HV/Series/Episode/ Work by: Barrett Golding · Larry Massett
Hearing Voices from NPR®
064 Outer Space: Moon and Beyond
Host: Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices
Airs week of: 2009-07-15 (Originally: -0-0)
“Outer Space” (52:00 mp3):
For the anniversary of the first Man on the Moon, July 20th 1969:
“Exploration” (3:25) is put to music by The Karminsky Experience from The Power Of Suggestion (2003).
In the early 1960’s, the United States was losing the Space Race. The first satellite in was the USSR’s Sputnik, 1957. The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, April 1961. The next month President JFK made a Special Address to the US Congress (2:10), that started the program which landed us on the moon eight years later.
“President John Kennedy’s Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, May 25, 1961”
“Zero G, and I Feel Fine” (6:01) transmissions are from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, with music by Jeff Artnsen of Racket Ship.
A women dreams of a visitor from the “Third Planet” (2:14) by Bisophere.
The “Last Man on the Moon” (2:41) are Apollo 17 astronauts Ronald Evans, Eugene Cernan, and Harrison Schmitt. They left the lunar surface December 1972. No one’s been back since. The music was by Jeff Arntsen.
A President has a distorted phone conversation with an underwater spaceman in “LBJ & the Helium Filled Astronaut” (7:21). Commander Scott Carpenter spent thirty days in the ocean at a depth of 200 feet as part of the Navy’s SeaLab project. This 1964 tape of helium speech comes to us from Larry Massett and Lost and Found Sound.
“Albedo 0.39” (4:22) is a measure of Earth’s bightness, and one of Earth’s physical constants, read by sound engineer Keith Spencer-Allen, in the title track of Vangelis’ 1976 CD (Albedo 0.39).
Laurie Anderson takes “A Night Flight to Houston” (1:33 from The Ugly One With The Jewels And Other Stories 2000), while the woman in the next seat is in outer space.
For some real space music, try “The Eerie Sounds of Saturn’s Radio Emissions” (1:13), and the other bizarre features captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, put out… a rap song. The sales benefit his ShareSpace Foundation, which “shares the wonders of space with children of all ages.”
“Buzz Aldrin’s Rocket Experience”
The website Funny or Die has a mockumentary on The Making of the Rocket Experience, with Buzz and the musicians who helped him out, Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones, Soulja Boy, and Talib Kweli.
“Making of Buzz Aldrin’s Rocket Experience”
The Voyager Two unmanned spacecraft sent back some ambient sounding recordings on it’s “Uranus Fly-by” (1:02).
Christine Lavin ponders the planetary classification quandary of Pluto in “Planet X” (7:14 Shining My Flashlight On The Moon 2005).
The Northern Lights are caused by particles from the sun hitting Earth’s magnetic field. Those same solar particles produce a “Natural Radio” (7:31), electro-magnetic waves which you can hear, if you have the equipment. And recordist Steve McGreevy‘s got a van full. Whenever he can, he heads north, and away from towns, where the listening is best. We caught up with him in Canada, at the Belly River campground in southern Alberta’s Waterton Park. (Produced for Lost and Found Sound; check our YouTube vid.)
