Shuttle Band Song Download
Eryn Diamante
Hello. I'm trying to track down a random song I found during my adventures through Spotify's 'related artists' feature. It's an instrumental track, similar to Explosions In The Sky or Sigur Ross in style.
Throughout the track it features clips from the voice recorder on-board the Space Shuttle Columbia/at NASA HQ. It's a beautiful song and my Google skills are failing me today. I don't believe it was an 'official' tribute track. I'm sure the band and the song have their own Wikipedia pages, but they're not linked to from the Columbia page.
The Swamp Coolers' song "I Want To Be an Astronaut" is among 10 finalists in a contest by NASA to choose two original songs that Cmdr. Mark Kelly and his five crewmates will awake to during their mission to the International Space Station on the shuttle Endeavour.
"(NASA has) a tradition of playing music as wake-up music for the astronauts, kind of like their alarm clock. They beam it up from Mission Control to the shuttle. As far as we know, this is the last space shuttle mission, so this is big," says Terry Keel, the band's guitarist from Mesa.
The song, written by singer and bass player Mike Kunes, was recorded in Keel's home studio months ago. The band then released it on iTunes, where they have some chart success as an instrumental surf music band. At live gigs around metro Phoenix, they play covers of popular music from the '50s and '60s.
The band's other two members are Josh Garber and Steve Chernek of Phoenix. Chernek is a multimedia producer at the Daily News-Sun, Glendale-Peoria Today and Surprise Today, papers owned by the same company that owns the East Valley Tribune.
"Mike's dad worked on the space shuttle back in the old days, when the program was new, and both of us are baby boomers and went to college probably in large part because we were inspired by the space race in the '60s. It was all over the news, and it was big," says Keel.
"It's an incredible long shot for some guys sitting around in Phoenix writing a song to get this kind of national attention. As far as I know, Mission Control always uses big, major-label songs off the radio for the wake ups. This will be the only time they've used original songs from people like us, who don't have a record contract," Keel says.
The other day, the heir to the throne (who turns 6 very soon, gotsta get some Phineas & Ferb swag for the DS, yo!) asked me about my favorite songs of all time. Yep, Junior threw down the impossible question for music nerds. I can handle favorite groups/artists (Cure, Beatles, Nirvana, Portishead, and Duran Duran, for starters). I might be able to rattle off my favorite albums, at least #1-4 with confidence (Disintegration, Loveless, Revolver, and The Velvet Underground & Nico).
The final space shuttle mission, STS-135 aboard Atlantis, adds a twist to that tradition, with some very special astronaut wakeup songs to mark the end of NASA's shuttle program after 30 years. Take a look at the last shuttle wakeup songs here:
Flight Day 6 was kick-started for the STS-135 astronauts with a special wake-up message from Elton John and one of the legendary performer's greatest hits. "Rocket Man" debuted around the time of the Apollo 16 mission, which sent men to the moon for the fifth time. The 4.5-minute song, which describes a long-term space-bound astronaut's mixed feelings at leaving his family to do his job, has been played to awaken four shuttle crews aboard Discovery and Atlantis. "Rocket Man" also, one of NASA's top 40 wakeup call songs listed for voter selection during a contest to commemorate the space shuttle Discovery and Endeavour's last missions, earned nearly 5,000 votes from the public. The song inspired by space exploration woke up the final space shuttle crew of Atlantis one last time, and the composer himself added: "Good morning Atlantis, this is Elton John. We wish you much success on your mission. A huge thank you to all the men and women at NASA who worked on the shuttle for the last three decades."
The Flight Day 11 wakeup music was "Days Go By" by Keith Urban, which was played for Mission Specialist Rex Walheim. The song was accompanied by a special good morning message recorded by employees at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. The NASA center is home not only to the astronaut corps, but also Mission Control and the Space Shuttle Program.
Flight Day 10 Wake Up Song and Greeting:The Flight Day 10 wakeup music was "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang, which was played for Mission Specialist Sandy Magnus. The song was accompanied by a special good morning message recorded by employees at NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, the NASA center that is home to the test stands that verified each of the main engines that helped propel space shuttles into low Earth orbit, including the three used in the STS-135 launch.
We amused ourselves by watching the people on the dance floor. This was a cowboy bar remember so the DJ had a very limited hip hop or dance music collection. The crowd reaction to these random outdated dance songs was entertaining to say the least.
Beyonce, Paul McCartney and Elton John are all stars who lined up to sing wakeup songs to the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis. Its flight closes out the 30-year space shuttle program, and there is a certain cachet to waking up the crew with a song.
\"Good morning Atlantis, this is Beyonce. Sandy, Chris, Doug and Rex, you inspire all of us to dare to live our dreams, to know that we're smart enough and strong enough to achieve them. This song is especially for my girl, Sandy, and all the women who've taken us to space with them and the girls who are our future explorers.\"
After Atlantis, there will be no more wakeup songs for years. The astronauts on the space station are woken by a buzzer on their alarm clock; after all, the space station is a year-round operation and even the most music-loving astronaut would be hard-pressed to come up with a different song every day for a six-month tour of duty.
The first wakeup song was played in 1969 for the three astronauts of Apollo 10, the second flight to orbit the moon. Mission control played a segment of \"The City of New Orleans, beginning with the lyrics, \"Good Morning, America how are you?\"
One song has actually been banned from ever being played as a wakeup call again: \"Paralyzed,\" by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Flight director Don Puddy wrote about the day they played it for the three-man crew on Skylab, America's first space station, in 1973:
\"Late one night, a future shuttle astronaut and CapCom (Bob Crippen) was trying to come up with a song to play in the morning. I told him I had a song that was guaranteed to wake the dead. Since he and I had a good relationship, I got my copy of 'Paralyzed' and we sent it downstairs to the communications center in the bowels of the building. They cued it up on one of the comm loops, and the next thing I see is Bob looking like a deer frozen in car headlights, then he starts screaming 'Yes! Yes!' then turning purple because he is laughing so hard he can't breathe. Of course, he and I are the only people in Mission Control who are able to hear Ledge [Stardust Cowboy's nickname] on our headsets, and everyone in the normally silent room is wondering what the hell is going on!\"
\"Paralyzed,\" if you've never heard it, is filled with growls, outbursts, and bursts of frantic guitar chords. It was banned, legend has it, because crew productivity on Skylab dropped so dramatically after the song was played -- they believed the song jinxed them.
"Countdown" is a song by Rush from their 1982 album Signals. Its lyrics are about the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia the previous year.[2] The song incorporates audio from voice communications between astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen and ground control, specifically Ascent CAPCOM Daniel C. Brandenstein and with commentary from Hugh Harris, Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Officer, leading up to the launch through to LOS just after Press to Rota.[3]
I remember thinking to myself as we flew back to Fort Worth after a couple days without sleep: "We've got to write a song about this!" It was an incredible thing to witness, truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can only hope that the song comes even close to capturing the excitement and awe that we felt that morning.
The song incorporates a driving rhythm and heavy use of synthesizers, with Geddy Lee switching between his synthesizer on the verses and his Rickenbacker 4001 bass on the song's chorus. The lyrics paint a vivid account of the group's experiences witnessing the launch. The song closes the album, with its cautionary tales of man's reliance on technology, on a more positive, celebratory note.[5]
The song was used as a wakeup song for astronauts during STS-109, which was the last successful flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. It was used again for astronaut Mike Fincke during STS-134, flown by Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final mission before retirement. Fincke described how his friends Greg Shurtz and NASA employee Ken Fisher chose the song because the band was inspired to write it after viewing the launch of STS-1. Fincke went on to say the song was played as a tribute to the Space Shuttle program, which has inspired people around the world.[6]
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Good morning to you all down in Houston and across the planet. I just wanted to say thanks for the song. That was by the band Rush and my friends Ken Fisher and Greg Shurtz sent that up for me. And Rush was really inspired by the launch of STS-1 so they included that in their music and it was really inspirational for them and for the whole album. What's really cool about it is that the Space Shuttle program has really inspired everybody across our planet for such a long time. So this song was a tribute to the Space Shuttle program and so we'd like to say good morning.
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