Taking a Trip with The Space Lady

"The Space Lady" 1990

You cannot talk about San Francisco in the Eighties and Nineties without mentioning the street performers that ran the gamut in both talent and entertainment. From the tribal, dreadlocked violin player adorned in only a loin cloth playing in the BART stations to the soulful blues singer selling late night tickets on 16th and Mission; these musicians, performers and entertainers added to the rhythm of the city and made our day and night just a little bit brighter.

When me and my friends reminisce about who and what we remember the most about "our" San Francisco back in our day, The Space Lady always comes up in conversation. She seems to have made the largest impression on most of us who were lucky enough to have caught her performing either on her guitar, accordion or her new Casio keyboard.

Many of us referred to her as Susie Space. Her ethereal presence and soundscapes that she carved out at the Castro Street Wells Fargo ATM machine alcove was a constant in our lives and her blinking red light guided us through the dark. Covering spaced out titles such as "Major Tom" and "Ghost Riders in the Sky" which lent themselves to her melodic style, The Space Lady would then veer into unexpected territory with songs like "Ballroom Blitz" and "Born to be Wild".

My friend and former band mate from Cameltoe Catherine Butler recently informed me that The Space Lady was going to be performing in Los Angeles and ON A STAGE! What a treat I thought and jumped at the chance to catch her at The Cinafamily in Los Angeles.

The following portraits below and interview came out of that evening. The woven portrait above was created this month from a photograph I had taken of The Space Lady back in 1990, right where I remember her, at the Wells Fargo ATM.

I hope you enjoy The Space Lady's insight into her magical, other worldly realm and I would like to thank her from the bottom of my heart for having supplied the City with a soundtrack to remember.

Synthesize Me!

Julie Green
April 4, 2015



JULIE GREEN: When did you start performing on the streets of San Francisco?

SUSAN SCHNEIDER: In the summer of 1984, after living in Boston for 12 years and playing there for 4 years.

JG: Are you still playing the accordion and guitar?

SS: No. Since I’ve been touring I haven’t been playing anything but my Casio.

JG:  What is the story behind your iconic winged hat and it's blinking red light?

SS: My late ex-husband, Joel, and I bought it in 1971 at a costume shop in San Francisco because he fell in love with it. We paid a whopping $20 for it, a lot of money for us back then! At the time he was building big sculptures and creating large paintings on wooden panels with little blinking lights embedded in them, and he immediately saw the potential to electrify the helmet with one of those tiny bulbs. After doing so, he wore it all around our art studio – which was part of an artist community in an old salami factory complex at the base of Telegraph Hill. We also made a few excursions to an old dilapidated hot springs resort, which had become a sort of hippie nudist colony, and Joel would parade around there wearing nothing but the helmet. In 1972, during our “cave days” on Mt. Shasta, he began wearing it while playing his guitar through an Echo-Plex and battery-powered amp, calling himself The Cosmic Man. It wasn’t until 1983, in Boston, when I “graduated” from accordion to the Casiotone keyboard I play today, that he handed the helmet over to me. It had the immediate effect of delighting people, making them smile or simply wonder – and helped add a certain mystique to my act, not to mention lots of tips just for the helmet alone, as people told me!

JG: Did you know The Brotherhood of Light when you were hanging out in San Francisco in the 60"s? Their light shows would have made a perfect backdrop for your performances!

SS: I didn’t know of them personally, but I certainly knew about their light shows, and experienced their beautiful, hypnotic effects at a wild concert my sister took me to. But I didn’t go to concerts unless they were free outdoors. I was somewhat of an outsider from the very beginning, I guess, avoiding crowds at all cost.

JG: I still have your cassette "The Space Lady: Recorded Live in San Francisco" which I purchased back in the early nineties. Do you plan on rereleasing those recordings?

SS: Those are the very same recordings Night School Records used for The Space Lady’s Greatest Hits, but beautifully re-mastered. A few of the tracks from the cassette were omitted because of space, except on the double CD, which is out of production now.

JG: Tell us the story behind your song "Synthesize Me"

SS: That was another gift from Joel upon my transitioning to electronic music from being an accordion-playing folk singer. He wrote it specifically for me on his guitar, and although he said he barely recognized the song as I reinterpreted it on my Casio, he liked what I did with it and considered that we co-wrote the song. But I don’t claim it as one of my own originals….credit where credit is due!

JG: The gentle qualities of your voice blend so well with your space soundscapes you create. Have you always been drawn to other worldly subject matter or do you think your inner qualities have drawn then to you?

SS: That’s an interesting question. I don’t know how to answer it exactly, except to say you’re probably onto something there! We are certainly magnets for whatever happens to us in our lives, and draw certain kinds of people, events, objects, music, art, etc., to ourselves. After all, reality is just a projection of the Mind, as we know from Eastern  teachings. Those of us who have taken psychedelics have experienced that realization first-hand.

JG: Your version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" was a song I heard you play many, many time on the streets of San Francisco and then your most recent performance at Cinefamily in Hollywood. Have any of The Beatles heard this version? 

SS: Hahaha! I’ve never seen a Beatle in person…and now there are only two left. I would love to play it for Paul or Ringo, which would be a huge kick, if I could keep my composure! It was always one of my most requested songs on the street but didn’t make it onto my cassette, and thus not the CD/LP either. It has been posted on YouTube, however. And I like to open my shows with that tune, because it’s an invitation to the audience to “let me take you down, cause I’m going to….” …a utopian land of sci-fi, fantasy, and make-believe.

JG: What is the most bizarre experience you have encountered while busking on the streets?

SS: Being punched in the face by a teenage girl on Fisherman’s Wharf. That was bizarre, but even more bizarre to me was the crowd of 10-12 tourists who just stood and stared while my helmet and all my gear went flying. I had to pick it all up myself, thankful that the girl and her gang of girlfriends kept on walking. The next day I was careful to avoid Fisherman’s Wharf and chose to play at 16^th and Mission, wearing shades to cover my black eye. It was there that the grand finale to the incident occurred, when a young man walked up to me and said, “I’m sorry my sister punched you in the face yesterday. She told me about it, and I knew it was you. You didn’t deserve that. I’m very sorry, and I apologize for her.”

JG: I love that you cover "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" by The Electric Prunes! Did you ever get to see them live?

SS: No, sad to say, but now we can all see them “live” on YouTube, if you can bear with the goofy talk show host and his embarrassingly corny presentation. 

JG: I see that song was included on the compilation "Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music" Vol. 2 by Irwin Chusid. To me, you were part of the very fabric that made San Francisco so unique. How do you feel about being categorized as an outsider?

SS: The first time I heard that term was from Irwin Chusid, producer of “Songs in the Key of Z,” when he asked to use that track. I liked it a lot, and in fact, it helped me understand why my music would be appropriate for what he was doing; and hearing the other artists on his previous “Key of Z Volume I” clinched the deal. I laughed my head off, but realized with those artists I was really among peers. I think all people feel like outsiders a bit, trying to fit in somewhere, at first even trying to hide our ‘outsiderness,’ trying in vain to conform and be accepted. Then some of us come to embrace our differentness, realizing it just can’t be helped, and it’s often the best part of us. Why not have special a category for misfits like us? A place where even we can feel that sense of belonging all humans need!

JG:  How was your tour in the United Kingdom? 

SS: I toured the UK a year ago last April, and it was my first excursion outside of the U.S. It went fantastically well, and I can’t wait to go back! The Space Manager is now working with a booking agent there for another tour next October.

JG: When and where will we be able to experience the folk-side of your repertoire with an acoustic guitar?

SS:  Well….I don’t know when I’ll be getting up to speed enough to share it. I may look through some of my iPhone recordings from last year, but now my calluses are gone and my left hand gets tired too quickly to get through a song. I’m a beginner at guitar at best anyway. But I do love playing it!

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