Jim Leftwich alerted me to this 1963 song, "The Martian Hop," by the Ran-Dells. He says: "Here's an account from one of the bandmembers (the late Steve Rappaport, R.I.P. July 04, 2007) of having made this weird hit record (#16 on the charts) back in 1963."
I was in my cousin John's living room with several of my 11 other first cousins, 8 of whom were very musical. We lived in Wildwood, New Jersey and frequently took our guitars and bongos to the beach and sang current songs. It was not uncommon for a hundred people to gather around and sing with us. In many ways it really was the idyllic life that we tend to romanticize as the late 50s (if you were there, you know in retrospect that the 50s didn't really end until November of '63 , and February of '64.
So my cousins John and Robert and I were sitting in John's living room strumming guitars, talking about flying to Mars, laughing, and I came up with the idea of Martians throwing a dance for the Earth spacemen who visit. We thought this was hilarious, and decided to write a song about it. In a flash of inspiration John created a unique vocal sound that Martians would probably make Again we thought this hilarious, partially due to the nasal quality of John's voice, and again because of the foolishness of the whole thing. Imagine: we finally get to Mars, and there really are Martians and what they want to do is throw a dance for us!
The Martian Hop, by the Ran-Dells
