The Crack of Dawn #799
10/30/2025
10/30/2025
Newsletter #799
The Crack of Dawn
The two great loves in my life are movies and music. I’m extremely fortunate to have spent the better part of my life doing a job that I love. Honestly, that’s the most you can ask for in life. Getting up every day to do a job you don’t like is hell on Earth.
Regarding music, as hard as I’ve tried, I’m not a musician. Not only am I not sufficiently coordinated to do two different things with each of my hands at the same time—like strumming or picking with one hand, while making chords with the other; I have a tin ear. I do not have the ability to perform the most basic aspect of playing a guitar—tuning it. What’s supposed to occur in that simple process means absolutely nothing to me. Plucking a string and equating that to a note to me is like trying to read Chinese.
But I deeply love music. I consider myself an expert listener. I can discern the various instruments, and though my youthful dream was to play lead guitar—like Jimmy Page or Carlos Santana—I also pay a lot of attention to the drumming, the bass lines, and the arrangement. Plus, having gone through innumerable shitty stereos in my life; I finally got the best stereo on Earth. My MacIntosh MA8000 amplifier has 300-watts per channel. This amp was Jerry Garcia’s favorite. It has tubes and weighs 200-pounds. I have enormous gorgeous speakers handmade in Italy. I have a JBL subwoofer that weighs 100-pounds and sits directly on the floor. Interestingly, I think, the subwoofer sits silent and unused for most songs. On rare occasions a song will have a bass guitar or bass drum that is recorded well enough to actually hear, then suddenly the subwoofer kicks in and my whole house shakes. The windows rattle in the panes. Knickknacks fall off the shelves. It’s awesome. Incidentally, the only classical piece that has ever caused the subwoofer to kick in is the first twenty seconds of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, best known as the very opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It begins with a powerful, quiet, low-frequency growling, that I assume is multiple basses. It perfectly sets the proper mood for the movie, and it rightly became famous because of it.
As I just looked for it on YouTube, and since the piece is two minutes long, I listened to a bunch of them. Most of them didn’t have the growling at all. A couple of them did, but very subdued and quiet. I’ve been listening to it my whole life from the movie soundtrack. That specific version is the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Bohm. That’s what I’ve included.
Back when I used to drink, I was an exceptionally talented air guitarist. No brag, just fact. I was able to hit the highest of high notes, bending the strings, using the whammy bar at just the right time, moving the guitar toward the amplifier to create feedback at just the right moment. I loved it, particularly when I was drunk. I bought a twenty-five dollar, fake, red Stratocaster at the pawn shop, along with two beautiful guitar straps, and two little amplifiers, but I never plugged in. For years I had blisters and callouses on my fingers—just like a real guitarist—from making fake chords, and strumming and picking as hard as I could. The steel strings on an electric guitar are vicious, particularly when you’re pretending to be Pete Townsend. The cuts and pain in my fingers constantly attested to my deep love of music. Why else would I do such a stupid thing. I was also an expert at air-bass, air-drums, air-saxophone, and air-piano. Playing lead electric air-guitar, this was my favorite song by a mile—Refried Boogie by Canned Heat. It’s on the album, Living the Blues, which was the second or third album I ever bought in my life, in 1968 when I was ten. It’s a double-record that contains Canned Heat’s biggest hit song (and one of my very favorite songs), Going Up the Country, that was used as the opening of the movie, Woodstock (1970). The second record of Living the Blues is one, 41-minute-long song called Refried Boogie, recorded live. The song begins with a three-minute long guitar solo by Alan “The Owl” Wilson, one of the truly strange, talented characters of ‘60s rock—which was loaded with strange characters—who unsurprisingly died very young of a drug overdose. In any case, I had the timing of the Owl’s long guitar solo down perfectly. I played it constantly. Friends shot videos of me performing this drunken routine, and though I look like a complete drunken asshole, it really does look like I’m playing the song on that fake Red Stratocaster—
Sadly, when I stopped drinking six years ago, there went my air-instrument career. Without the booze, I haven’t got the enthusiasm, the audacity, or the overripe imagination.
Meanwhile, I’ve always paid a great deal of attention to song’s lyrics. If a song’s lyrics are good; I learn them. I know the words of a lot of songs. Oddly, I think, most people can’t remember lyrics, even many musicians. And though I have an incredibly shitty voice—getting shittier everyday with every cigarette and every joint—I love singing songs. I sing songs all the time. On my daily walk through my neighborhood, I generally sing out loud at full volume. I occasionally belt out the song’s finales, like Rose’s Turn from Gypsy—”Everything’s coming up roses/Everything’s coming up bright lights and lollipops/Everything’s coming up roses this time for me! For me!” Another terrific song to belt out loud is Kate Smith’s God Bless America, attempting to emulate her. I frequently sing all of side-4 of Judy Garland Live at Carnagie Hall (1961), including all of Judy’s comments between the songs, like, “Do you really want more? Aren’t you tired?” The crowd roars, chanting, “Judy, Judy . . .” She says, “We’ve got one more. We’ll do, we’ll do, we’ll do, Chicago.” Judy stutters, “we’ll do,” three times. I also sing the entire score of My Fair Lady, Cabaret and Gigi (Best Picture, 1958, the year I was born. My sister Pam and I can do all of the duets in Gigi—”We met at nine/We met at eight/I was on time/No, you were late/Ah, yes, I remember it well.”
A couple of weeks ago, the day before Pam left Michigan for Florida, where she lives half the year, she came over to say goodbye. Upon seeing each other, we hugged and kissed. Pam said naturally, not quoting anything, “My bags are packed, I’m ready to go.” I replied, “I’m standing here, outside your door, I hate to wake you up to say goodbye,” then automatically we sang together, “So kiss me and smile for me/Tell me that you’ll wait for me/Hold me like you’ll never let me go/I’m leavin’ on a jet plane/Don’t know when I’ll be back again . . .” and we sang the whole song.
Oddly, I think, when I’m walking, only a very limited number of songs ever come to me, even though I know many more. So I sing the same songs over and over. I don’t know why, the most frequent songs are: Late for the Sky by Jackson Brown, We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn, several Barbra Streisand songs (lately it’s been Superman), Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond, Baby, Now That I’ve Found You by the Foundations, Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones, and Five Years by David Bowie. I also enjoy singing, Oh, Canada, now and then.
Meanwhile . . .
By my reckoning, there haven’t been too many science fiction songs. The first two that come to mind are Fly Me To the Moon by Frank Sinatra, which isn’t science fiction, it’s using space, stars and the moon as metaphors.
The earliest sci-fi song that I recall is Telstar by the Tornados from 1962. It’s not really science fiction, either, but it seems like it. It was an early use of a pre-synthesizer called a Clavioline, used in an inane, unmemorable tune. The song amazingly hit number one in the charts—
— because it was named after one of the very first telecommunication satellites, Telstar, that was launched in 1962. Telstar broadcast the first TV images from America to Europe. Get this, Telstar was only in use for seven months. It was mistakenly destroyed by the largest nuclear bomb test in space in history, called Starfish Prime, on July 9, 1962.
The first real sci-fi song that I recall was In the Year 2525 by Zager & Evans, released in 1968. I was ten, I bought 45rpm record, and of course I still have it. The song is an up tempo, extremely pessimistic, chilling (to me at ten) view of a bleak future.
The next sci-fi rock song in my memory is David Bowie’s Space Oddity, released in 1969. I remember the first time I heard it and thinking, “That’s the weirdest song I’ve ever heard. Rock and roll just gets better every day. The possibilities are endless.” Space Oddity was produced by a very talented producer named Gus Dudgeon, with a brilliant string arrangement by Paul Buckmaster. As a complete sidenote: the next year, a young, bespectacled, singer, songwriter, piano-player named Elton John (real name, Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who officially changed his name to Elton Hercules John, was then knighted, and became Sir Elton Hercules John) was signed to a record contract with a small British label, DJM Records. The record company asked him what he wanted his record to sound like. Elton John immediately said, “I want it to sound like David Bowie’s Space Oddity.” Amazingly, the record company was perfectly accommodating. The hired Gus Dudgeon and Paul Buckmaster for Elton John’s second record, imaginatively entitled, Elton John, and containing the enormous hit, Your Song. Gus Dudgeon then produced Elton John’s next seven albums, all of which were insanely gigantic hits. But I digress, as I often do.
Anyway, David Bowie followed up on the sci-fi rock theme with his brilliant, 1974 album, Diamond Dogs. This is one of my very favorite records and is forever ringing around in my head. Nobody writes lyrics like David Bowie. The rest of us shmucks are merely trying to simultaneously rhyme and make sense, which is a lot. But it’s juggling two balls. A third ball, which I try to throw into the lineup as much as possible, is metaphor. A brilliant song metaphor (of which I’ve never come close) is A Bridge Over Troubled Water. Lyricists like David Bowie, John Lennon and Jim Morrison took lyric writing to a whole new, different, and exciting place—a place I would love to go, but apparently my brain doesn’t work that way. They could rhyme and make sense anytime they wanted to, but they were going for, in my opinion, bigger and better things—strange, vivid images; words that simply sounded good together; the occasional rhyme for the hell of it. Here’s a John Lennon lyric I really admire, but it’s just the first half of the song. I don’t like where Lennon went with it, and I think that’s why it’s an undistinguished Beatles’ song. Here is the first half of Happiness is a Warm Gun—
She’s not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do, oh yeah
She’s well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane
The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy
Working overtime
A soap impression of his wife which he ate
And donated to the National Trust
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down
Down to the pits that I left uptown
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down
Etc.
For the pure fun of it, I will now write out the spoken lyrics at the beginning of David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, called Future Legend, from memory. I won’t look it up.
(This Substack program will only allow me to single-space occasionally. I prefer lyrics single-spaced. Alas).
Future Legend
And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
Shutters lifted in ancient temperance buildings
High on poacher’s hill
And red mutant eyes gazed out on hunger city
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand people-oids scattered into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass front of love me avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox
Now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emeralds
Any day now
The year of the diamond dogs
This ain’t rock and roll
This is genocide
Then it goes into Rebel Rebel, which is a great song.
That’s what fills my mind a lot of the time.
In any case, without further ado, here is my contribution to sci-fi songs.
The Gigantic Red Sun
Slamming the handle forward
We instantly disappeared
The time machine worked perfectly
Rushing forward through the years
A thousand years shot by
Then a thousand more
When we got the handle back
Two-thousand became four
In the year six thousand
Humans had grown weak
They were now so passive
They couldn’t even speak
Humanity was dominated
By an alien overlord
It made them do its bidding
At the sharp end of a sword
Humans did as ordered
They never objected
That’s until we got there
Then we were selected
The alien overlord
Was a giant eyeball
It glared down at us
Like we were nothing at all
We didn’t know what to say
It somehow seemed comical
We both burst out laughing
At the worst time possible
The eyeball began to blink
Then it began to shrink
Soon it was pathetically small
Then it was nothing at all
We freed the folks of the future
They made us their heroes
They built a stone statue of us
Then we told them we had to go
We said we’d go back in time
The people shook their heads
You can’t go back in time
You can only move ahead
Our machine went both ways
We informed the throng
We pulled the handle back
It turned out we were wrong
Instead the counter raced forward
You can’t go back it appeared
By the time we got it stopped
We’d gone ahead ten thousand years
All the people were gone
Humans had become extinct
As we surveyed the barren wasteland
Our eyes widened and blinked
In the sky burned a giant red sun
Hot dusty wind blew in a gust
All that remained on Earth
Was a crumbling statue of us