Destination: Earth!, from left: Raider-X, Gattler the Terrible, 7-Zark-7 and R5-D4. They’ll be playing at the Spring Reverb Fest this Saturday at Radio Radio.

Destination: Earth! origins

In the year 1999, a brilliant flash of light erupted across the skies of the planet Earth, as a spacecraft of unknown origin broke through the fabric of the space-time continuum. Operated only by a highly advanced computer system, the visibly damaged ship lurched to a landing in a backwoods sector of the Midwestern United States — a location in which it would escape detection.

But three local inhabitants HAD witnessed the incident, and took it upon themselves to investigate. Encountering no opposition as they entered the damaged hull, the Earthmen were instantly brought under the control of the ship’s sentient computer system and fitted with neural sensor brain implants — special transceiver units which would allow thoughts and actions to be dictated by remote control. They became hosts to their unseen controllers across the void of time and space, 7-Zark-7, Raider-X and R5-D4.

Their mission: to prepare the planet and its inhabitants for the coming invasion. Mission codename: Destination: Earth!

—From the Destination: Earth! biography

7-Zark-7 and Raider-X are men on a mission. Literally. Besides trying to facilitate an alien invasion of Earth, they’re also responsible for delivering brilliant surf/spy-type music.

Destination: Earth! is a band. It’s also an animated video, a sci-fi movie concept and action figures.

On-stage, the band members dress in metallic uniforms and helmets, with movies or filmstrips projected over the top of them as they play. But forget about the trappings for a minute and concentrate on the music.

It’s good stuff. Heavily influenced by the instrumental bands of the ’60s with a dash of the new school thrown in, it’s perfect music for a space-age bachelor pad or go-go party. 7-Zark-7 is a precision guitarist (or “burning lead oscillator recon unit operator,” as he puts it) with almost every note ringing clean and true, aided by generous dollops of reverb and tremolo.

Raider-X is a bassist (“support module specialist,” he says) and R5-D4 is a drummer (or “heavy artillery officer”) whose fierce adherence to the beat complements the band’s sound perfectly.

They’re going to be part of the Spring Reverb Surf Fest at Radio Radio (1117 Prospect St. in Fountain Square) on Saturday, playing alongside such groups as the Troubadors, the Buckaroo Bandits and Bloomington’s Dragstrip, a hot-rod surf band.

Ask them about how they got together as musicians and Raider-X says this:

“Commander 7 was commissioned for a mission to see if the planet Earth was comfortable or whether we should just wipe out the human race and start fresh on our own. So he campaigned for certain members to come along on the mission with him. So I, Raider-X, and R5-D4 submitted our applications for the sortie and we’ve been together for two and a half years in Earth time.”

You look at 7-Zark-7 for help and he responds, “I think music serves as an excellent cover for our covert operations.”

Raider-X: “Since music is the universal language, it makes it easier to hop from galaxy to galaxy and take over since everybody listens to some form of music.”

7-Zark-7: “And, of course, we have to commandeer different forms on each world.”

Raider-X: “So, basically, when we assimilated these bodies, we scanned the planet looking for suitable hosts. And we went into a symbiotic relationship with these humanoid forms.”

7-Zark-7: “Hence our human appearance.”

They’re not a joke band, although they have plenty of jokes. And they’re not an instrumental band, although they play plenty of instrumentals, too. That fact is hard to understand for some.

“We noticed that humanoids from a young adult on up could comprehend the idea of an instrumental, but the lifeforms of a younger age could not,” Raider-X said. “So we’ve faced questions like, ‘Hey, dude, why are you playing a song out if it’s not done yet?’ And I say, ‘What do you mean, carbon-based lifeform?’ ‘Well, you got no vocals.’ ‘That would be an instrumental.’ ‘Oh.’”

“There was a time in rock and roll’s early days where instrumentals were popular and chart successes but that doesn’t happen these days,” 7-Zark-7 says.

“The Ventures, Herb Alpert, half the songs that came out in the ’60s were instrumentals,” Raider-X says.

Their influences are many. Ask 7-Zark-7 about them and he pulls out a stack of CDs he’s brought with him.

“We’ll start off with the Ventures, specifically The Ventures In Space album. I wouldn’t say they’re big influences, but we’ve had a symbiotic relationship with some of the more current third-wave surf bands, such as the Space Cossacks and Laika and the Cosmonauts, Los Straitjackets and bands of that sort. But most of our music is actually stolen from the future. We go into the future and find out what the hit songs are and bring them back.”

They’re musical archivists and historians as well. Ask Raider-X to explain the relevance of the Ventures and he says, “It’s timeless music. They are dubbed a surf band and they are not a surf band. They did a few albums that embodied the surf guitar style but they did rock, country, blues, ’70s psychedelia. Half their albums are cover tunes. They ended up being the inspiration for most metal bands, from their dual guitar work in ‘Walk Don’t Run’ and ‘Caravan.’ ‘Caravan’ is the basis of most all metal music, when you get down to the rhythm and the fingerpicking.”

But historians and archivists are not always appreciated by the masses. Destination: Earth!’s second live show, opening for Sloppy Seconds at the Emerson Theatre in the summer of 1999, didn’t go well, to say the least.

“We didn’t mind the change being thrown at us. I was actually able to buy some beer with it on the way home,” Raider-X says. “The cups of crushed ice were easily dodged. The bottled water was dodged; even the 75-gallon trash can that was thrown in my direction was easily missed. The lit matches and lit objects thrown on-stage were a bit unnerving, however, given that our uniforms of the time were 90 percent plastic with quite flammable metallic elements.

“There is an entire universe of D:E! characters, from the arch-nemesis Gattler the Terrible to navigator Agent Venus to their commanding officer, Gen. Casualty, but D:E! at present is a three-piece band. There was a fourth member at one time, 7-Zark-7 says.

“We sent for reinforcements and we were joined by Yurak-38 from our home system in Vector Sigma, but he was unfortunately vaporized during a routine scouting mission on the outer rim of Vector Sigma,” he says.

“Kinda hard to do your job when you have no tangible form,” Raider-X adds helpfully.

Why go to the trouble of creating action figures, animated films and live videos, when most bands these days don’t bother with such things?

Raider-X speaks of accessing his human host’s memory banks. “At certain concerts that he went to as a youth, they had product for sale. Neat tour books, posters and all that stuff. Nobody does that stuff anymore. These bodies we took over thoroughly enjoyed it as kids, so we decided to do it.”

“Rather than press CDs or make T-shirts, we decided to make action figures,” 7-Zark-7 says. The figures originally sold for $3 each and Raider-X was recently offered $100 for the four remaining dolls. He declined.

One drawback to all of the sci-fi trappings is that some people don’t take the band or its music seriously. Raider-X has been confronted by skeptics of the band’s style on a regular basis.

Imitating them, he says, in his best Hoosier hillbilly voice, “‘You guys shouldn’t be in the music business. If you can’t play music, you need to get off the stage. Getting on stage wearing costumes and making noise is not playing music.’”

He responds to them this way: “You obviously haven’t been to one of our shows, because music is first and foremost.”

“That’s what I hate,” 7-Zark-7 says. “People find out about the shtick and then they just assume that you can’t play, which in the case of someone like Gwar may be accurate, but not with us.”

Their chief weapons in combating that perception are their debut album, Trapped In Hyperspace With …, and their more diverse and pleasing follow-up CD, Adventures in Newspace, which is due for release this summer.

But they admit it’s an uphill climb.

“Until we achieve a complete takeover of the planet, ignorance runs rampant,” Raider-X says, “and all you can do is try and teach them as much as you can. Some people are willing to learn and some are not. And the ones who are not, well, we’re going to vaporize them when we take over.”

shammer@nuvo.net