Topic: New Tab Postings
Needless to say, Klaatu are not The Beatles. So we don't need to get into that. But for anyone interested, here's a link to the exact 1977 newspaper article (written by Steve Smith for The Providence Journal) that launched the rumour heard 'round the world, which proved to be both a blessing and a curse for the band. http://www.klaatu.org/fanclub/mornsun7.htmlThe prog-rock classic "Calling Occupants", Klaatu's best-known song, is the opening track from their 1976 debut album 3:47 EST (pictured at right). That was the album's name in Canada; elsewhere it was titled simply Klaatu. Capitol Records brass in the US apparently felt the original title's reference was too obscure. (In the film The Day the Earth Stood Still, the extraterrestrial Klaatu landed his spacecraft on Earth at 3:47 EST.) The album was co-produced by the band and Terry Brown, who was starting to become well-known at the time for his production work for other Canadian bands such as Rush and Max Webster.
The full version of "Calling Occupants" (tabbed here) is over seven minutes long. The radio/single edit is about 3:30. One of the coolest things about the full length version of the song is the nature sound effects that open the track/album, setting the atmosphere before the music even begins (this can be heard in the audio of the song posted below). In a 1997 interview, band member John Woloschuk (on the left, above) described how this came together:
"...we knew that 'Calling Occupants' was going to open the album. We'd already decided that. So we wanted to have something that was really, you know, sort of ethereal, especially with the subject matter. And we were all into UFOs at the time, and things like that. And so, we just started building, and I think the first thing was we had some sound effects records with crickets, and animal noises, and birds, and things like that. And we layered that on, and then we had the idea of recording somebody walking – and these ideas sort of just came, you know, when you were working on the session. And we came up with the idea of having the sound of footsteps walking through the bush, and then he would come across this record player, and he'd lift – you know, he'd put the needle on the record and then 'Calling Occupants' would start. And we thought that was, you know, a neat idea. So we ended up doing all the cricket noises and stuff first, and then we did a remote recording out at Terry Brown's house in the back, in the ravine there. And we had a fellow walk through the pathway on – we put a bunch of twigs down, and we did a remote recording of him walking on these twigs, and then we just wild-bounced it into the track over the crickets and stuff. And then we got the idea of putting the scratch in the record so that people would realize that he'd put a record on the thing, because the sound of the needle touching the record was pretty subtle. So we figured, well, if we put a little scratch on the record … so we got a blank lacquer disc and scratched it, and then recorded the scratch (laughs)."
(http://www.klaatu.org/interviews/347est.html)
A year after the Klaatu release, the Carpenters had a successful single with their cover version of the song (in 1977).
The tab:
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/cantab/klaatu-callingoccupants.txt
Audio:
Updated: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 4:19 AM EDT
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But congrats to the Bruins and their fans; well done. 
