Subterranean Homesick Alien

By Peter Nekrasov

Rudy and Jana sat in the front of their spacecraft, zooming at the speed of sound. They had already been traveling for two months together, but they were still a long distance away from their home planet of KUNI. They were ambassadors sent to the distant planet of WLOP to make sure their broadcast was up to code. Finding everything okay, they were finally heading home.

A tense moment had just passed: Rudy finally proclaimed his love for Jana, to which Jana replied that she already had a lover, who lived on KIDA. It was now quiet between them.

“Want to listen to the radio?” Jana asked, attempting to diffuse the awkwardness. Rudy did not answer, concentrating on the ship’s control panel. Jana fiddled with the dial, scrolling through countless options: KLON 91.785 “Space Rock” which Jana only really enjoyed when she was alone, KQQQ 92.787 “Cygnus Hits” which played dreadful contemporary hits, and KMOO 92.791 “The Moon”—broadcasted from an actual moon in the Andromeda Galaxy. What an uninspired name, Jana thought to herself. The radio receiver on their spacecraft was able pick up radio micro-frequencies that were broadcasted across a few different galaxies. Their home planet KUNI hosted 99.245, and it played ambient techno—they called it “Higher Intelligence Dance Music”—but neither of them were in the mood to dance. Continuing to scroll through the stations in search of something suitable, Jana stumbled upon a station she had never seen before: 92.956. No call sign appeared on the screen.

“92.956. Do you know where that is?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Rudy replied.

All they could hear was bizarre vocalizations of female voices singing in reverse over the foreign sounds of acoustic guitars. What a nightmare, Jana thought to herself.

“Is your radio broken?” she asked.

“It better not be,” Rudy replied. “It’s new, I installed it just before we left.”

Jana wished she could listen to her true favorite singer, a woman by the name of Lina Cat. Jana could listen to her voice for hours, swooning over her melodies. Lina reminded Jana of her lover on KIDA; they always stayed up late listening to Lina and talking about their plans for the future. In this way, Lina’s music has a sentimental value to Jana. Unfortunately, the spacecraft was too far away to tune in to her station, and Jana was too far away from her darling.

When Ximon and the rest of the Kidans touched down from space, they did not make a sound. They were careful to land in an empty field in Indiana, where there was no possibility of being spotted by civilians or UFO hunters. The spacecraft sat in the wheat field for a few brief minutes as the Kidans and their recording equipment unloaded onto the grass.

Their initial aim had been to simply tap into the mass data flow to intercept information that could be useful in understanding the newly discovered human race. While they did bring a few cameras, they believed that the most crucial elements to understanding a species all had to do with sound: the language of the people, the music of its culture, the quality of their voices. But there was also an immense beauty in their experience of new sounds, and on a personal level, Ximon and the Kidans listened because they were fascinated by the artistry in everyday things. Before they landed, they watched the globe sitting with a quiet hum, vibrating unknowingly, present in the collective force of millions of small noises: car alarms, rustling leaves, conversations. They wanted to record the harmony of noises and relay it to the public intersphere by turning the planet into a station, as they had done with their home planet of KIDA and countless other celestial bodies. To the Kidans, it was all music.

The Kidans have several listening probes built into their organisms, ears tuned beyond regular sound frequencies. While they could hear normally, like humans, they could also hear radio waves and convert the information into sound. Their brains allowed them to broadcast and communicate to each other using radio frequencies, but only over short distances, so they brought all the equipment they needed in order to turn the planet into a radio station and broadcast its music to the surrounding galaxies. Although Earth already had plenty of radio stations set up, the Kidans could not tune in to the waves unless they were in close proximity to a transmitter.

The Kidans migrated from the wheat field toward a highway, where they deployed one of their jet-propelled vehicles. It looked nothing like the humans’ automobiles, and they were very much aware of their conspicuousness, but they were safe using the vehicle so long as there were no other cars on the road.

After driving for 2 hours on Route 74, Ximon grew hungry and convinced the group to stop at a nearby convenience store. Ximon and two others walked in, prepared to gawk at the unfamiliar Lays chips and Coca-Cola. They were surprised to hear music playing inside—the song was “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, which had just last week become a number one hit. To the Kidans, the song sounded like a shameless imitation of Lina Cat’s “Two Hearts, One Star,” a catchy bubblegum song from Cat’s dance-pop period. For this, Ximon thought, I will not even bother to take out my recording equipment. Ximon grabbed bags of chips and candy bars off the shelves, prepared to devour anything he could find. Unfamiliar with Earth’s system of monetary transaction and not having any money to begin with, Ximon walked straight out of the store, his alien countenance unsettling enough to convince the cashier not to stop him. Stuffing his face with junk food, Ximon reentered the vehicle, put a Lina Cat cassette into the tape deck, and thought about home.

Unable to withstand Earth’s high-friction, gravelly road, their car broke down somewhere near Urbana, Illinois. Not having any other options, they took out their audio equipment and abandoned the car in a ditch. It was late at night, and walking across the town they mostly saw corn fields and white-picket fences. On Springfield Avenue, they encountered a group of college-aged kids on their way to a party. Ximon approached them and asked them where they were headed, and one of the kids told him they were going to a show at his friend’s house. Kind enough not to question the alien’s appearance, the kid invited Ximon and his friends to come along. The Kidans looked at each other, and then Ximon told them (via radio communication) that it was okay, that these people seemed trustworthy enough.  

It was a 15 minute walk, and when they got to 704 West High Street, they were greeted by a few kids smoking and drinking on the porch. It looked like any other old midwestern house—a quaint little home with white siding and a walkway. They went around to the back of the house where some band was playing live music: fast-paced adrenaline-soaked punk rock. Kids with spiky hair and Converse were dancing to the music. The Kidans hardly knew what a concert was—separated across wide intergalactic distances, the Kidans only experienced music through radio transmission. But they were amazed to find that they were witnessing a ritual surrounding the live generation and direct delivery of new sounds. Ximon set up the audio equipment and began recording surreptitiously, while the others took part in the ritual, doing what felt natural: moshing and thrashing with the human kids. The way Kidans danced was a bit different, their entire bodies vibrating with their arms splayed out in all direction. Even though they stood out, the Kidans still managed to fit in through their appreciation of the music.  

After the punk band finished their set, people stood around chatting and drinking beer as a few kids moved guitar amps around in preparation for the next act. The next band to perform was called The One Up Downstairs; though their style was much different from the previous band’s—they opted for cascading guitar arpeggios rather than distorted power chords—the poignant songs were a product of the same time and place: what it felt like to be a kid growing up in the Midwest.

Of course, all this was lost on Ximon and the Kidans, but they nonetheless deeply enjoyed the music of that night. The Kidans had entirely different instruments, most of them electronic in nature with antennas and oscillators—probably most closely resembling the earth instrument, the theremin. Guitars and drum sets were foreign to them, and so their initial aim to experience human culture began intersecting with their interest in technology as they examined the instruments and relayed their blueprints back to KIDA. Ximon was once a somewhat prominent electro-folk musician back on KIDA, and so he examined the band’s instruments with great curiosity and delight.

Ximon and his group migrated towards the West in search of new sounds. In Kansas they heard The Get Up Kids, in Texas they heard Spoon, in California they heard Weezer. Their proclivity for good music brought them to all sorts of curious places—bars, concert halls, grocery stores. The simplicity of their obsession with music made them amiable aliens, that is, when they weren’t stealing the musicians’ instruments. Though they danced kind of funny, they made many friends along their quest who showed them to concerts and gave them cassette tapes. They even got to meet some of the musicians personally—during the middle of a mediocre show by a Led Zeppelin cover band in a bar in Sante Fe, Ximon and his friend got up on stage and started singing along with the band before hijacking the microphone. Needless to say, Ximon and his friend were kicked out of the bar, even though they thought they were helping the band out.

On their tour of the West, Ximon found a spot in the desert where they could finally set up the radio transmission. He drilled holes into the ground, then erected the module and secured it with titanium bolts. He then dialed in the tower’s operating frequency, in accordance with the guidelines established by the Interplanetary Board of Interplanetary Transmissions. He slid a tape into the deck and began the tape transport at high-speed, checking the waveform on the visual scope. While Ximon could hear the radio broadcast coming up just fine, he also set up a nearby receiver to measure sound levels and check that the signal was undistorted. The receiver could also work so that the Kidans could modify the radio broadcast from afar and transmit data to Earth. Ximon connected to the audio transduction and relayed the signal, the sound of the Foo Fighters emerging from a speaker connected to the receiver. The visual scope indicated no distortion, no noise, no clipping. The channels were all balanced. 92.956 was up and broadcasting.

Now that the radio station was established, Ximon and his friends realized they would have to go back soon. A spacecraft was supposed to arrive next Friday at midnight to pick them up in the middle of the desert. Ximon and his friends would all have to say goodbye to 92.956 and board the ship to be taken back to their home planet of KIDA.  

One day before they left, Ximon and the Kidans ended up at a show at the Troubadour, a popular nightclub in West Hollywood, located on the border of Beverly Hills. The venue was known for hosting legendary hard rock acts of the 80s, like Guns N’ Roses and Poison. Tonight, a hot British band by the name of Radiohead was performing. They had just released an album called OK Computer, which was very well received by critics and fans alike. Of course, Ximon and his friends were not aware of most of this. They found out about the show a few days before from a poster pinned to a storefront in Los Angeles. Seeing the word “Radiohead” on the sign confused Ximon: the Kidans had radios built into their heads… was this a wanted poster, offering a reward for the capture of the radio-transmitting aliens? Did the government become aware of the aliens, who had the capability of transmitting and receiving radio waves through their brains? Reading the date at the bottom of the poster (June 13, 1997), the aliens decided to show up to the Troubadour to investigate.

When they got to the show, they were pleasantly surprised by the performance. Shortly after they arrived, Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitarist of the band, walked on stage and began strumming a few chords on the guitar. After a few measures, Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, walked out and began singing pristinely, and yet dramatically. He had kind of a weird appearance to him, Ximon thought, as he wore disheveled clothing and had a lazy eye. When he wasn’t singing into the microphone, Thom danced eccentrically, with his arms noodling to the sides, very similar to the way the Kidans danced. That’s odd, Ximon thought to himself. Ximon also couldn’t quite decipher the band’s lyrical themes: the first song seemed to be about some interstellar car crash, and the next song was about an anxious robot. It wasn’t until the band performed the song “Subterranean Homesick Alien” that Ximon started to understand what was going on. During the song, Thom began crooning passionately:

I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane

Late at night when I'm driving

Take me on board their beautiful ship

Show me the world as I'd love to see it.

Ximon looked to his friend and then looked back at Thom. He’s one of us, Ximon thought, Thom Yorke is one of the Kidans. This explained the poster and the name of the group and the band’s lyrics: Thom Yorke had become separated from the rest of the Kidans and created the band as a way to find his species again and get back in touch with them. Thom Yorke was a “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” and he was homesick for KIDA. Though Thom clearly tried to cover up his alien nature by wearing makeup and clothing, his true identity as a Kidan still showed by his odd appearance and his gauche (by human standards) dancing. Ximon recognized that only the Kidans could dance like wet noodles.

After the show, Ximon and his friends hatched a plan to rescue Thom. Their spacecraft was supposed to arrive to pick them up that night, so they had to move quickly. They stood outside the venue by the tour bus and waited until Thom got on. Then, they snuck onto the bus. After some confusion about how to operate the machine, one of Ximon’s friends began to drive the bus away down Santa Monica Boulevard, toward the desert where they were to meet the spacecraft. Ximon then tried to speak to Thom. While Thom seemed somewhat confused, and did not recognize Ximon directly, he could tell that Ximon was an alien, so he seemed to welcome the encounter. Ximon, wholeheartedly convinced by the performance he witnessed at the Troubador, did not ask Thom for any more proof that he was a Kidan. To some extent, Ximon believed that Thom was acting un-alienly due to post-traumatic stress; after being displaced from his home planet, Thom had forgotten the customs of KIDA and needed help becoming reacquainted with the language and culture. Ximon was more impressed by Thom’s musical talent, and once they got to the desert, Ximon and Thom and the rest of the Kidans boarded the ship and started their journey back home.  

On the spacecraft, Ximon and Thom spent a lot of time discussing music and showing one another songs from their own cultures. Ximon showed Thom all of KIDA’s electronic music synthesizers and interesting ways to modulate the sounds to form melodies. Thom and Ximon made lots of music together, and before they got back to KIDA, they assembled a set of ten songs. The set of songs was different from all of Thom’s previous work with Radiohead: the album sounded incredibly futuristic and experimental, featuring sounds produced by Ximon’s synthesizers and various samples of the aliens’ singing.

After arriving on the planet and living there for a few years, Thom decided to beam the album to his bandmates on Earth through the high-rate receiver Ximon set up in the desert. Thom decided he wanted the album to be called KIDA, after Ximon’s planet of course, but his bandmates seemed to misinterpret his message and labeled the album Kid A instead, thinking that the title was another one of Thom’s obscure, self-congratulatory enterprises (whatever “Kid A” means!). Though the release would have probably been considered extremely mediocre on Ximon’s planet, Kid A became pretty acclaimed on Earth. And while people on Earth were enjoying the album, no one even suspected that Thom was on a distant planet, far far from Earth, in a place called “home.”