u/eaglebtc

Needle Drop: https://vimeo.com/1204651413

Kris Kristofferson's path to a successful music career is a story of quiet persistence, never giving up, and always looking for unique and unexpected opportunities to collaborate with other musicians. He wrote lots of songs that were more famous for their covers by other musicians.

The song "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" describes a man feeling restless and disconnected until familiar sights and sounds remind him of something he'd almost forgotten. In a way, this also describes the journey of our protagonist, Ryland Grace, adrift and lost and slowly remembering who he is, why he's 12 light years from earth, and who he has to be brave for.

Kristofferson's feeling of restlessness and longing for something familiar was the byproduct of his upbringing. Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson's father was an active military member, which meant their family moved a LOT during his childhood. Anyone who is an "army brat" will understand the feeling of never being able to call any place home.

Some time after World War II ended, the family settled down in San Mateo, California. Kristofferson wasted no time out of high school, enrolling in Pomona College in 1954 and graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Literature. He earned a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford in 1958, and continued writing and recording songs in England. After graduating with a Masters in Literature in 1960, he served in the US Army from 1961-1965, and formed a service band with fellow soldiers during his time in West Germany. After being discharged, he taught literature at West Point Academy and worked other odd jobs.

One such job he started in 1967 probably changed his life: janitorial services at Columbia Records, where he could talk to artists and producers at all hours of the day. He even met fellow outlaw countryman Johnny Cash through this network. He and June were extremely impressed by Kristofferson's body of work.

His first release, Kristofferson (1970), included a lot of songs that had already been performed by other artists. His 1969 song, "Me and Bobby McGee," was performed first not by Janis Joplin, surprisingly, but by country artists like Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers, Gordon Lightfoot, and the Statler Brothers. Lauded by critics, Kristofferson was a commercial failure with an audience that didn't know who he was. Then Janis Joplin included the song on her 1971 album, Pearl. Kristofferson hadn't even heard her cover until the day after she died. Owing to the success of that record, the label re-released his debut album with a new title: Me and Bobby McGee (1971). It peaked at #10 on the Billboard Country charts, and was certified Gold (500,000+ copies sold).

Kristofferson released a slew of albums in the 1970s and 1980s, and worked with such artists as Rita Coolidge (whom he married and later divorced), Dolly Parton, Brenda Lee, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. In 1985, Kristofferson, Cash, Jennings, and Nelson formed the outlaw country supergroup, The Highwaymen, which released multiple albums and went on tours until 1996. He appeared in a few movies, but his most notable role was opposite Barbra Streisand in 1976's A Star is Born, which was remade in 2018 (starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper).

He continued touring and performing throughout the 2000s and 2010s, only slowing down for the COVID-19 pandemic. His final public performance was at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023, and he passed away in 2024 at his home in Hawaii, at the ripe old age of 88.

His tombstone is engraved with lines from a Leonard Cohen classic:

> Like a bird on the wire
> Like a drunk in a midnight choir
> I have tried in my way to be free

Rest in peace, cowboy.

Here are my previous installments and needle drops in this series:

• Neil Diamond: Stargazer
• Miriam Makeba: Pata Pata
• Dennis Wilson: Rainbows
• Scorpions: Wind of Change
• Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida
• Carlos di Sarli: El Amanecer
• Turakina Maori Girls Choir: Po Atarau

^(oh, in case anyone gets cheeky: all of these posts are 100% written by me, with no AI involved)

^(Sorry; new post with title corrected to 'early 1960s')

edit: ACK, the album was released in 1976, not 1967. Sorry!

This is entry #7 in my personal "Project Hail Mary" to collect all the vinyl records that feature songs included in the PHM soundtrack. With the exception of the Scorpions and the Harry Styles albums, all were released before the launch of the Voyager probe.

Needle Drop: https://vimeo.com/1205693650

Today's entry is about Neil Diamond, one of the most successful balladeers of all modern recorded music. He has sold over 50 million albums to date. You might only know of his music from drunk people belting out "Sweet Caroline" in a crowded bar at 1:30 AM, but he has a deep and varied catalog of soulful ballads about the American experience, and of falling in and out of love.

Stargazer is played for about 30 seconds toward the end of Project Hail Mary.

The lyrics are mostly obscured by dialog, so here they are for context:

Stargazer
You with your head in the heavens
You'll never get by
Walkin' that high off the ground

One might argue that the "star gazer" is referring to Dr. Grace. It's also possible that the light-hearted music was chosen to support the humorous exchange between Grace, Armando, and Rocky. The plunky banjo is certainly a sonic and emotional contrast to the deeply moving score in the previous scene's reunion. Yet I can't help but wonder if the music supervisor (Keir Lehman) noticed that the lyrics quietly call back to Ryland Grace's conversation with Rocky about the woman who left him because he always had his "head in the clouds." (And now she's with Mark. Rocky hate Mark.)

However, if we read the liner notes from the LP—something you will never get on streaming platforms, I might add—we get some additional context:

This album is a series of recollections... seen through the eyes of a young songwriter making his way through the streets of New York City's Tin Pan Alley in the early 1960's. It is made up of people, places, and events from a period which some have called a renaissance of the American spirit; others, the beginnings of a new age of decadence. Whatever history calls it, the early sixties opened the door to a new wave of consciousness for most of those who passed through its beautiful but noisy portals. N.D.

Listening to this song, I envision a young man walking around the bustling neighborhoods of Manhattan at night taking in the whole experience: the flashing neon lights (and even flashier people); the endless parade of buskers playing on the streets and in the subway stations; and hoards of people packed into every club on the boulevard listening to sultry jazz, or a raucous rock and roll band.

You only need to spend one or two nights in Manhattan to understand this feeling.

Some historical context about Tin Pan Alley:

In the early 1900s, a critical mass of music publishers rented offices on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth. It got the name "Tin Pan Alley" because a lot of people owned crappy, beat-up pianos and played ragtime on them (poorly). Eventually, though, the name became synonymous with this massive system of music publishers who cornered the market on new music. ASCAP was formed in 1914 by a consortium of publishers on Tin Pan Alley, and their lobbying led to the expansion of copyright laws in America. Remember, this was a time before even record players were commonplace, and the shellac records and Edison cylinders were recorded analog, one at a time, which made them rare and expensive. Electric recording and duplication of records didn't happen until 1925. So, if you wanted music, you had to be able to read it, play it, and buy it. Then you could host a cocktail party for your friends and take turns playing the latest hit on the piano.

The list of composers and lyricists who sold music through Tin Pan Alley is far too numerous to include here, but includes some of the all-time greats who created this enormous outpouring of music collectively known as "The Great American Songbook": Dorothy Fields, Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Richard Rogers & Oscar Hammerstein II, George M. Cohen, Fats Waller, Frank Loesser, and so on.

The system of Tin Pan Alley was built survived until the 1960s. The artist who claims to have killed it was none other than Bob Dylan. In a 1985 interview, he said: "I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now."

The times, they are a'changin', indeed.

On the back of the LP, Neil Diamond closes with this thought:

tin pan alley died hard, but there was always the music to keep you going.

Here are my previous installments and needle drops:

• Miriam Makeba: Pata Pata
• Dennis Wilson: Rainbows
• Scorpions: Wind of Change
• Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida
• Carlos di Sarli: El Amanecer
• Turakina Maori Girls Choir: Po Atarau

Needle Drop (audio+video): https://vimeo.com/1205197145

A lot of people love this song because it's just so infectiously fun; you can't help but dance to it!

In the movie, Pata Pata is used in an invented scene with Ryland Grace and an invented character, Carl, shopping at the hardware store. It was a clever way to show Ryland Grace's scientific prowess, while summarizing his close work with other researchers around the globe in discovering the nature of astrophage.

The cheerful quality of this tune belies a lifetime of pain, sorrow, and yearning for home, which brings me to today's writeup about Miriam Makeba.

Dubbed Mama Africa by the press and her legion of adoring fans, Miriam Makeba was a decorated musical artist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1932. She released over 30 albums across a storied career that started in the early 1950s. If her musical career was heaven, her life before music was hell by comparison: her father died when she was a child, so Miriam was forced to get a job to keep the family afloat. At age 17, she had her one and only daughter inside an abusive marriage. Inconceivably, she also survived a bout of breast cancer. And if that weren't enough, she was exiled by her own government in 1959 for singing two songs in the anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa. When her mother died in the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, she wasn't even allowed to return home for the funeral.

Being banished from her home country turned out to be a major blessing in disguise: the United States was more than happy to welcome her musical talents. She worked extensively with Harry Belafonte in the early 1960s (earning a Grammy with him in 1965), and dropped half a dozen albums to critical acclaim, including Pata Pata in 1967. In 1968, she fell out of favor with white Americans after marrying Stokley Carmichael, a prominent leader of the Black Panther Party. Rubbing salt into the wound, the US government revoked her visa while traveling abroad. They were forced to move to Guinea. There, Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Touré.

Meanwhile, she continued touring and performing across Europe and Asia in the 1970s, divorced Kwame Touré in 1978, then married a Belgian in 1981. She remained in exile until South Africa's apartheid was officially ended in 1990.

Pata Pata remained one of her most popular songs of all time. In 2008, Miriam was on tour in Italy and suffered a heart attack after performing this very song. She died en route to the hospital.

Miriam Makeba was vitally important to popularizing African music for a western audience. If not for her success and influence, we might never have enjoyed the next generation of African artists like Ali Farka Toure, Cheb Mami, Youssou N'Dour, and so on.

Rest in Power, Mama Africa.

Here are some of my past posts in this project:

• Dennis Wilson: Rainbows
• Scorpions: Wind of Change
• Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida
• Carlos di Sarli: El Amanecer
• Turakina Maori Girls Choir: Po Atarau

Needle Drop (video w/ audio): https://vimeo.com/1205039438

Pacific Ocean Blue was a rare solo project by a former member of The Beach Boys. Being the drummer and the middle brother between Bryan and Carl Wilson, Dennis didn't get many opportunities to sing on the band's albums, though he helped write many of the songs. His first real solo was the opening track "Slip on Through" from the 1970 album Sunflower. After Pacific Ocean Blue, he started having marital problems and his voice began to deteriorate. Dennis Wilson tragically drowned in 1983, and his upcoming album "Bambu" remained unfinished.

I'm really impressed with the production quality of this album, as well as the expert mastering of the vinyl record itself. It was a joy to listen to from start to finish. Several tracks employed arrangements and harmonies that would not be out of place on a later Beach Boys record. The track that surprised me the most was Time on the beginning of Side 2.

Collecting these albums—my own personal Project Hail Mary—has been a joy and a thrill. It's great to hear the rest of the tracks on the album to get better context for the song, and understand why it was chosen for the film.

My copy was graded as "VG" by the seller, but I'd have to say that this was a pretty conservative grading as it sounds very nice. The surface noise is not distracting, and there are no major clicks or pops. This is a pressing from its original release year in 1977. VG+ copies go for $50-80. I took a gamble on a VG for $35 and feel pretty good with the outcome. The outer and inner sleeve are in excellent condition. For the sake of sticking to music that would have been released before the Voyager launch, I did not consider the re-releases of this album that occurred in 2008 and 2010.

Here are some of my past posts if you want to hear more of the tracks!

Previous posts:

• Scorpions: Wind of Change
• Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida
• Carlos di Sarli: El Amanecer
• Turakina Maori Girls Choir: Po Atarau

As part of a series, here is my latest installment in collecting the entire PHM Soundtrack on vinyl:

Scorpions: Wind of Change (1990, Crazy World)

NEEDLE DROP: https://vimeo.com/1204510934

This copy was pressed in Holland (The Netherlands).

This track was featured in the karaoke scene on board the aircraft carrier. Ilyukhina was hammered (as is tradition) and picked this song. Cmdr. Yao, being three sheets to the wind himself, decided to join her.

Despite the brief appearance in the film, I found it to be a brilliant choice for three reasons:

1. The song was written in late 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Though it makes no direct statement about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain, the narrator opens by telling us that he "followed a Moskva down to Gorky Park," and that he saw "soldiers passing by, listening to the wind of change."

2. The characters singing this tune are a Russian woman, and a Chinese man. Historically speaking, both Russia and China are inexorably linked to Communism.

3. There is a hopeful energy to the tune that something massive and world-changing is about to happen at a very fragile moment in history, but no one's entirely sure what will come next. Ryland Grace is grappling with anxiety and uncertainty about Earth's future, and doesn't understand why everyone else is feeling so joyous and hopeful about dying, which is why I think it's such a smart choice. Eva Stratt believes that "Camaraderie helps..." the mission by boosting morale.

So far I have 9 out of the 11 discs. I'm waiting for my 1977 pressing of Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" to arrive next week, and the Harry Styles record should be here this week.

(The karaoke version of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" has never had a vinyl release and does not count for this project, although it is based on a version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong).

Previous posts:

• Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida
• Carlos di Sarli: El Amanecer
• Turakina Maori Girls Choir: Po Atarau

Just a boy, his box and a purple fan

I was browsing the user manual for a Mackie mixer / recording interface (Onyx16) when I came upon this gem in the warning section about minimizing exposure to loud sounds. They give the standard OSHA regulations, then provide a helpful chart to understand how much time you can be exposed to loud sounds before hearing damage occurs.

https://imgur.com/gallery/SUk9kNY

Does anyone know this bit of Mackie lore? Who are Chaz and Troy, and why is the one screaming at the other about deadlines all the time? :D

This chart is in a bunch of Mackie product user manuals, apparently.

Listen here: https://vimeo.com/1199977091

Note: the above recording has been played 5% faster to match its presentation in the film: it was raised to have a musical key relation (B minor) with the Maori song that ended in E major, and to match the pitch of the klaxon siren (F#) that wakes Ryland Grace out of his dream.

I have spent the last month and a half collecting all the vinyl records which contain the tracks used in the Project Hail Mary soundtrack, since a vast majority of them were published before 1977. The 1970s were considered the peak era of vinyl production: virtually everyone had a record player, and cassette tapes and CDs didn't take off until the 1980s.

I've been checking local record stores as well as buying on Discogs. This is the latest one to arrive. It wasn't nearly as difficult to find as my last two entries: the Carlos di Sarli tango record, or the Turakina Girls Choir. By the same token, Mercedes Sosa was not well known outside Central & South America, and parts of Western Europe.

This album is an homage to the music of Violeta Parra, a highly influential Chilean composer who took her own life in 1967 at the age of 50.