Perhaps those of us who find listening to Sun Ra so worthwhile an experience appreciate how the music he and his incredible Arkestra made expanded the bounds of music. What's startling is that the sounds he used to make music were not "electronic," per se, but did what sythesizers and such later sought to do, once they became available. He obviously thought "outside the box," to use one of today's catch-phrases. Things the Arkestra did maybe once have since become whole genres in their own right. For instance, "A House of Beauty," on side two of "The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 2," which was recorded in late 1965 and hit the stands in '66 (just think about what was on the radio that year) anticipated the whole "New Age" thing that has since garnered its own section in music stores--but without descending into the syrupy vapidity that characterizes so much of it. He and his music appeal to those receptive to it in a musical way in the manner that science fiction appeals in a literary way--it requires us to put aside preconceptions and think in terms of "what if?"