THE BEAT GOES ON
Space Trackin’ CAPE KENNEDY, FLA. — How would you feel if you were jolted awake to the strains of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Redneck Mother”? Ready to face the world? Ready to push all those little buttons and tussle with the Russkis in outer space?
THE BEAT GOES ON
Space Trackin’
CAPE KENNEDY, FLA. — How would you feel if you were jolted awake to the strains of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Redneck Mother”? Ready to face the world? Ready to push all those little buttons and tussle with the Russkis in outer space?
Well, our celestial flyboys had that and more to conend with. NASA’s extraterrestial disc jockeys were the capcons, or capsule communicators. In between chattering with the astronauts they spun the discs, although you’d probably never find their picks on the Fab Forty. “Nights Over Moscow,” penned by the USSR’s Burt Bacharach and the Russian equivalent of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” were chosen in honor of their Slavic colleagues.
And then there’s the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, a lost and almostforgotten soul in the annals of rock history, whose album Paralyzed is as manic a collection of noises and screaming and you’ll hope to find. Paralyzed was scheduled to be played but due to a foul-up with the tapes “Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild Wild Women” rolled the astronauts out of bed instead. Of course, it’s not Metal Machine Music, but whatever gets you up . . .
Susan Whitall