[X] My Assistant

[imipak]

There's far more than anyone ever wanted to know about my music taste on last.fm. Live statistics galore, straight from my audio player - it uploads track data as they're played. Last.fm's a music obsessive's heaven! (and you can click through to even more detailed stats; e.g., artists ranked by number of listens over the last 12 months .) I like to think I have something musical in common with almost everyone... but also that there's at least one album in my collection that any random person would find unlistenable. (There are some that nearly everyone finds unlistenable )

There's not much space-related in there, apart from [*embarrassed cough!*] er... mumblemumblehawkwind. There are some space and astronomical themes in Biosphere - SETI, aurorae, startoucher, Skylab,.. highly recommended to anyone who likes electronic ambient, with lots of found sounds, samples from shortwave radio and the like.) Not much else really... hmm, Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space"? Hitch-Hiker's Guide, of course... oh, and Joanna Newsom has the best musical setting of a mnemonic for remembering the difference between meteors, meteorites and meteoroids that I've heard.

(No, "Science Fiction film themes compilation" doesn't count... too easy!)

[ustrax]

Hard to pick...here are some fine tunes...

This, this and this...
...and this...
this
maybe this one too...
and God! this...

Oops...

[ngunn]

The music's not space related, but there is an album title that I will always associate with the Huygens landing - Coldplay Parachutes.

[ustrax]

Coldplay and Huygens hey?
I associate this with MER times... :-)

EDITED: Just one more...a pity you guys don't understand Portuguese...

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Talking about Music...

Open the large version of this photo and spot the iPod in the orbiter cockpit window

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images...016e032313.html

[Gladstoner]

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[climber]

Beattles not bad : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj-4t9drUlM...feature=related

[DEChengst]

Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M-UtlpvBWk

"Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten."

[nprev]

Okay, finally found a G-rated Tubes clip to share; the bass player in the Shriner's hat is a nice touch...

[Gladstoner]

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[edstrick]

"The Space Movie" is available on DVD. Recommended. Has much better Saturn 5 footage than the slightly later <and otherwise damfine> documentary "For All Mankind"

[jrdahlman]

On the subject of The Tubes and space music, I wouldn't say the following is a favorite song, but it's certainly appropriate:

Bill Spooner, formerly of the Tubes, did a song (and album) some years ago that may be the only sure-fire way to get the great unwashed masses excited about the planets:

Have them travel on the "Mall to Mars"!

"The Earth people had a big contest,
And the prize was a shopping trip.
We'll fly to the angry red planet
On a first-class fully-automated Shopping Ship.

(Chorus)
...So off we go on the Mall to Mars!"

[nprev]

...was not aware of this song, thanks!

Well, The Tubes did do one song sorta related to our common interest: "Space Baby". All I remember is one verse:

Space baby you got no planet
Space baby you got no planet
Got no home to give a name
No air to breathe, but just the same
I dig my atmosphere machine...

EDIT: Crap. When am I gonna learn to look on YouTube first? Here's the song. Not one of my favs at all, either, but here it is FWIW.

[Gladstoner]

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[imipak]

How could I have forgotten to mention Brian Eno's fantastic music for the Apollo film. "An Ending (Ascent)" is transcendent really; perhaps it's because I associate it with that sequence from the film. Go listen to the clip on Last.fm if you don't know it...

I'm playing the new Spiritualized album to death at the moment - it's not everyone's cup of tea, being pretty intense and obsessed with a single metaphor for the human condition (substance abuse and recovery from same)... however! There's a space link. Jason Pierce was in an earlier band called "Spacemen 3", and carried over the habit of crediting himself as "J. Spaceman". The theme (a less cheddary development of the cheesy 70s "hey man, like, outer space... inner space... dig it?" notion) crops up throughout their work, from the Apollo end-of-transmission tones on "Ladies and Gentlemen..." to a prop spacesuit in earlier videos and artwork. The video for 'Out of Sight' was filmed on Mt Etna during an eruption, so that's a thermal protection suit rather than a spacesuit, but the lines are apposite - "the planet spins and it keeps me in my place / where I stand is only three miles from space* / standing space is all the space I can stand / gravity just keeps on keeping me down" - and there's a satellite image showing the smoke plume from Etna blowing across the Med.

*Yes, yes, I know... sounds good though, right? and it's the right order of magnitude. Look, it's art, ok?

NPrev - A fine accompaniment to a my morning commute, with the early summer sun filtering through the trees, birds singing, a balmy breeze playing through the sunroof of my beloved Celica, new-born lambs frolicking on the road verges (they roam free around here, it's a Forest of Dean thing) is... "punk ain't no religious cult! / punk means thinking for yourself!" Hmmm... the missing link between Johnny Rotten and the scientific method?

Re: Martian shopping malls - Hawkwind got there first I'm afraid!

OK, enough with the lecture, I'd better stop now before I start looking for space lyrics in New Order or the Manics :>