Musical Acts in the Galaxy

Space isn’t just big, it’s STUPID big. Big enough so that just about anything could be out there. It is in this spirit of unlimited possibility that this (very partial) list of some of the notable musical acts in the galaxy is offered.

Ambient Ambitions - A drug-addled wuxrian, generally acclaimed as a musical genius, known for their unique “Contrast Music” style.

Broken Symmetries - Fractal-electro Salsa music quartet from Fitzgerald’s World.

Fog Plow - A Victorian Metal duo known for excessive pyrotechnics. They got their start on Cielius 5.

The Glowing Herd - A Weestern-Trance orchestra banned on several worlds due to the combination of the hoedown and the rave.

NeoHeatCore - Metamodern Punk band known for performing underwater. Popular among Thanians.

Kly Fnofcob - A band of lower-caste subjects of the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns, their music is designed to shock the conservative tastes of imperial society. All members were sentenced to hard labor in the heat-mills of Scharlaff.

The Laundry - Traditional funk group from New Samarkand Station.

Lewis and Roscoe’s Vibraphone Anomalies - A free-floating synthcore jazz ensemble last heard touring the Sagittarius Gap.

The Lung-tronics - Acapella classical music “orchestra” featuring members of numerous species singing the parts of different instruments.

Maiden House - An ASMR-dubstep idol group, primarily composed of Lärkians, named after one of the most notorious rishathra parlors on Gibson.

Riot of the Floating Head - A choir of ool-tyr renowned in the Tartarus Sector for Heavy Metal renditions of advertising jingles stretched into hour-long symphonies, usually with a political message.

Super Nandemo ( スーパー 何でも) - Heavy metal band known for romantic ballads, based in Berwynne’s Reach.

Zaganway - An Electro-folk band, the members are all Jovians, except for lead vocalist Marfy Snok,(a Bleen), known for featuring the Sprungivore ( a traditional Jovian insturment).

Zaganway Poster

Triple-lapels

First introduced by avant-garde fashion designer Lemmingworth Hurl in GSC 562, triple-lapels were a fashion whose time had come, and they swept the galaxy for several years. As time went by, they would occasionally re-emerge as a popular adornment, but rarely with anything like their initial popularity.

Quite stylish.

Mr. WOW!

Mr. WOW! was a popular brand of soft-drinks during eras 1 and 2.  This synthetic beverage came in a wide assortment of colors and flavors, often involving some kind of gimmick.  Made by Mr. WOW!, inc. headquartered in the Berwynne's Reach system, Mr. WOW! outlasted many competitors, even surviving the Great Reckoning.

Mr. Wow! employed a large array of gimmicks, including robotic, ambulatory vending machines. One of these is known to have been employed on the campus of the PLAS Academy for a long time, becoming something of an unofficial mascot.

Flavors included:

• Orange Insanity

• The Purple Prescription (Later changed to Murasaki Mayhem in honor to the famous Battleoid)

• Chaos Cola

• Strawberry Berwynne (after Ichigo Berwynne, and used in the cocktail of the same name)

Notable gimmicks:

• Nanotech dyes used to stain a particular design on the consumer's tongue

• replacing carbonation with helium bubbles, raising the pitch of the consumer's voice

• a bio-luminescent glowing soda

Paper-craft:

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Print and cut out this image to create a paper-craft Mr. Wow! vending machine. (Scaled for use with 25mm miniatures)

Grigoo

Grigoo (grigo͞o) n. A pejorative term for anything that doesn't work properly or is worthless, especially nanotechnology. (A shortened form of Grey Goo, a doomsday scenario in which runaway nanotechnology disassembles everything into grey goo.)

Grigoo entered the vernacular early in Era-1, when a new line of self-cleaning bathroom sinks came on the market without getting a thorough quality control review.  The main issue with these sinks, which were designed to break down organic matter, arose when they were used for shaving.  The embedded nanotech turned the hair follicles into a disgusting grey paste and gave off a foul smell. 

Other infamous examples of Grigoo include the first attempts at Plushite underwear, which often contorted themselves into very uncomfortable configurations, and a line of high end telescopes with nano-engineered lenses that under certain conditions exhibited unintended emergent properties, giving a distorted image. 

Entities made of naturally occurring and/or low purity computronium (which tends to be sentient, but hopelessly insane) are also commonly known as grigoos.

Tesserites

Description

Tesserites are objects that drift close enough to a black hole to be significantly stretched by tidal forces, but not close enough to fall in.  The word tesserite is derived from tesseract, a term often used to describe black holes.

 Naturally occurring tesserites were brought back by explorers as souvenirs of their travels, and caught on as a popular curiosity. Various shops sell tesserites, and a number of entrepreneurs have been known to create tesserites out of natural or artificial objects by firing them (usually from a  rail-gun) on a trajectory close to a black hole, and then catching them on the other side.

In the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns, some keep natural tesserites as tokens of good luck, and philosophers sometimes keep them as objects of contemplation.

Artificial tesserites are mainly popular in human-controlled space.

The Smiling Human

The iconic yellow smiley face, found in popular culture is known among many of the alien cultures of the galaxy as "The Smiling Human".  

Different cultures perceive it differently, but it is nearly always associated with humans.  In some cultures it is a symbol of restraint, because it shows the mouth drawn back in a smile, but without bared teeth.  Some see it as symbolic of a disingenuous attitude or sarcasm.  The most popular interpretation is to see it as emblematic of cleverness and good fortune, since humans are the most technically advanced species, and the face has to be smiling about something. 

It is widely recognized and popular enough that that there is a good bit of interstellar commerce attached to it.

"The Smiling Human"  was also the name of a popular saloon/casino on New Albuquerque that became a galaxy-wide chain during Era-2.

The Gorox Festival

 

Many civilized planets with a significant Gorox population celebrate the end of the hibernation cycle with a Gorox Festival.  This starts with a big feast, because the Gorox are always ravenously hungry after their hibernation.  After the feast, there is usually a presentation made to catch the Gorox up on the last twenty-five years of history.  Finally, no Gorox festival is complete without the presentation of old stories, and the questions of knowledge-seekers.  Since the Gorox live so long, they often represent the only living memory of many historical events.  Although they hibernate much of the time, they do get to meet the people of an era, and experience life for a period of roughly five years before hibernating again.  

Alcohol

Space-booze

The humans of the future (and quite a few different alien species as well) enjoy the consumption of this organic compound.  Since various locations in our galaxy  contain copious amounts of it, an industry of alcohol collection has sprung up.  In particular, the nebula G34.3 (which lies inside Planetary League territory during Era-1), is a prime location for space-booze.  Also, Sagittarius B2 is famous for its “Raspberry Rum”, but is close enough to the galactic core that only the foolhardy and the radiation-hardened go to collect it, making it a rare and expensive drink.   The planet Dionysus is home to many species of alcohol-bearing fruit trees.

Dogarri egg-beer

Dogarri egg-beer is made when the eggs of a Dorrik-braagh (a large, birdlike animal) are slow-fermented in a broth made from vort-grass. The results are remarkably similar to Earth-beer, plus you get a tasty alcohol-saturated egg to eat at the end. (This does not taste as bad as it sounds.)