1970s

This is just all kinds of silly fun: Rush playing “Tom Sawyer” in Rock Band, backstage at the Colbert Report.

Thanks to SF Signal for mentioning an awesome collection of Astounding Science Fiction and Analog Magazine covers, going back to the 1930s. (Start here.) That alone would be cool, but SF Signal happened to use this particular ASF cover in their post:

From October 1953. Which, if you’re a Queen fan, you’ll immediately recognize as being the inspiration for this:

News of the World, of course, released in October 1977. There’s more to the story, actually, since the original artist agreed to redo the illustration for the album! From Wikipedia:

The album’s cover was a painting by award winning American sci-fi artist Frank Kelly Freas. [Drummer Roger] Taylor had an issue of “Astounding Science Fiction” (October 1953) whose cover-art depicted a giant intelligent robot holding the dead body of a man. The caption read: “Please… fix it, Daddy?” to illustrate the story The Gulf Between by Tom Godwin. The robot killing the man was likened to a child injuring a bug and looking up at his parents saying “what have I done?”. The painting inspired the band to contact Freas, who agreed to alter the painting for their album cover, by replacing the single dead man with the four “dead” band members (Taylor and Deacon falling to the ground). The original painting (also called The Gulf Between) features on the cover of Freas’s collection of art As He Sees It (Paper Tiger, 2000).

Bliss!

Via Bruce Sterling, who had this to say:

If I were a contemporary musician, tinkering with my MySpace profile and wondering how on earth I could ever scrape up enough money to maintain a productive career in music, I’d be really scared by a clip like this. It must be like — I dunno — like being a member of the contemporary US Congress and going to visit Mount Rushmore.

The fascinating philosophy behind some of my favorite electronica, Music for Airports — for public spaces originally, but also lovely for coding or just chilling out.

Via Bruce Sterling, who says, “The clarity of his thought is frightening. Every airport in the world should play nothing but this music.”

1972 was thoroughly eventful by any measure, not least musically. Elton John’s Honky Château came out that year and included the hit song “Rocket Man”

The song was apparently based on the Ray Bradbury short story “The Rocket Man”, from his Illustrated Man collection.

Whatever the origin, it is one of several Lonely Guy in Space songs from the period (e.g. “Space Oddity”). There’s probably a dissertation waiting to be written on what this niche signifies as a cultural reaction to the Space Age’s failure to solve all of society’s problems. ;) No matter what academic value the song has, though, it’s a horribly effective earworm, particularly when the chorus kicks in:

And i think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find

I’m not the man they think i am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Ever wonder what happened next? A selection from McSweeney’s gives the full story in “A Letter to Elton John from the Office of the NASA Administrator”:

Dear Mr. John,

This letter is to inform you of your termination from the NASA astronaut program. Our decision comes after a great deal of deliberation, and while we take no pleasure in terminating you, we felt it was the only choice we had….