walker Show!' time, all the time over at channel awesome now, I highly doubt the dude will listen to anyone besides himself. Since it's very hard to hear anyone else when you're screaming and flailing your arms around like a crazy person. But glad to see Todd and Joe doing well. They've always been my 2 favorite former ca youtubers. They've managed to become successful and make actual businesses and actual merch. Good on them.
@@shawnfields2369 The "screamy" Todd that I discovered in 2010 was something I really loved at the time, because as a freshman in college at the height of the club pop era I felt smothered by all the terrible loud party music around me, and Todd provided the catharsis that I needed at the time. However, as I've grown older I barely listen to pop music or hear it in the wild anymore, and when I go back and re-watch Todd's old videos the amount of visceral anger is kind of grating to me now. I feel like I've matured along with Todd. Plus the club pop era at the turn of the 2010s ended up being a unique era where the bad music was bad in a particularly loud and ridiculous way, something pop music itself couldn't sustain for very long, and Todd's shift in style has reflected that shift.
@@nicklane6084 People call him that because its funny and iconic. Im guessing you mean only plays right?? They like Linkara, and i havent heard anyone else saying it negatively
A few days now since this was posted, I went to listen to that "Space Jazz" album. My takeaway from listening to that: Space Jazz shows that you don't have to be Kate Bush or Peter Gabriel to use a Fairlight CMI, but it most certainly helps. Also, a good deal of it sounds like its music from a lesser forgotten JRPG game.
Space Jazz sounds a lot like a bunch of Hans Zimmer-style mockups intended to be dubbed over/replaced with real instruments. Except they forgot to dub them over with real instruments.
Also, it's amazing that Hubbard was the *first* one to write a "literary soundtrack" 10 years after Camel recorded "The Snow Goose". And 100 years after Richard Strauss composed "Also sprach Zarathustra".
Between my low-medium baritone and my surprising falsetto I can reach 4 octaves on a bad day... The problem is that I sing well in one of them, if that.
Fun Fact: Edgar Winter didnt think much of Maneater when John Oates played it for him, but it became a huge hit. Coincidence you sang maneater in the video?
"I'll swang me another girl, yessiree" at least makes sense in spite of its bafflingly awful wording; it's an open-faced hookup metaphor. "Foggy pot" meanwhile is completely out of place and indecipherable.
I read all of these back in the 80s as they came out, and yes, they’re terrible. Perfect for a teenage boy, though, lots of manly men, sniveling villains, and big breasted women. I picked up the album on cassette in a cutout bin in the early 90s, played it once, and soon traded it in. I few years ago a came across the CD and bought it… still terrible. I had a friend that worked at a bookstore and he’d give me his 50% discount on anything I wanted. The Scientology books, including both Battlefield and Mission: Earth, were excepted - the publisher refused to allow any discounts. Edgar Winter is pretty good though.
I was probably 13 or 14 when I started reading these, as a relative who was reading them finished and passed them on. The first one wasn’t horrible, it was an interesting take on a few classic tropes. And if it ended with the first book (keeping in mind I haven’t read it in 36ish years) I might even sort of recommend it. But they went downhill fast. I know I finished the second, and probably the third, but that was it. And they weren’t good.
Todd, I am a longtime fan and a professional historian, and I just want to say this is an excellent piece! This may be my favorite video of yours to date. The historical and cultural scholarship you've engaged in here is really exceptional. Keep up the good work!
As someone who reads a lot of shitty science fiction, this made me even less inclined to read L Ron. Also worth noting that the way the NYT best seller list doesn't actually look at books sold, it looks at books shipped to sellers.
As the daughter of one of the bestselling authors of the 1990s ("Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" et al), back then my dad says that sales clerks and cashiers had to physically write down which books people were ordering if it was particularly surprising at the checkout, so if they were already keeping tallies on you, you had a decent chance of staying on that list. He suggests that the books were small and next to the cash register, so the cashiers just knew about them and kept it in their tallies, which is the best excuse he had for how a tiny satirical book series managed to make it into the top ten books sold each year, twice, and number one on the NYT. And were I a cashier back then, and saw people coming into the store buying five or six copies of these books, I'd notice enough to take tallies, if only to note how many forests were obliterated for their existence. There could have been plenty of books that sold better, that no one cared enough to check if they sold. Remember, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Now he writes Spillane/Runyonesque noir novels about clown detectives in a circus ghetto ("Rex Koko, Private Clown"), and it's a million times more interesting to read than Mission Earth. Ron just doesn't have a sense of humor.
@@dw89music73 Do you think that the church will be ok with funding my sci-fi themed Godfather fan-fiction into a feature film? No changes to the original screenplay, it's literally the exact plot of the first Godfather but the setting is in space.
@@dw89music73 if i recall correctly, hubbard at one point said that there was more money/attention in creating a religion than there was in creating a sci-fi story, so you aren’t wrong
I've rarely been as disappointed by a movie as i was with Godfather 3. It was so boring that I had stop watching at the point where Michael's starts singing some song to him.
I tried to read _Mission Earth_ back in the '80s; and couldn't even get halfway through the first volume, it was so bad. And I read a LOT of absolute crap sci-fi and fantasy back then; all the pulp stuff. It was just such a slog. The dialog was so stilted and artificial, the storytelling so rambling, repetitive, and flatly boring that even my sci-fi-obsessed teenage brain could not manage more than a few chapters before giving up in disgust -- and I managed to get through all of _Atlas Shrugged_ without my brain melting. This series desperately needed a competent editor; which, while there was never any chance the series was going to be good, could have at least made it readable. Along with the raging anti-psychology/psychiatry stuff, the homophobia, and the glaring misogyny; what a lot of people don't mention is the glaring antisemitism in both _Battlefield Earth_ and the _Mission Earth_ books. I guess it doesn't get noticed as much, probably because it's somewhat more subtle than the flat-out preaching the other themes get. That is, as much as Hubbard could be subtle about anything, which wasn't very. Crude antisemitic stereotypes abound throughout all his works.
@@Byzas000 He basically plays up the old stereotypes of Jews as obsessed with money, unscrupulous, and uses the more common negative physical caricatures of Jews common to antisemitic propaganda. Any evil character in his books who is a banker or otherwise involved with money/finance is portrayed using these stereotypes.
I think antisemitism can be used as a good inspiration especially in science fiction when it shows discrimination. The fact that the psychlos are style as Jewish looking pretty much shows you the direction they were going however.
I find the best way to read the series is to cut all the bullshit, so like 95%, and just keep the few scenes that are so over the top nuts that they feel like they were pulled from the dark corners of 4chan (which would explain all the racism, qeerphobia and anti-Semitism)
I'll give a pass on Beck since his parents have been in the Co$ since he was born, so he's one of the few people who were raised in it instead of converting to it.
He actually always insisted that he didn’t follow the religious stuff, he actually identifies as Jewish but he’s never really been interested in religion. He has a song on one of his old demo tapes called Watchtower Magazine that is basically about his alienation from his parents because of their Scientologist beliefs.
Happy to hear he eventually blew--and I hope he has a halfway-decent relationship with his parents (or they eventually patch things up if that's not the case). Seems like a good guy.
It's worth mentioning there is an outstanding site that picks apart every detail of the Mission Earth books, chapter by chapter, entitled: "Mission Spork." It's vastly more entertaining than the books themselves. (P.S.: Thank you for the mention! I saw it after writing this comment.)
It speaks to Edgar Winter's quality that the worst music he could make out of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth, with lyrics dictated by Hubbard personally, was just mediocre and unfitting, not anything close to the disaster that is the source material.
Yeah! Like... it's actually kinda listenable? Todd gave us the warning, Winter is no-joke awesome and his music might just be Good. Some... actually was.
Funnily enough, "A return to Rock's roots, but highly experimental" is basically the creation of Post-Rock which was actually happening around a similar time with Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden in 1988, Laughing Stock in 1991 and Slint's Spiderland also in 1991. None of these albums sound like Mission earth though.
@@michaelcooke5695 I would say their lyrics were more spiritual, rather than religious. I think Godley & Creme's "Goodbye Blue Sky" is a better example of religious lyrics.
Oddly, at first when I heard Cry Out, I thought it sounded similar to Two Hearts by Phil Collins. having relistened to it, made me realise that what reminded me of it were the "thud" drums.
Jesse, I’m seeing you out in the wild! It’s Christian from DT. Always wild to see someone on another channel and super agree. Let’s get Todd that sponsorship
I'm reminded of Billy Idol writing a song about Neuromancer. Not the same situation at all of course, but still a guy trying to write pop music about a sci-fi novel he doesn't understand and knows nothing about. The difference of course is that at least Neuromancer is a good book.
The reading of the quotes from Soltan Gris made me picture him as Squidward, and now I kind of want to read the books so I can laugh my way through them with that mental image.
Yeah it's just how Linkara sounds although I think "can't you just go away and let someone be quietly miserable?" sounds like something Squidward would say.
Last Year Todd: "Hey look, Liz Phair saying penis colada, how funny is that?"
This Year Todd: "So. Scientology."
2020 took a hell of a toll on us all...
Ahem, it's pronounced "Peñis colada"
The fact that Penis Colada makes sense compared to whatever the hell L. Ron was writing for either the songs or books is somewhat disconcerting
#personalgrowth
@@JennaLeigh #peñisgrowth
I love the idea that Edgar Winter read that description of a super sexy and funny performance and was like "right, I'm gonna need a gospel choir."
LOL, the Scientology sex song needed Jesus 😂
Glorious.
"Oh I know what the book says, I just abso-fucking-lutely refuse to curse this world with Edgar Winter burlesque. Even I know when it's going too far and I've made a disco album for crying out loud. So get on the phone and get me the choir so we can just pretend I misunderstood."
What kind of world do I live in where I feel like THE CARPENTERS made a more fitting interstellar ballad than literal Scientologists? WTF??
Gamma Ray (power metal) and Hypocrisy (death/melodic death metal) also make amazing songs about aliens and space and stuff :)
Sometimes it really just takes having a soul and a good heart to make good music, I know it sounds lame and hokey but I swear it’s true. Karen Carpenter had both. She absolutely sold the hell out of ‘Calling Occupants’ as a genuine, heartfelt welcome and a plea for peaceful coexistence with extraterrestrial life.
On the theme, I'd also recommend "Space Metal" by Star One, which is one of Arjen Anthony Lucassen's many spinoff projects. Every song on the album is inspired by a sci-fi novel or movie. If you like anthemic euro-prog-metal it's a lot of fun.
@@jasonblalock4429 Everything AAL touches is gold.
@@ImpendingRiot83 You could tell me Karen Carpenter was the sweetest lady on earth, and I'd definitely, 1000% believe you, and I wasn't even born at the time. I was born in 1993. But if you told me tomorrow, that she was the sweetest woman to have ever lived, yep, I'd totally believe you, 10,000,000% agree with you on that. Just saying.
Kind of a note to be aware of: Scientology can not really sue people for slander or libel because they would have to prove in court what they do behind closed doors. They might send people to harass or attack you or defame you, but they will not sue you for defamation or libel. I know its about a year later after this video, but worth stating.
someone tell Danny Masterson
@@cpsbBXCXconvicted rapist Danny Masterson?
who?@@cpsbBXCX
I think it's called gang-stalking.
They can also kill you
My dad was an insatiable consumer of pulp fantasy and sci fi, he would read and reread books until they literally fell apart. There is a full set of Mission: Earth in my basement that looks almost brand new because he read them once and never touched them again. Given my dad’s high tolerance for crap writing that’s a damning indictment.
I used to take the audiobooks out of the library and my friends and I would put them on to listen to as we got high in the basement. They are hilariously bad.
your dad sounds like a fun guy
Well done, Matrim's dad. A literary indictment that scathing is the kinda legacy I want to leave behind
Your dad sounds rad AF
@@ChristianStewart007 that sounds like the best use of them. I can see y'all stoned as all hell eating Cheetos and laughing your asses off.
Holy shit I didn’t think Hubbard was a good writer but I didn’t realize he was that bad. “It was so sexyyyyy, it reminded me of sexxxx”
L. Ron Hubbard, typical redditor
He wasn’t super bad when he started out but by the 80s, when he was rich and powerful within the church. He kinda just wrote whatever the hell he wanted and no one close to him was willing to tell their messiah he was shit.
Hubbard: “I had seeeeeeeeeex!”
@@nilus2k There are also strong rumors that Mission: Earth was heavily ghostwritten.
@@TheRealColBosch With writers paid by the word? Would explain...everything.
I'm mesmerized by the fact that somehow L Ron Hubbard and Edgar Winter collaborating turned into an album consisting entirely of theme songs for scientology based family sitcoms.
I think this is the best description for the shit I've just listened to.
LMAO
LOL well said. Totally sounds like the opening credits music for the TGIF lineup.
My immediate thoughts when hearing the songs. Not a single one of them fits a scifi setting, even an 80s one 😂
If you want a good laugh, look up the song "Thank You For Listening". It's a song Hubby sang himself that he ordered to be played at his funeral. It's basically him going "Fuck you I'm right" from beyond the grave over an 80's sitcom track.
Too weird to sell but too generic to be interesting: my favorite panic! At the disco album.
This is literally Pretty Odd lmao
@@Annafyz How dare you, that album is fantastic
@@Betta66 Pretty Odd deserved way more than it got. Most Panic fans I see don't listen to it much, but the one's who do love it
I thought they were all called that?
I would say that for most of Brendon Urie's pop attempts
"He's an adult man who looks like a teenager because his species ages differently"...Huh. The rare male version of that trope....
@@af-pv7vm I don't remember Tim Allen ever looking like a teenager
…hey wait, how much older is his sister if she can convincingly portray a Sexy Sexual Singer of Sex
@@FionavanDahl I'm more specifically talking "character who looks like an actual child/teenager, but is actually 1000 years old and probably a dragon". It's usually a Japanese trope, admittedly.
@@billyweed835 Husbandos are now tainted by Scientology!
you need to watch more anime, I gather :)
L. Ron Hubbard notoriously used to knock out his novels while tripping on speed. Many of his peers have said this, and have also admitted that that was not unusual in the early Science Fiction/Fantasy/Pulp scene.
Need to make rent on Monday? Down a fistful of uppers and get to work on Tuesday, knock out a novel by Thursday, Sell it to a publisher Friday, sleep it off on the weekend, pay your rent in cash Monday, then repeat.
Stephen King says he doesn't remember how he wrote several of his books for this exact reasons lol.
Cujo and the Tommyknockers specifically IIRC. There was a period in the 80's where Stephen King was doing just about anything he could get his hands on. @@leonidtimofeev1178
If I had unlimited AMPHETAMIIIIIINES id do the same. Only I can hope Id write better :(
Glad TH-cam video essayists are still keeping the tradition alive
@@leonidtimofeev1178The movie Maximum Overdrive was co-directed by a sentient pile of cocaine
Lo-fi jazz: It's not the notes you play, it's the notes the microphone doesn't pick up
Going to quote the hell out of this.
😂😂😂
A friend of mine was looking into Scientology. He even tried dragging me along, but when I said no, he decided he didn't want to do it alone and decided against the whole thing entirely. I like to think L Ron Hubbard shook his fist in anger at me that day.
you might've done your friend a solid there. dodged a bullet and then some
No "might've" about it. Whether he realizes it or not, your friend owes you.
L. Ron snarls with his weird gravestone teeth at all critics of Scientology, because he can’t zap them out of existence with his Space Powers from beyond the grave.
@@Thobeian Yet Jesus walked out of his tomb after three days. Modern Space Popes fail us every day.
Lol that reminds me of this old Adam Sandler skit called Joining the Cult:
th-cam.com/video/JR3PC8VDoz8/w-d-xo.html
For a book series that purports to be pro-environment, Mission Earth sure did waste a lot of paper
🤔😛😝
at least you can recycle that paper now while you got the chance xD
🏆
It's also like 4 floppy disks
@@stephenbianchi71414 x 1.44 MB?
Bullshit. A modern CD can't hold it all.
First off: herculean effort, for which we are all grateful. Second, I had to look up how his book did in the 1987 Hugo awards when I saw it was against Count Zero, Orson Scott Card and Vernor Vinge. And I wasn't disappointed: out of 5 books in the running, Hubbard placed ~sixth~, behind a 'No Award' vote meaning people intentionally voted to make sure his book didn't even place.
The "No Award" is mostly used by voter's when they look at the entire block and go "You know what? Fuck this!" and decide none of the nominee's deserve a reward. So it's not that they deliberately voted "No Award" to spite Hubbard, it's more that votes for Hubbard were greatly outweighed by the number of votes for *Literally Nothing!*
If George R. R. Martin is to be believed, the audience at the Hugo Awards booed out when L. Ron Hubbard's name was called out among the list of nominees.
I hope Count Zero won, that book is fantastic.
@@EngineerLume it’s a ranked vote, so you can easily rank the deserving works above no award, then no award, and finally rank the works that you think shouldn’t be on the ballot. Targeting specific works is definitely common when people suspect vote manipulation has taken place, but it’s not particularly common to see people throw out the whole ballot, especially in best novel, and further especially considering how legitimately popular Gibson was at the time.
@@chungbertflabbergast5995 card did for speaker
Seeing Todd outside in the real world is like seeing a mall Santa outside the mall
Or when you see your cool teacher outside having an actual life besides their job
Fitting since he was a substitute teacher
@@OfficialROZWBRAZEL Super strange.
You should look up Suburban Knights...
I asked my mother if she knew that Edgar Winter had done an album for the Scientology guy. Her response: "No, but considering acid did Edgar Winter during the eighties, I'm not that surprised".
6:40 And remember kids, if your local record store has their Edgar Winter records between Mötley Crüe and Tom Petty then something seriously wrong has happened to their alphabetised filing system.
Yeah I’d… kinda be giving the Rock eyebrow to whoever’s behind the counter if that’s the kind of organizing they’re up to… lol
"I went to a record store that specialized in hard-to-find records. Nothing was alphabetized!" Mitch Hedberg
@@frizzlefriar4417 😆
Probably some customer looked at the album and placed it somewhere it didn't belong.
Could've been in "New Releases"
Seeing L. Ron Hubbard’s name on anything but a book cover creates a visceral feeling of *_oh no_* in me
See that name on anything but an official investigation report, is an oh no, what other horrible thing did he do, for me
@@dark_fire_ice Surprisingly he never once had any allegation of sexual abuse. I don’t believe he never sexually abused anyone but nobody has ever come forward. Absolutely a strange man.
Hell, even the book covers look off. I don’t want to buy anything that could fund his estate, and knowing that he was also promoting his cult through his work poisons it further.
Seeing it on a book cover elicits that same feeling
I heard that he started Scientology just so he could get more money from his books. Just proves how money-hungry L. Ron was.
Nothing better when in the middle of a Trainwreckord Todd proclaims one song on the album to be absolutely incredible.
Automatic man!
"Fairweather Johnson."
'My Big Mouth'.
"Calling all Occupants"
“This is England” off of “Cut the Crap” didn’t make my ears bleed!
Todd In The Shadows made another Trainwreckords video and it was SEXY!
But it had comedy in it
I love this
His narration was a throaty, sexy lure.
He taught us!
@@warlockboy3864 And he kept it up for a whole 43 MINUTES!
It takes a true musical genius to turn a sleazy lounge song into a christian rock power ballad.
I was thinking about that... imagine the gear works and mechanics of the mind to read that part of the book and produce that song? talk about running that through a few filters lol
Cartman learned only from the best.
I commented myself, it's like starting with All That Jazz from Chicago and ending up with something by Richard Marx or Bryan Adams.
@@heymistercarter. yes
Well, I don't usually leave comments but as a former Scientologist, this one hits different. I have very distinct memories of being forced to listen to this album (along with the rest of the Scientology albums - fun fact, there's like 10 more albums of music either produced by or based on poems by L Ron). Watching this one was a real trip. Thanks man.
Forced?? That's FUCKIN awful. Sooooo glad you're out, Bee!!
Chick Correa- “Power of Source”
Hope you've recovered from your life in the cult.
...You were forced?
Damn man I'm so sorry to hear that.
Sending hugs. Cuz I am sure like many former Scientology members you have some serious stories to tell.
I had a run in with them as a kid, but they said I was beyond help because they couldn't get a reading on me. Of which, I was glad. The people I talked to, they creeped me out.
But, I was lucky on that day...my notoriously cheep ex adoptive dad (abusive bastard) saw that price tag of their help and was like Nope, nope, nope. Lol. One of the few times I was ever grateful for him being around.
So I can only imagine if my one time run in with them as a kid was bad, how it must be for someone who spent years involved in it must have felt and the crazy things that happened. So my heart goes out to all of you who have left.
My father was a science fiction specialist and wrote a SF dictionary when I was about 5. In it, there was of course a Ron Hubbard entry where he made a very sarcastic critic of the quality of the work... including the fact that Hubbard was apparently still writing and publishing after having died which made him a better Sci-Fi subject than author. Scientology people started threatening us, showing up at our flat and calling at all times of the night. It ended after my father, a very very quiet and calm man, completely lost his shit at them screaming he would bludgeon them to death if they ever came again. Looking back, I think we were really lucky we weren't living in the US, so the scientology community wasn't as powerful and interested in us as they could have been over there...
Time has passed since then, so hopefully there will be no problem after this video. ^^'
They are fucking nuts here in California. They made a whole movie about Leah Remini being a bad person because she left.
Scientology is less a sue happy religion and a more of a special interest group that doesn't pay taxes. Y'know, the church of Hollywood
You didnt get any other threats after that, did you?
Is there a way to get my hands on this book, i really want to read it
Sureeeee
I love how "Do not murder" is apparently number 8 on the list of things that'll bring you happiness.
Even in the Ten commandments "Thou shalt not kill" is way down the list.
@@lucasoheyze4597Kind of interesting that even with four initial commandments specifically about how to treat the deity, "Thou shalt not kill" makes the sixth slot on the original list. And here ... well ...
I don't think the ancients had a Buzzfeed understanding of what things ordered in a list meant. Instead they were more topical, first about things having to do with your relationship with God, followed by things having to do with your relationship with others. Murder is only #2 on the relationship with others, and I suspect that's because the first is about parents, making for a good authority-figure segue. I don't know about Scientology's ordering, though.
This made me laugh out loud
@@calmbbaer As you alluded to in your final sentence, we do have a sort of "Buzzfeed understanding" of what a list ordering means in the modern day. So it's weird for Scientology to do it.
The community college that I went to in the early 2000s had a giant Mission Earth display, complete with cardboard cut-outs and supplemental material. I think they were donated to the library by Scientology shortly after the books came out.
One day, I picked up a random book and started flipping through. I immediately realized that I was first person to actually open the damn thing. I then started looking at the other books. One had some wear and tear, but easily could be considered near-mint. Two definitely had a few people pick it up (though less than one). The rest? Pristine.
Let me say that again: a book series was on display at a college library for FIFTEEN YEARS and never touched. That should tell you something.
Was it the electoral college?
I'm more curious about how this display stayed in place for so long. You'd think a community college might have better use for that space.
@@bartholen My guess is they didn't have a lot of funding for the library and nobody had the time to get rid of it.
This reads like a Community bit where the Dean mistakenly gets involved with the Church of Scientology in an attempt to cut costs or to make Greendale more credible.
Says alot.
I just realized this is somehow the second album covered on trainrecords with an upbeat party song about heroin addiction.
If I had a nickel every time a trainrecords album had an up beat song about heroin I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's still weird that it happened twice.
What was the other?
@@mitzo4526 Cyberpunk by Billy Idol
And now, with no fixed addressed, there's three!!
@@irisaferg2524that one was actually about cocanie
Can we just give props to Todd for actually going to the building and doing the Eric Andre “LET ME IINNNNNN” bit 🤣🤣🤣
Now I'm wondering if that place still has the CCTV files of Todd doing that right outside. They're probably watching it wondering what in whatever strange planets they conjure up is going on.
Him stumbling to the door makes it funnier.
" WHO DO WE WANT?! "
*" XENU! "*
" WHEN DO WE WANT 'EM?! "
*" TEN TRILLION YEARS! "*
40:52
@@brendanb2982 THERE IS NO HELL!
To date, there has been only one OHW shorter than the song it's covering (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida) and only one Trainwreckord longer than the album it's covering (Mission Earth).
For standalone videos, you’re right. But, “Juju on that Beat” had a OHW segment during the worst of 2016 video
Tubular bells now
What a weird, neat stat
What about Mardi Gras, It’s shorter than a half an hour for Pete’s sake
Update: So close, The video is shorter than Mardi Gras by 6 minutes 😢
"Cry Out" sounds like the theme to a eco-friendly Ducktales spinoff.
Where in the Slowly Dying Ecosystem is Carmen Sandiego?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who could ONLY think "This sounds like the DuckTales theme from a worse universe" because I was absolutely flabbergasted
Oh god! Now I hear it! I knew something about that bloody song was nudging the back of my mind now I know!
lol! 💀💀💀
Todd confessing to liking Joy City is the most Todd thing ever.
Please don’t stereotype Asian people. Thanks.
@@againstthepods4316 How on earth are they stereotyping all Asian people by saying it’s unsurprising that Todd in particular likes Joy City? Haslett is just commenting on Todd’s personal taste, which is known to everyone who’s a long time watcher of him.
@@cloudstrife4534 Todd is Asian. Such a fan ANd you didn’t know that
@@againstthepods4316 I know he’s Asian. But acknowledging that him liking Joy City is very in line with his taste is not stereotyping all Asian people, or even just him as an Asian person. Joy City is good either way, but am I supposed to avoid it as a part Southeast Asian person because it would be “making a stereotype of myself”?
You’re showing that you’re not much of a fan of Todd at all if you think saying it’s not surprising that he likes Joy City means anything other than it not being surprising that he likes Joy City. You’re honestly coming off more like a troll in trying to turn innocuous comments from long-time fans of Todd into accusations of racial stereotyping. You definitely don’t come off as an fan. But if you are, maybe don’t be so rude to other fans who aren’t doing anything wrong. I’m sure there are some fans who are, so go bother them.
Either way Todd is Asian, but he’s also an Internet personality that is very candid about the things he likes. Not just on TH-cam, he’s constantly putting out tweets that give a clear view into his personal tastes and opinions on everything. His takes aren’t just his about his musical taste and the tons of adorable pictures of Amydog. You should know that if you follow him like most fans do, because his Twitter is just as much of a joy as his videos. You’re missing out if you don’t follow him there.
I really want to believe Todd is just trolling us. This is the worst song on the album, and he knows it. HE KNOWS IT!
I think this album only proves Edgar Winter as a musical genius because I can't imagine anyone else making those horrible lyrics sound listenable in the least.
Shit you right. Additionally his singing voice isn’t great but it’s not the worst and is at the very least memorable
what is it with Scientology and keyboard players? Winter, Mike Garson, Chick Corea, Nicky Hopkins
@@derkommissar785 They're more likely to be into geeky tech like synths, so the sci fi shit might appeal to them.
Side note: Paul Simon wasn't even the first major Western artist to do African polyrhythms. That title might go to Remain in Light by Talking Heads.
This is late, but westerners using African polyrhythms goes way back to the early 70s in the Krautrock scene with bands like Embryo and Amon Duul II
Also Miles Davis would incorporate African music in some of music from the fusion era , most notably On The Corner
Ginger Baker was playing and recording with Fela Kuti as early as 1974.
Steve Reich - Drumming (1970-1) incorporates a lot of african polyrhythm inspiration
@@andrei11dr some of Duke Ellington's late-period work, notably his album Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, would begin to introduce North and West African elements to "popular" Western music in the 1950's.
Rush and Peter Gabriel also flirted with African rhythms
I'm surprised Todd was willing to film himself yelling outside of a Scientology center. Well played.
yes! There was no shadows there! So we got Todd out of the Shadows.
When does it show up? What time exactly?
@@4ofdubs 40:50
Doing an Eric Andre meme, no less
holy fuck i lost my shit
The reason Hubbard's books such as Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and Battlefield Earth are on the best sellers list, is because apparently the Church of Scientology buys back their own books. Therefore the book stores have to keep re-ordering Scientology books and they're kept artificially on the best sellers list. I was talking to an employee of a very large book store in Toronto. He told me that every Saturday two people from the local Church of Scientology would come in to the store and buy every single copy in stock of Scientology books. This is just one way that Scientology manipulates the public. The Church of Scientology is a money making cult disguised as a church and religion. L. Ron Hubbard committed one of the biggest scams of all time.
That Simpsons episode "The Joy of Sect" taught me everything about that so-called "religion".
NO....Hubbard did NOT commit
any kind of scam. He created a
new form of mental illness.
@@theunknowngamer5477 "You don't make the big bucks writing science fiction. You make the big bucks starting a religion." - L. Ron Hubbard. The man might have been majorly fucked in the head, but he definitely knew what he was doing.
This is a common practice to get political books on the NYT best sellers list as well. For example, there were thousands and thousands of copies of Donald Trump Jr.'s book purchased using PAC political donation money to artificially boost him to the top.
At least $300,000 dollars spent by the RNC went to Jr.'s company in exchange for a ton of copies of his book, which were then sent to donors, and not necessarily because the donors wanted his book. It's a mostly legal form of corruption.
@@drpibisback7680
What about Parsons and the
Babylon Work against all of
Western politics/God clubs?
A timeline of the growing thing
is good, not trying to BS you.
"Todd in the Shadows risking a lawsuit to make a 45-minute video on a mediocre rock album which was only made because one of the most legendary music industry lifers of all time didn't want to let down the founder of Scientology" is literally one of the most excellent possible combinations of words in the English language.
Oh look who is here
Seanny Test
absolutely
hi sean
Brilliantly summarized.
The biggest give away for the quality of these books are the names of the characters. "Jettero", "Bang Bang", "Mary Schmeck"....
How about Miss Pinch And Miss Candy or frozen mob hit man Torpedo Fiaccola? It's like Ayn Rand naming villains Cuffy and Balph.
😂😂😂
@@liamannegarner8083Don't forget Teeny Whopper! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This album really makes us appreciate the half-baked monstrosity that was Styx's "Killroy was Here"
For every “Mr. Roboto” there’s five more crappy religious songs by rich nutters
At least Styx weren't promoting a cult
Elron Was Here
@@warlordofbritannia Joy City is pretty good though
"Heavy Metal Poisoning" is still a fantastic song to this day!
I adore how Todd's careful dancing around Scientology subjects becomes more impatient and blunt as the video goes on.
Yes this, I noticed this too! 😂
Especially since I get the impression he's so hard on Mission Earth partly because he's (probably) not going to get sued for shitting on those books and is tired of walking on eggshells.
(I believe him about the books being unreadable. A ten book series that was never edited, ever, sounds like a nightmare. I just mean I think Todd was very glad to have a target he could just hit with a sledgehammer as often as he felt like after everything he had to tiptoe around.)
@@Talisguy a ten book series with no edits? The only comparable thing I can think of is Left Behind. So, dangerous cult texts are just like that, I guess.
Maybe he's hoping no one from the church will watch the whole video but I dunno, they probably have whole teams of people whose job is to look up anything bad anyone on the internet has to say about their religion, they're thorough motherfuckers.
@@Jurgan6 I remember reading all 12 of the Left Behind books in middle school. There are a lot of negative things I can say about that series, but I don’t remember it being unedited or incoherent.
Over the course of Trainwreckords, we've seen records fail because the artist didn't understand their strengths (Jewel, The Human League) or because they just had a career-endingly bad idea for an album (Styx, Billy Idol). Having a career end because of Scientology's influence, however--that's just sad. It's genuinely a little upsetting to see how many desperate celebrities fell (and continue to fall) under the sway of Scientology.
And then there's the sum of no playing to strengths, terrible ideas, and downright insanity that was Funstyle.
To be fair, Edgar Winter's career was kind of on the back burner anyway, so it's not like the album could really ruin it. If he'd released it at the height of his popularity, it probably would have killed that career dead.
Don't forget artists destroying themselves after starting to believe their own hype as an infallible creative force, a la Oasis. Also, cocaine. *so much cocaine.*
@@Bluecho4 so your saying that it's more like an album like Passage where the musician's career was dying anyway
Chick Corea's career didnt even die after participating in Space Jazz so...you know?
Something I didn't realise until I read about it was that metallica's master of puppets was about drugs. The entire song made sense. The fast tempo being a heartbeat caused by the crack. The line about self destruction being about how while the drug is destroying the users health, its the user whos administering the drug voluntarily. The bridge being an angry come down from the high as the user briefly realises the effects of the drug and how its supposedly improving their life but really its killing them slowly and the lack of help from anyone in the users life being equivalent to someone getting amusement out of their misery. What I'm trying to say is, there's a way to make a drug addiction song good and fitting for the subject matter, This album does not do that
What about the line 'chop up your breakfast on the mirror'
Also hotel California
I'm fairly sure Master of Puppets is about powder cocaine rather than crack, given the line "chop your breakfast on a mirror." You don't chop crack because it's in the form of rocks, you just put a rock in your pipe and smoke it. You chop powder coke with a razor or other sharp and flat instrument (credit card is also common) on a flat surface (which is why mirrors are good for it). My dad told me it was about drugs when I was a kid, maybe 12 years old? He was an old school fan. He smokes a lot of weed but doesn't like alcohol or any other drugs.
Anyway, it's not surprising that there are good songs about addiction that also happen to be fast and loud (in contrast with the Velvet Underground writing a slow and sad song about addiction with "Heroin"). Hetfield himself is well known for struggling with alcohol addiction.
You know, I never knew that, I assumed it was about Military and how the soldiers are the puppets, and the general is the master, granted I assume that from the album art rather than the lyrics given they ain't Megadeth, they're not gonna make it easy to hear
@@nickrustyson8124.
Funnily enough, that's what "Disposable Heroes" on the same album is about.
Me: "Hey, we haven't heard from Todd in a while, I hope everything is okay..."
Me looking at the length of this video: "Oh, okay, that explains it."
If he was okay before making this video, doing the research for this video probably hurt a lot.
If I'm not mistaken, he was right on schedule... One video every 4 weeks. His last Trainwreckords was 4 weeks ago, so...
Some say he was so deep in his work producing his magnum opus "TRAINWRECKORDS: Edgar Winter and L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth"" that there were rumours that he had died.
Now, your more cynical observers have disagreed with this version of events, saying that he had actually disappeared because he was in hiding from various world governments for various crimes, that he was tightly in control of his twitter account, and that he had never even liked 80's music and only returned to it because he wanted some of that youtube ad revenue
He also took September off I think.
@@EpicB I guss you could say he *woke up when September ended*
"LET ME IN!" is my favorite bit since the existential montage from "Took a Pill in Ibiza".
And the montage showing the agonies having Body Like a Backroad stuck in your head
Also the apocalypse joke from the Funkytown OHW
“Do do do do, I wish that food still existed...”
Okay, y’all really need to watch this before the Scientologists either take the video down or make Todd disappear
Relax. Todd’s probably going to be fine. Last time Scientology went after non scientologists online they took a major L and never really recovered.
We'll sue you! Yeah, we'll sue you!
Here comes the Squirrel Busters!!!!
I had a vision of him listing all the Patrons as "John Smith" like the South Park episode
My BF has downloaded the episode just in case x
My husband introduced this review to me back in November while we were on our honeymoon in northern Michigan and we actually spent some time looking more into the album and giggling and some of the goofiness we found. So to me, Mission Earth brings back lovely memories of my honeymoon with my dorky and amazing husband 😂😂
Still married ?
@@Galvatronover Yup! About to celebrate our first anniversary next month!
Why would you ask that??
Aww that's so cute and fun
I hope you guys are doing well and still watching this review together
@@janjanbinks1710 Thanks so much! We’re doing great and planning an overnight trip for our first anniversary. We’re going to listen to the review again on the way there 😂❤️
Awwww
I don't think I deserve Todd for how much effort he puts in this. this is probably his most fascinating video
His masterpiece indeed
Glad to see I'm not the only one that thought this. Bravo, Todd. This was thoroughly interesting throughout.
It's funny, I say that one video is the best video he'll ever make and then he does THIS
I like to think Todd moved to LA just to convert to Scientology as “research” for this episode
Although, I will say that I still probably prefer Am I The Only One as this one isn't quite as rewatchable
"Joy City" sounds like an 80s TV intro to a series about a family running a dilapidated theme park with quirky accidents, ramshackle attractions and questionable morals. I think, I should write a series of 10 books about that (and maybe found a religion on its basis).
'With hilarious consequences!' Coming soon to Comedy Central.
So in other words, a song about Action Park in New Jersey? Although that place had constant real-life accidents and even deaths that happened there?
Go for it.
Shut up and take my money!
What happens when Danny Zuko and Danny Masterton inherit a spooky old sci-fi theme park?! Oh those summer nights....of sexual assault and hook-ups with your male pilot buddies under the watchful eye of the groundskeeper who just might be Xenu. Only on Fox.
Is this the first Trainwreckords episode that’s actually longer than the album it’s covering?
I think so, kind of in the same way that his One-Hit Wonderland video on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is shorter than THAT song (the full version, anyway). Then again, there's so much to say on the history of this album and on all the songs, I guess it could justify being this long.
Yeah I was really surprised by the length when he went over all the songs. Something's that sold as a rock opera type theme album I would expect to be longer
@@merchantfan Right? Especially considering this is supposed to be some kind of album adaptation of these books, and a lot of these songs are about things that might as well be outtakes! Though I have to wonder if that's on account of a lot more of the actual books' content being way more leaning towards Scientology, and Winter wanted to make this album accessible to everyone as well or something? Who knows.
I read the series in high school in the 90s (knowing nothing about LRH or Scientology) and rooted for Soltan Gris the entire way through thinking that's how it was supposed to be read. Jet Heller (even his name, jeez) was too much of a football jock/pretty boy/Flash Gordon that was always too perfect to like. Gris was the underdog working man literally just doing his job. Was very disappointed in the end.
justice for soltan gris 😔
The way he's described, he reminds me of Squidward.
I suspect the reason Edgar Winter is so reluctant to pin himself down re his position within the Church is because they (officially don't) have a policy of "Disconnection," where if you badmouth them, everyone in the Church has to completely shun you, regardless of whether they're a friend, relative, spouse or whatever. Plus they have a tendency to use information disclosed in auditing sessions against former members.
They officially DO-Leah Remini
And that is why im not religious
Of _all the places_ I would find one of your comments...
This just makes me realize that Scientology has more in common with the Jehovah’s Witnesses than I first thought. Now I hate both groups equally.
Fancy seeing Jago commenting on a Scientology video.
Hi! Masochist here! I read all ten volumes of this mess in the late 80s (I was in my early teens and was still hadn’t quite figured out what “good” science fiction was yet). At the time the sex and violence was really over the top (and as a dumb kid, that’s probably what enticed me to read it through to the end). I hadn’t known what the deal was with Scientology at the time and figured it was just some kind of self-help thing. Years later, when I learned more about the “religion”, the subtext in Mission: Earth (including the anti-Psych stuff) stood out like a neon sign.
I also owned a cassette copy of the album (which I bought in 1989, if that helps in the “Did it come out in 1986 or 1989” argument), so a lot of these songs are indelibly etched into my grey matter. The album seems closer to Douglas Adams than L Ron Hubbard though, in that they’re “Mostly Harmless.”
@@themadmattster9647 i wonder if Mr. Young's self-insert happens to go by the name Soltan Gris
Did the story ever linger in your mind enough to recall it nowadays? If so were there any insane tidbits Todd left out?
@Brian Geers …Well the etching in your gray matter didn’t seem to destroy your better sensibilities or sense of humor! 😂 Great story!
One thing Todd forgot to mention about the 2nd heroin song is that Edgar's brother was hopelessly addicted to heroin for most of his life. I feel like that might've had some more influence from Edgar than elron
this is the first time i have legit loved a Trainwrecks album cover. props to the artist whoever they are
Their talents were wasted on this...
@@eamonndeane587 imagine your most known accomplishment being the cover to the edgar winter/l ron hubbard album... F
It's a cover that deserves to be on a better album than this, that's for sure.
@@giotronq As long as you say the second part quiet it sounds impressive.
Dick Zimmerman and Gerry Grace for what it's worth.
That "And now... our feature presentation" slide hits right in the nostalgia bone.
Reminds me of how my sister watched our VHS copy of Ernest Saves Christmas so much she wound up not only breaking the tape but also the player while trying to “fix it”…ah, good times
Yes
I felt extremely called out by it
Same.
THE OUTSIDERS:
Ponyboy
Dallas
Johnny
Cherry
Sodapop
Darrell
Two-Bit
Steve
Bob
Six Pack
Dad
E.T.
Bumblebee Tuna
Clamshell
Inspector Gadget
Payless Shoes
Death
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
Kid Cuisine
&
Johnny, played by Johnny Cash
Todd recreating the "Let Me In" skit from Eric Andre has made my entire week.
The fact it's a scientology building makes it even funnier
I’d say the dislikes were from Scientologists, but they’re not allowed to consume media that criticizes the church so🤷♀️
The singular dislike?
They wouldn't need to watch it, they could just come and downvote it.
Church leaders don’t need to follow those rules. It was probably them
I mean it wouldn’t be impossible if a few people on their social media team tried an unsuccessful downvote campaign, they had an information war with Wikipedia that got them IP banned
*THIS IS WHAT TODD ACTUALLY BELIEVES.*
“You guessed it, Frank Stallone.” Wasn’t expecting a Norm reference, made my day. Nice little tribute.
So glad I'm not the only one who noticed that
@@connorshelton9535 or so the Germans would have us believe...
Came here to say the same exact thing.
I wonder where Todd gets his ideas from
Hey Todd, have you heard of the Mangrate?
For a guy who wrote well enough to start a cult, Ron really couldn’t think of any synonyms for sexy?
We're talking about a guy who was able to pump out a novel within 24 hours. You don't do that with a backlog of synonyms and antonyms. (yes, I wish I was joking...)
@@godozo What the fuck was he on Speed or some shit? How do you do that?
And how bad was it?
@@FusionFullForce He would've gotten away with it ok in say, 1954, but for anything beyond 1976 it was very, very, hopelessly bad.
@@FusionFullForce In that era, pretty much everyone writing sci-fi at that time was subsisting off of a fun combination of speed, acid, and cocaine.
@@FusionFullForce - words cannot describe how bad his writing was. Or maybe it was brilliant. Don't think of it as a story, because there isn't any story. His writing is what depression feels like. If you are depressed and someone in your life doesn't understand what that is like have them read Battlefield Earth. They will understand. And possibly commit suicide. I think in complete honesty that L Ron Hubbard's writing was attempted murder. He was trying to murder his readers with psychotic boredom.
God hearing Linkara reading lines from L. Ron Hubbard is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a minute.
I had to confirm that’s who I was hearing lol
Some of your finest work, Todd. A full-blown 45 minute documentary about an unbelievably strange cultural artifact. No one does what you do. Cheers!
Fully agree, this was an awesome one!!
Badada da
Badada doo
I about died laughin'
How about you!?!😆
And somehow not as weird as Top 10 90's Buses.
Jenny Nicholson is quite similar in that sense
Cultural? Or cult-ural?
Todd doing a “You Guessed it, Frank Stallone” joke is the perfect way to subtlety honor Norm. Hell yeah dude.
I've read about as much of Mission Earth as Todd has, and let me tell you, he's not kidding about how weird and bad it is. Do not subject yourself to it, it's not the fun kind of bad.
He mentioned the Dragonriders series. If everyone wants to experience mid twentieth century sci fi/fantasy I'd say read those and leave it at that. Mission Earth may be the low point but a lot of the rest is closer to Hubbard than McCaffrey.
@@GriffinPilgrim What about Dune? The first Dune novel was published in 1965 and is still one of the best ever written. People still know quotes from Dune without even knowing that's where they're from.
@@WinterReflections I overstated it, there are few other good ones. Personally I found Dune a bit dry (pun entirely intended) but I don't deny the quality. But I do think the majority of the speculative fiction literature produced from the 60s to the 70s was pretty samey and bad, especially compared to what came before (Verne, Lovecraft, Tolkien) and what came after (Pratchett, Moore, Gaiman).
Yeah. The premise is pretty good but the execution is woof.
I know I read the first one and I quit when whats-his-name got involved with a sado chick and he got a new dick.
This is a thing that happened in these books.
@@duckrutt the who what now
Thanks to Todd's warnings on Twitter, this has been the fastest I've ever clicked on a Trainwreckords video.
In my very early 20's when "Battlefield Earth" came out, I fell in love with that book (I was, and remain, a fan of Pulp Fiction as a genre), and to this day, it is the only thing by Hubbard that I actually finished. Because, based on my love for that book, I ran right out and bought the hardcover release of "Mission Earth" Volume One "The Invaders Plan" ... and I couldn't believe it was written by the same author. I tried getting into it several times, but just couldn't. Simply put, it was awful. I can't even recall now anything about it. That book killed any interest I had in acquiring any of his older writings. This was before I knew anything about his involvement in Scientology, as I was pretty naive. A few years later, a girlfriend started gushing to me about a book she was reading called "Dianetics". What she was saying about it sounded vaguely interesting, but highly unusual, and a bit suspect. She then dropped the author's name, and I said, "Wait. Who?!?" To this day, I still have trouble believing that the author of one of my favorite pulp sci-fi books could write such horrible dreck and be such a bad person to boot.
LRH charged The Apollo Stars a dollar for every “wrong” note.
On a JAZZ album.
Now I'm wondering how much he got.
$4.62?
It's certainly no "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft".
This comment deserves more likes.
No turns out that was a good song. Well I do think the title song "Mission Earth" is okay. I'm not sure about the others.
Didn't think I'd hear Linkara in a Todd video again. Oddly nostalgic.
Right? I was like... Hang on, that's not Todd's voice!
Guess they're still friends, despite not working together any more? Cool.
@@coredumperror Yeah, Linkara's still good with most of the ex-Channel Awesome members himself. I know he's mainly disappointed by The Cinema Snob for staying with Doug's brand, though.
Oh that's who it is. I thought that I recognized the voice.
"Joy City" sounds like something Huey Lewis would write for Phil Collins.
39:15 = You know, I've been enjoying Todd's videos for a while now. Watched a bunch. And for the life of me, I still can't figure out his taste in music. Music I'm certain he'd like he ends up despising, and music I think he (or anyone) would hate, he loves. I routinely fail to predict how he'll respond...like here. I'm glad this song sparks joy in Todd, but good God Almighty that is the cheesiest of cheeseball songs...it's like saying you can't stop rocking out to the opening theme of Growing Pains.
Legit, I was surprised too. Not even judging, it's cheery and I'm sure it's fun to listen to if you're into it, but I also was left wondering if it's just cuz I was born in the latter half of the 90s and that sound was dated to me even as a kid, if I just couldn't appreciate good music cuz I'm a filthy gen Z. I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who is like, "....Yeah, Todd?"
I'm glad someone else heard the TV theme song aspect to it...it didn't make me feel nostalgic at all. Just slightly queasy.
I am Todd's age and....I kinda...sorta get it?? But I wouldn't die on a cross for it. I would call it 'pleasant', not 'revolutionary', I think thats along the lines of what he means here too...? There is just a warm nostalgic feeling to it. The cheese sound and lyrics kinda makes it have that. It has a bland but just upbeat dated enough feel, like, a long forgotten late night diner or hotel chain tv ad from your childhood that you haven't seen in years. Or like something you hear every time you go in a CVS or grocery store akin to Toto's "Rains in Africa", or other such cozy light jazz/Soft Rock trash. It isn't something you're gonna likely put on your Spotify list by conscious choice. But if it comes on while you shop, you might be able to smile a bit and hum a few bars.
@@avosmash2121 Yeah that's what I'm assuming I missed here. Lord knows I, a 25-year-old woman, am still endeared to songs from Disney channel originals from the 2000s, and the Bratz Rock Angelz soundtrack, but couldn't defend that to anyone who wasn't a kid in that specific time range. Sure there were 80s reruns in there, but I think I just can't get into the mindset. You definitely do a good job of explaining it though.
Todd's tastes seem to lean more towards pop music with slick production. He's definitely a lot more lenient towards the echo-chambered, auto-tuned numbers that dominate modern pop and hip-hop. He and I often agree on which songs are bad, but it's a crapshoot when I go through his "10 best" lists as to whether I'll agree with him. It's probably also a generational thing, I'm older than Todd by a good amount and have more of a rock background.
In case anyone is curious, the person who voices the Narrator in this video is Linkara and the person who recites the burlesque song lyrics is Maggie Mae Fish.
Ah, I thought I recognized his voice. Glad to hear Linkara again. Thanks for the Intel, dude.
"An album about lord of the rings" like almost the entire discography and inspiration for Led Zeppelin
This 💯
Only a few Zeppelin songs have LOTR references. Cirith Ungol is the true Tolkien house band.
@@robwalsh9843 What about Blind Guardian? They actually wrote a whole album based off of the Simarillion.
I once heard that during the recording of Power of Source, The Apollo Stars had to pay L. Ron Hubbard a dollar for every mistake they made.
Power of Source is a jazz record.
Fucking stonks.
that's a lot of billion-year contracts
Nah, they could get out of it by just making the same mistake again and then it's not a mistake anymore, it's on purpose
Heard about that too from the "This Exists" series. Also talks about a Kidz Bop version of "Teach Me" with children vocals. Sounds after school special-esque, but now knowing of the lyrics origins, is just jarring.
I grew up with this album!
We weren't Scientologists; my father was just an Edgar Winter fan.
I am so sorry!
the segment at about ten minutes in where todd delves into the l. ron hubbard foundation book is genuinely one of the creepiest things i've ever seen on this show. like literally everything venerating him is some of the most cringey, disturbing televangelism i've ever seen. and the "psychiatry kills" garbage was nauseating to listen to. thank you for doing all the research for this video. i'm sure it wasn't easy to get through. well done, todd.
The kind of congratulatory circlejerkery of Hubbard in those books feels like North Korean propaganda.
@@supernintendo182 Hey, at least the Kims are decent writers.
@@s.bakyhnh1756 with all due respect, how would you know that?
@@supernintendo182 yeah at least the Kim's have some level of competence I'm not really sure what they're competent in but certainly they are more competent than Hubbard
and also awfully convenient that the science that could explain what his religion is doing is the main one they tell people to avoid.
Very strange.
Todd isn’t kidding about enduring legacy of some of EW’s songs. “Free ride” is one of the songs on rotation for mission breakout at Disneyland.
a place where, and this is true, the rides are not actually free
That song was also in the original Power Rangers movie when the unmorphed Rangers are rollerblading through the city
It was in Dazed and Confused. 'Nuff said.
There's the South Park episode where Chef joins Scientology, and they explain it in brief. Even though they flashed "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" across the screen, I thought there was no way. They must be messing with us, right? I'm still a bit baffled that something like this exists.
Do you know from what season and episode it is?
@@さんごのみや花 Season 9's "Trapped in the Closet" OP got it confused with "Return of Chef", which was a few episodes later
Yeah I remembered that episode and was like "oh haha, South Park is making fun of them..." well I was surprised when I googled it!
Everything they said about what Scientology believes is true. You only find out what their creation myth is and most of the crazy alien shit when you reach OT or Operating Thetan level III. By that point you have to have been in the church for years and have to have spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on auditing. So sunk cost fallacy keeps most people from leaving at that point. They tell people that learning the truth before you are prepared with years of "proper" auditing can actually give you pneumonia and/or kill you. When you learn about Xenu they lock you in a room and then bring in a locked briefcase which has a photocopy of Hubbard's actual handwritten notes on Xenu and Teegeyak. They basically leave you in the room to figure it out. But to be honest South Park wasn't lying at all. You can read the source materials for yourself they were leaked onto the internet in the early nineties if memory serves. Even the part about spaceships looking like DC8s is in there.
Wait, isn't Chef voiced by Isaac Hayes?
...well, at least that man had a sense of humor, I guess.
I have written this on previous videos as well, but Todd is one of the few creators on TH-cam that shows visible improvement with every new video, which is so impressive for someone who's been doing this for over a decade now.
Even more impressive when you consider Todd's life changes through his career and his struggles with depression. It seems his struggles have made him stronger and more determined.
I feel like Todd is very aware of his weaknesses and strengths and can therefore really hone in on what he’s good at, play to his strengths, and make some killer content
Yep, it's very telling if you go back to his Channel Awesome pop reviews. Those were very much of their time and i'm so glad he got away from the yellman schtick & the unfunny skits.
@@joshthefunkdoc Completely agree. I'm glad almost everyone who was involved Sir-Yells-A-Lot and his unfunny skits had left too. Doog was fun to watch at one point, but the dude's lost his magic, and lost his way. Definitely sounds like he's lost his mind too. I once had major respect for Doog, because he was able to bring together so many talented people and have them all interacting with each other in one way or another, and them managing to carve out unique followings for each of themselves and their work, but now, it's just a huge disastrous mess for Doug. What a shame. He's become the "But The Chart Says", guy now. Glad to see that most of the individual former ca members are doing well. Like Todd, Joe, Rap Critic, Linkara, Film Brain(I think?) etc., and they're each doing better than ever WITHOUT Doug's stupid attempts of having them do boring, unfunny skits which NOBODY liked. It was like struggling to watch bad, rejected SNL skits. Which doug STILL doesn't understand to this day. I think everyone prefers the less screamy Todd who has actual funny skits. Again, Doug just can't comprehend how to do funny skits right. He just shows his lack of understanding and knowledge about something, screams about it for way too long, makes these skits that bore you to tears and make your ears bleed, and doug just shows no self-awareness and is way too full of himself, and just desperately throws shit at the wall and sees what sticks and just throws basic knowledge that anyone watching would already know, back at you. It's painful to watch and why I haven't gone back to see Doug's reviews, in some time. And why I'm done with his shit. It's childish and painfully unfunny. While the other former associates of ca have for the most part, matured, and shown that they didn't need doug to succeed, doug keeps pretending, also screaming and flailing his arms around, like he's trying to be the Wacky-Waving-Inflatable-Arm-Flailing-TubeMan, which is just annoying and obnoxious. It was funny... when I was 15. Not anymore. It's time doug realized that, but since it's "The Doug Walker Show!' time, all the time over at channel awesome now, I highly doubt the dude will listen to anyone besides himself. Since it's very hard to hear anyone else when you're screaming and flailing your arms around like a crazy person. But glad to see Todd and Joe doing well. They've always been my 2 favorite former ca youtubers. They've managed to become successful and make actual businesses and actual merch. Good on them.
@@shawnfields2369 The "screamy" Todd that I discovered in 2010 was something I really loved at the time, because as a freshman in college at the height of the club pop era I felt smothered by all the terrible loud party music around me, and Todd provided the catharsis that I needed at the time. However, as I've grown older I barely listen to pop music or hear it in the wild anymore, and when I go back and re-watch Todd's old videos the amount of visceral anger is kind of grating to me now. I feel like I've matured along with Todd.
Plus the club pop era at the turn of the 2010s ended up being a unique era where the bad music was bad in a particularly loud and ridiculous way, something pop music itself couldn't sustain for very long, and Todd's shift in style has reflected that shift.
Linkara is the only person you could've had read from a shitty sci-fi book by a deranged cult leader and really capture the ridiculous tone.
He did an excellent job really.
Yeah. I find it funny I recognized his voice as soon as I heard it
@Justin Butler I wouldn't call him that unless you are trying to insult him. That is what people call him to make fun of him.
Amazing work.
@@nicklane6084 People call him that because its funny and iconic. Im guessing you mean only plays right?? They like Linkara, and i havent heard anyone else saying it negatively
A few days now since this was posted, I went to listen to that "Space Jazz" album. My takeaway from listening to that: Space Jazz shows that you don't have to be Kate Bush or Peter Gabriel to use a Fairlight CMI, but it most certainly helps. Also, a good deal of it sounds like its music from a lesser forgotten JRPG game.
Space Jazz sounds a lot like a bunch of Hans Zimmer-style mockups intended to be dubbed over/replaced with real instruments. Except they forgot to dub them over with real instruments.
Nice, could it be used for vaporwave? I have to find it now
It's somewhat ironic that this insignificant Synth-Jazz Fusion is on Spotify, while Edgar Winters' collaborative Magnum Opus is not.
If you want great Space Jazz, just listen to some of Yoko Kanno's immaculate work for Cowboy Bebop.
Also, it's amazing that Hubbard was the *first* one to write a "literary soundtrack" 10 years after Camel recorded "The Snow Goose". And 100 years after Richard Strauss composed "Also sprach Zarathustra".
Edgar Winter's voice expands over 4 and a half octaves,and he is famous for it,why he is singing like that in this record is beyond me.
Between my low-medium baritone and my surprising falsetto I can reach 4 octaves on a bad day... The problem is that I sing well in one of them, if that.
@@ΓρηγόρηςΤ-φ5τ difference is Edgar sings perfectly in all of them.
Fun Fact: Edgar Winter didnt think much of Maneater when John Oates played it for him, but it became a huge hit. Coincidence you sang maneater in the video?
I love how that "foggy pot" line somehow baffled Todd more than "I'll swang me another girl yessiree"
Gotta get some jam to go with my foggy pot
@@Brillemeister Don't forget your soy latte and get it double shot-ay.
It will go to your body and you know you're satisfied.
@@DrZuluGaming But it would give you a mind full of decavities.
"I'll swang me another girl, yessiree" at least makes sense in spite of its bafflingly awful wording; it's an open-faced hookup metaphor. "Foggy pot" meanwhile is completely out of place and indecipherable.
@@VinchVolt I'd believe that if the line that followed wasn't "Swaaaaaang, new city dancing yeah"
I read all of these back in the 80s as they came out, and yes, they’re terrible. Perfect for a teenage boy, though, lots of manly men, sniveling villains, and big breasted women. I picked up the album on cassette in a cutout bin in the early 90s, played it once, and soon traded it in. I few years ago a came across the CD and bought it… still terrible.
I had a friend that worked at a bookstore and he’d give me his 50% discount on anything I wanted. The Scientology books, including both Battlefield and Mission: Earth, were excepted - the publisher refused to allow any discounts.
Edgar Winter is pretty good though.
I’m having so much fun reading these book reviews in the comments. The series sounds uniquely terrible.
I was probably 13 or 14 when I started reading these, as a relative who was reading them finished and passed them on. The first one wasn’t horrible, it was an interesting take on a few classic tropes. And if it ended with the first book (keeping in mind I haven’t read it in 36ish years) I might even sort of recommend it. But they went downhill fast. I know I finished the second, and probably the third, but that was it. And they weren’t good.
Todd, I am a longtime fan and a professional historian, and I just want to say this is an excellent piece! This may be my favorite video of yours to date. The historical and cultural scholarship you've engaged in here is really exceptional. Keep up the good work!
gotta be honest this is alan walker sitting in a piano ranting music from the past decade
A 43 MINUTE VIDEO? Not only do the stores think its Christmas already but I guess Todd does as well!
Ikr we're not even in late October
As someone who reads a lot of shitty science fiction, this made me even less inclined to read L Ron.
Also worth noting that the way the NYT best seller list doesn't actually look at books sold, it looks at books shipped to sellers.
all shipment or pre-orders?
As the daughter of one of the bestselling authors of the 1990s ("Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" et al), back then my dad says that sales clerks and cashiers had to physically write down which books people were ordering if it was particularly surprising at the checkout, so if they were already keeping tallies on you, you had a decent chance of staying on that list. He suggests that the books were small and next to the cash register, so the cashiers just knew about them and kept it in their tallies, which is the best excuse he had for how a tiny satirical book series managed to make it into the top ten books sold each year, twice, and number one on the NYT. And were I a cashier back then, and saw people coming into the store buying five or six copies of these books, I'd notice enough to take tallies, if only to note how many forests were obliterated for their existence. There could have been plenty of books that sold better, that no one cared enough to check if they sold. Remember, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Now he writes Spillane/Runyonesque noir novels about clown detectives in a circus ghetto ("Rex Koko, Private Clown"), and it's a million times more interesting to read than Mission Earth. Ron just doesn't have a sense of humor.
Ah, so this is why Francis Ford Coppola went back to re-edit The Godfather Part III. Because of this album. Finally restoring the director's vision.
This album, as well as the movie version of Battlefield Earth, both prove why Scientology is founded on complete bullshit.
@@dw89music73 Do you think that the church will be ok with funding my sci-fi themed Godfather fan-fiction into a feature film? No changes to the original screenplay, it's literally the exact plot of the first Godfather but the setting is in space.
@@dw89music73 if i recall correctly, hubbard at one point said that there was more money/attention in creating a religion than there was in creating a sci-fi story, so you aren’t wrong
I've rarely been as disappointed by a movie as i was with Godfather 3. It was so boring that I had stop watching at the point where Michael's starts singing some song to him.
Man, it was a treat to hear Linkara reading out lines from the book. Love that guy!
Knew it sounded familiar.
I tried to read _Mission Earth_ back in the '80s; and couldn't even get halfway through the first volume, it was so bad. And I read a LOT of absolute crap sci-fi and fantasy back then; all the pulp stuff. It was just such a slog. The dialog was so stilted and artificial, the storytelling so rambling, repetitive, and flatly boring that even my sci-fi-obsessed teenage brain could not manage more than a few chapters before giving up in disgust -- and I managed to get through all of _Atlas Shrugged_ without my brain melting. This series desperately needed a competent editor; which, while there was never any chance the series was going to be good, could have at least made it readable.
Along with the raging anti-psychology/psychiatry stuff, the homophobia, and the glaring misogyny; what a lot of people don't mention is the glaring antisemitism in both _Battlefield Earth_ and the _Mission Earth_ books. I guess it doesn't get noticed as much, probably because it's somewhat more subtle than the flat-out preaching the other themes get. That is, as much as Hubbard could be subtle about anything, which wasn't very. Crude antisemitic stereotypes abound throughout all his works.
Do you remember any examples of antisemitism in the books? I know Hubbard is a piece of shit but I didn't know it went that far
@@Byzas000 He basically plays up the old stereotypes of Jews as obsessed with money, unscrupulous, and uses the more common negative physical caricatures of Jews common to antisemitic propaganda. Any evil character in his books who is a banker or otherwise involved with money/finance is portrayed using these stereotypes.
I think antisemitism can be used as a good inspiration especially in science fiction when it shows discrimination. The fact that the psychlos are style as Jewish looking pretty much shows you the direction they were going however.
I find the best way to read the series is to cut all the bullshit, so like 95%, and just keep the few scenes that are so over the top nuts that they feel like they were pulled from the dark corners of 4chan (which would explain all the racism, qeerphobia and anti-Semitism)
@@Byzas000 Oh you never heard the coat hanger story from his son. He was kicked out of the Navy multiple times.
Greatest sentence ever written. "It was sexy".
L. Ron Hubbard certainly seemed to think so.
“It was SEXY!”
Linkara’s read of that line needs to be a meme.
But it had comedy in it, don’t forget!
It was so good, he wrote it another like 10 times in that paragraph alone.
I'll give a pass on Beck since his parents have been in the Co$ since he was born, so he's one of the few people who were raised in it instead of converting to it.
He also left Scientology a few years back
He actually always insisted that he didn’t follow the religious stuff, he actually identifies as Jewish but he’s never really been interested in religion. He has a song on one of his old demo tapes called Watchtower Magazine that is basically about his alienation from his parents because of their Scientologist beliefs.
I believe the same is also true of Elisabeth Moss, intriguingly.
Happy to hear he eventually blew--and I hope he has a halfway-decent relationship with his parents (or they eventually patch things up if that's not the case). Seems like a good guy.
I thought beck was a girl
It's worth mentioning there is an outstanding site that picks apart every detail of the Mission Earth books, chapter by chapter, entitled: "Mission Spork." It's vastly more entertaining than the books themselves. (P.S.: Thank you for the mention! I saw it after writing this comment.)
Link ?
I posted a link last night, but TH-cam doesn’t seem to allow posted links. Best I could say is to simply Google for that term “mission spork.”
@Galvatronover dont think you can link on youtube comments anymore
It speaks to Edgar Winter's quality that the worst music he could make out of L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth, with lyrics dictated by Hubbard personally, was just mediocre and unfitting, not anything close to the disaster that is the source material.
Yeah! Like... it's actually kinda listenable? Todd gave us the warning, Winter is no-joke awesome and his music might just be Good. Some... actually was.
So nice to hear Lewis chewing the scenery with those line reads.
Funnily enough, "A return to Rock's roots, but highly experimental" is basically the creation of Post-Rock which was actually happening around a similar time with Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden in 1988, Laughing Stock in 1991 and Slint's Spiderland also in 1991. None of these albums sound like Mission earth though.
Of course Spirit of Eden didn't sound like Mission Earth, because Spirit of Eden is freakin' incredible.
@@gracecarpinter8623 based
Talk Talk's lyrics are also very religious!
@@michaelcooke5695 I would say their lyrics were more spiritual, rather than religious. I think Godley & Creme's "Goodbye Blue Sky" is a better example of religious lyrics.
Oddly, at first when I heard Cry Out, I thought it sounded similar to Two Hearts by Phil Collins. having relistened to it, made me realise that what reminded me of it were the "thud" drums.
I'm glad someone addressed the threat of bawdy song on our culture
I need an audiobook of Linkara reading all 10 MISSION EARTH books this instant. Todd's got an Audible sponsorship, so he can make this happen!
Likara, the great Linkara
Get him out of here, get his jacket!
It's nice to hear his voice somewhat subdued and not shrilly reverberating off the walls of his living room.
Jesse, I’m seeing you out in the wild! It’s Christian from DT. Always wild to see someone on another channel and super agree. Let’s get Todd that sponsorship
1) I'm pretty sure he's already been sponsored by Audible before, and 2) I think they'd both be better off not being associated with this series
I'm reminded of Billy Idol writing a song about Neuromancer. Not the same situation at all of course, but still a guy trying to write pop music about a sci-fi novel he doesn't understand and knows nothing about.
The difference of course is that at least Neuromancer is a good book.
He also did that super upbeat sounding song about heroin too! Omg, Good spot! That’s weird.
spacers lot is the most billy idol like, but I like to play it with 50 percent more speed
The reading of the quotes from Soltan Gris made me picture him as Squidward, and now I kind of want to read the books so I can laugh my way through them with that mental image.
Mission Bikini Bottom
Lol yeah that’s just how linkara sounds
I'll never watch Atop the Fourth Wall the same way.
Yeah it's just how Linkara sounds although I think "can't you just go away and let someone be quietly miserable?" sounds like something Squidward would say.
[squidward voice] And it was SEXY!
Nice Oktoberfest stock footage at 39:55. Incidentally, the idea of a planet where it's always Oktoberfest is absolutely terrifying.