April Stevens :: Teach Me Tiger
Teach Me, Tiger was one of the first songs that came to mind when I first heard about this project. Its campy brilliance is unsurpassed! Though I think April Stevens’ “whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa” is truly beyond words, still I had to come up with something to write. Upon searching the title, I happened upon a fascinating document.
This song was used as a wake-up call aboard NASA’s sixth Challenger mission on April 6, 1983. As a child I remember watching PBS footage of astronauts afloat in space with a single umbilical link to the spaceship, while The Beach Boys’ I Get Around played in the background. It never occurred to me that the song actually could’ve been pumped through their spacesuits. It turns out that wake-up calls are a “long-standing tradition of the NASA program.”
NASA playlists seem to be the sole responsibility of CAPCOM, the DJ at Mission Control, although special requests often are made by the families of astronauts. In the sixties, classical music and showtunes dominated the spacewaves, and most missions ended with Going back to Houston by Dean Martin. Themes of the sea, home, and lost love emerged throughout the seventies, while the lyrics tended toward hitting the road in the eighties. Certainly, some CAPCOMs had a better sense of humor than others. For the Discovery’s seventh mission, Robin Williams belted “Gooooooood morning, Discovery!” in Good Morning Vietnam style. In the later eighties, radio DJs submitted zany lyrics set to familiar tunes for CAPCOM approval, including the Star Wars theme with a Darth Vader voice over. Some songs were chosen for particular lyrics quoting the names of dropped or unusual scientific circumstances. Got Me Under Pressure by ZZ Top was played for a particular bout with high cabin pressure.
The 1994 Discovery mission’s crew included Susan Helm, possibly better known as the keyboardist for all-astronaut band Max Q. Most of their wake-up calls came from Max Q’s tape Mach 5. In 1995, Max Q recordings dominated playlists when their drummer, Jim Weatherbee, came aboard.
Though today’s wake-up calls seem decidedly less funny, inside jokes, wedding songs, and family voices still dominate wake-up call playlists. CAPCOM set a precedent in 1989 by sending recordings of astronauts’ children shouting such things as “Get up, Dad, get out of bed and get to work,” and “Hi, daddy, this is your darling daughter telling you to wake up.” This was followed by What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. The shuttle crew then broadcast Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel back to Mission Control.
Some of my favorites include the clever classics:
Carole King I Feel the Earth Move, Chicago Good Morning Sunshine, Willie Nelson On the Road Again, Judy Garland Over the Rainbow, Christopher Cross Sail Away, John Denver Take Me Home, Country Roads, Jerry Lee Lewis Great Balls of Fire, Perry Como Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes, Lynyrd Skynyrd Free Bird, Bachman-Turner Overdrive Takin’ Care of Business, The Muppets Pigs in Space, Theme from Chariots of Fire, Theme from Rocky
The utterly obnoxious:
the Singing Dogs Jingle Bells, Raffi with Ken Whiteley Rise and Shine, R.E.M. Shiny Happy People, Baha Men Who Let the Dogs Out, Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A.
And the ones that kinda blew my mind:
The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night, U2 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Surfaris Wipe Out, AC/DC Who Made Who, The Clash Should I Stay or Should I Go (played at the end of several missions), Simon and Garfunkel The Sound of Silence, Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science, Irene Cara What A Feeling, Theme from Godzilla Versus Space Godzilla, R.E.M. Stand, Sonny and Cher I Got You Babe (referencing Groundhog Day on missions extended extra days)
Teach Me Tiger
April Stevens (wikipedia)
Shirley & Company :: Shame Shame Shame
Two margaritas deep on a spring night, Elizabeth, Caroline, and I are driving up Damen after our regular Wednesday dinner. When we reach the stoplight at Division, a beacon of glittering splendor jumps out of the car in front of us. Gene Lee, affectionately nicknamed “Mantease” (or “Manties” for his gold lamé hot pants), is dancing in the intersection, and the smokers outside the Rainbo smirk, even grin.
We fast-forward the Ian Hixxx Disco Mixxx to track 14, and this song spills out our windows. At the Crotch we hit another red, and we wail “shame, shame, shame” as we pile out of the car. Fingers point from the windows of Filter and Swank Frank. Cabbies clap and whistle, pumping fists in the air; kids on all six of the corners are cracking up. Maybe some of them join in, too.
Can’t stop me now. Hear what I say. My feet want to move, so get out the way. I’m gonna have my say. I’m going to every discotheque. I’m gonna dance, dance, dance till the break of day. With spins breezing and hips rolling and heels clicking, we join Gene Lee in that intersection for the dance break of the century. Horns blare affirmation, and stoplights break the laws of time. We dance that song down to the ground.
Hoping for another red light, we drove side by side for a few blocks. Somewhere around Armitage we heard Dancing with Myself coming from his stereo. With a cool point and wink, he took the expressway downtown into a mystical midnight sunset.
Rumors have been flying about Gene Lee. I first heard from a friend that he’d overdosed, and we even talked about replaying this night in memoriam. Recently I heard that the story was a hoax and that he’s been spotted dancing outside Whole Foods in Oakland. Just as this story passes into our memories, Gene Lee passes into a Chicago legend.
Shame Shame Shame
Shirley & Company (wikipedia)
Sylvie Vartan :: Ne T’en Vas Pas
Sylvie Vartan and the Yé-Yé Sisterhood make me blush. Everything they touch feels raw and new, or at least new again.
Though I’d like it if this recording were live from a dingy mod club in Paris, she’d already made the Big Time when this LP first hit the turntables. Hers is a story of discovery that feels impossible today; while working at a record store on the Champs-Élysées, she’s asked to fill in for a no-show singer at her brother’s studio. She dashes out of the shop, tossing something to the floor, never to return to the life of the unknown.
And I blush again. In fact, I can say the same for nearly every other artist and movement mentioned in Susan Sontag’s cultural hall of fame, Notes on Camp. Campy art makes me blush, at least a little. The prude exhibitionist, the morose goof, the sensible dandy: the moment of clarity in the midst of contradiction. Those yé-yé singers have got it, to be sure. Just as Godard chose Chantal Goya to embody “the children of Marx and Coca Cola” in Masculin Feminin, so do Sylvie and the others catch something of the tension of the time. Their camp sensibility creates a place of disregard for the old boundaries, a place where humor, austerity, sex and repression converge.
The needle hits the vinyl. Heads bob and hips shake in tandem. The organ plays a sax solo while the saxophone keeps time. Paris 1963, exactly as I imagine it.
Ne T’en Vas Pas
Sylvie Vartan (wikipedia)
(Note — Song originally by Mel Tormé in 1962, I believe!)