Most people who’ve paid attention to the space program know that the Voyager 1 probe carried a golden record into the interstellar vastness. Scientists hope that a technologically advanced species on another planet might play the record – and, in so doing, learn about Earth and its inhabitants. But what is actually on that record? Navé Pundik of The NaveBlues has a pretty good guess. In his video for “Pale Blue Dot,” he imagines that the songs carried into space by Voyager sound something like the music he makes, and he figures that any aliens who spin his songs are more than likely to want to send a message back to him.
It’s not unreasonable. The Norwegian band makes songs that represent our planet’s deepest and most enduring musical traditions: real rock, authentic blues, authentic soul. Wherever Pundik has taken his band, crowds have responded enthusiastically. Would an interstellar audience be that much harder to reach? There’s no way to know, of course, but if a song as heartfelt, immediate, catchy, and winning as “Pale Blue Dot” doesn’t get the little green men dancing and singing (or beeping?) along, interstellar diplomacy is probably a hopeless cause.
“Pale Blue Dot” is the latest in a series of delightful tracks and videos from the NaveBlues. Over the past few years, the band has demonstrated its versatility with the heartbroken, harmonica-drenched “Tender Rose,” the swaggering “Sexy Kiss,” the roaring “Thank You,” and other irresistible tracks. Pundik led his combo across Norway this spring; no word yet about US dates, but a stateside audience seems inevitable for these artists whose understanding of American music runs as deep as theirs does.
The radiant clip for “Pale Blue Dot,” however, is pure Scandinavia. Shot in the mountains around Bergen, Norway, The camera catches Navé on a verdant hilltop in the summertime – high above the sleeping town and the fjords below. It’s gorgeous, it’s majestic, and it’s solitary. However, Navé is not alone; not exactly, anyway. A burst of white light leads him through the forest to a transmission from the stars. There it is, waiting for him, and, by extension, all of humanity – a message from our astral neighbors. Navé’s extraterrestrial encounter gives him a fresh perspective on the planet we all inhabit. Let’s take good care of our pale blue dot, he cautions us, because it’s the only one we’ve got.
