OT Ground Control to Major Tom

[Flyby PC]

Apologies if this has been mentioned before. I missed it if it was. I thought this was going to be really cheesy, but I was wrong. This is brilliant. Chris Hadfield in space singing David Bowies Space Oddity.

Sorry about the formatting, for some reason pressing enter wouldn't work carriage return. Hmmm, doesn't work here either. I was going to say it's not WW1 related, but a yardstick for where we've come in 100 years.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Flyby PC

[+Olham]

Not cheesy, indeed - quite touching; it brings some emotion into this tech-station high above our planet.

And if all humans could see Earth from up there, they might be more careful with the small blue pearl...

[rjw]

A very respectable rendition of Bowie's song, in an appropriate location and well produced. Very nice indeeded!

[+Fubar512]

"My mother says, to get things done, you'd better not mess with Major Tom!"

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnc7b1utU3Y

[Vavavava]

really nice... thank you for sharing

[+Olham]

One of his greatest songs IMHO. The arrangement is brilliant.

[+Olham]

PS: David Bowie and "Ashes to Ashes" were so popular in Germany in 1980, that "Major Tom"

even appeared in a song of a German group around Peter Schilling.

"Major Tom" was their only hit as far as I know, and it was originally sung in German,

but I only found a video of the English version for the international market.

 

[+Fubar512]

Bowie was once asked about the message contained within the lyrics of Space Oddity, and his response was "It's just a song, man".

 

Years later, when asked about the significance of the scenes, scenarios, and costumes in the Ashes to Ashes video, Bowie simply stated that the bulldozer represented "approaching violence". One of the crew involved in the filming of that video said that it (and the lyrics) dealt with Bowie burying his personas and problems from the 1970s, and moving on to new and better things.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Fubar512

[Flyby PC]

I can't really put my finger on it, but it's just tremendously uplifting. It's not just that a real live astronaut is singing a song about an astronaut. It's nothing spooky that David Bowie mysteriously saw it coming, but just the things that would come to pass actually have come to pass, but the circuit isn't dead and Major Tom isn't lost, the circuit is good, and the astronaut is coming home. I think it's uplifting because it is just a song. Life has a live soundtrack. The other thing is how outlandish David Bowie was considered to be when he released Space Oddity; the emphasis seemed to be less space more oddity, but I've grown up in the same period that David Bowie has become the establishment, and is now being sung by Astronauts to inspire school kids to study science. That's pretty cool. It's nice when someone original shows up to shake the place up a little.

[Atreides]

Yeah mr Hadfield is an awesome guy the first Canadian commander of the ISS.

Edited May 23, 2013 by Atreides