Celestial Navigations by Geoffrey Lewis and Geoff Levin

December 10, 2023 3:10 PM

Geoffrey Lewis was one of those "Hey, he's that guy!" actors [7m, but you won't need that long]. Geoff Levin would be a "Hey, he's that guy!" composer if there were such a thing. [Look at his filmography.] Together they created the peculiar and enchanting music-and-storytelling project Celestial Navigations. Perhaps best described as "Baritone Actor Monologist Really Really Tells Stories Overtop Of Vangelis and Hans Zimmer Synths". They provided the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated short The Janitor [5m]. But I found a rare live performance of this piece with a holiday touch, The Train. [5m12s]

Winner [3m40s, not great video quality] is another live performance, this one a bit more in front of an audience. Also from this same source is another performance, Horses [11m, cw for description of violence]. Check out the video description for how these were sourced!

I'll be honest: I had no idea there even WERE live performances by this band, for lack of a better word, until this evening. But the treasure I've found! Here there are some super early! Celestial Navigations 11-24-88 TV variety show performance [3m11s] From the same YT channel also Celestial Navigations "Hunchback" 8-9-89 TV variety show performance [5m44s] and Geoffrey Lewis & Celestial Navigations 2-22-89 variety show performance.

But also music videos of a sort. Here is The Dwarf [7m50s], apparently posted as the only video on a personal channel of Lewis. The CelestialNavigations channel has four war-themed videos posted: Dad [3m34s], Dear Laddie [3m5s], The Soldier [6m33s], and War Babies [6m].

The full recorded catalog can be found in playlists:

Chapter I [1988]
Chapter II [1989]
Chapter III Ice [1992]
Chapter IV Road Train [1995]
Live At The Matrix [1998]
Chapter V The Connection [2005]
Chapter VI The Space Racer [2006]
Romance (Compilation Album) [2006]
Chapter VII WAR [2007]

posted by hippybear (5 comments total)

Fascinating. I guess I kind of typecast Lewis in my mind as always playing heels — perhaps because if you showed me his picture before just now I'd have said, "That's the heel from Bronco Billy" — so I never thought about his creativity. Watching that first variety show performance it seems like he was a really interesting dude.

Going back to the first link, I had no idea that “The Train” was from Lewis. I've heard it a few times on the kind of radio station that plays nothing but Christmas music in the week before the holiday.

I love the earnestness of the whole thing.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:12 PM on December 10, 2023

It's a project that a co-worker of mine at a jewelry production house shared with me back around when Chapter II came out. And it's honestly haunted me for decades because up until this past week, every time I've thought to search for it has been unfruitful.

So, I'm glad to get to share all this with people, finally. I've only heard the first three chapters; I didn't know it had gone on as long as it had. I hope there's nothing that hasn't aged well in any of the tracks.

Honestly I'd welcome more of this kind of thing. My mother has been a storyteller with her local storytelling league since I was in high school. And she's still telling stories even now that she's in her Eighties -- she was just complaining to me a couple of days ago that "everyone wants stories around Christmas, but I'm here all year around!".

She has never told stories with a musical score, however.
posted by hippybear at 7:18 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a kid who grew up with Geoffrey Lewis by way of Clint Eastwood movies, this looks interesting, but the only thing I have to add is that I just learned that he's Juliette Lewis' dad.
posted by rhizome at 9:56 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh my god!!! My mom had all three albums and we would listen to them on car rides all the time. I still think about them all the time. “I DON’T BELIEVE IT!!!!”

If memory serves, I think they performed on the 1980s iteration of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
posted by UltraMorgnus at 10:28 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also worthy of note: Geoffrey Lewis is Juliette Lewis' father.
posted by hippybear at 6:51 PM on December 11, 2023