The Flying Saucer (song)

Made using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, "The Flying Saucer" has been described as a "two-part sound collage", and is conceptually an audio adaptation of Orson Welles' radio drama The War of the Worlds (1938), eschewing the seriousness of the radio show for comedy by "[interspersing] popular song lyrics into the audio broadcast. The song lyrics, when taken out of their original context, would describe the Martians landing on Earth." == Release and reception ==

Its wide use of "sampling" prompted music publishers to file suit against Buchanan and Goodman in July 1956. The two men were also criticized in media of the era, with an anonymous source telling Billboard, "If we can't stop this nothing is safe in our business." While "The Flying Saucer" was not the first record to quote from famous songs (see "Cool Whalin'" by Babs Gonzales), it was the first popular record to sample directly from the recordings themselves. The comedians made fun of their own predicament by issuing a follow-up song, "Buchanan and Goodman on Trial" (Luniverse 102), which just missed the Billboard Top Forty, peaking at #42. By November 1956, the novelty song had stood up in court, being labeled as artful and clever. A judge refused to issue an injunction prohibiting the sales of the record. Essentially, the record was considered a new work. This made it legal for artists to sample existing records—a practice that became very popular in subsequent years. Alongside the trial record, Buchanan and Goodman followed the single with more "Flying Saucer" records, resulting in what has been dubbed a "UFO comedy series", Other artists followed suit: Dewey, George and Jack and the Belltones (three WHBQ disc jockeys and a local Memphis singing group) recorded their own version of "The Flying Saucer" under the title "Flying Saucers Have Landed" (the DJs did the spoken bits and the Belltones sang the musical snippets). Other versions of "The Flying Saucer" included one by '''Alan Freed, Steve Allen, Al "Jazzbo" Collins and the Modernaires With George Cates' Out Of Spacers and another by Sid Noel and his Outer Spacemen'''; both records used re-recorded versions of the musical bits. ==Legacy==

"The Flying Saucer" was the first song to sample the work of other artists. Dave Banks cites "The Flying Saucer" as the first acknowledged example of a mashup, in which "an artist or producer might combine two or more existing songs." In 2011, The New York Times included it in their history of the mashup, again highlighting it as the first 'break-in' novelty release. According to Carr, the hit "in many ways paved the way for artists such as Public Enemy, Freelance Hellraiser, Negativland, and Danger Mouse, to name but a few." These artists were also litigated against for sample-based copyright infringement. Writing in 2010, Miller describes Goodman's influence through the record on popular music as stretching to "all the pop music hits that are built on snippets of samplings", as well as "comedy routines on late-night talk shows in which a host will interview someone, with the answer taken hilariously out of context." He added: ==Charts==