Another Celebrity Affected by Scientology

Ok, I'm going into the wayback machine for this one, to talk to you about a celebrity who had the Scientology bug way back in 1986.

Im talking about the one, the only, Edgar Winter. You remember the songs Frankenstein and Free Ride, right? I wouldn't call those great songs, but they're respectible.

But in 1986, he had his big scientology album.



Ok, I'll give you a second to stop laughing at the album cover.

Mission Earth was inspired by L. Ron Hubbard's ten volume science fiction novel of the same name. Ten volumes of L. Ron. I'm sure that's fun in itself.

I'm not going to tell you anything other than friend provided me with a way to listen to the crappy album last night, and, I did so.

It's a "concept album," sort of like The Who's Tommy, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Green Day's American Idiot.... except completely horrible. Terrible overuse of snythesizers and saxophone, which is expected of 80s music, but this was much worse than your typical 80s fare.

First of all, was that really based on L. Ron Hubbard in anything other than name? I mean, I don't think any of those songs were deep enough to be based on a book, even a crappy Scientology book.

I heard vague references to planets and drugs. Basically the message of the album was drugs are bad and planets are, um, planets, I guess.

Oh, and there was one poorly written environmental song. It sounded like Hall and Oates with a gospel choir, and the vaguest enviromental lyrics imaginable... polluting is bad, so lets cry out, and not pollute, and stuff.

The last song was Edgar experimenting with all kinds of sounds, including actual ping pong sound effects... the message was something along the lines of life is one big ride and lets all be happy... Musically, it sounded like a rip off of lame 80s tv theme songs, Perfect Strangers in particular came to mind.