“Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige” One of the many great quotes from the much talked-about 2014 film Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Birdman is the story of insecure Hollywood actor Riggan Thomson (played by Michael Keaton), famous for being Birdman in a series of superhero movies of yesteryear. In an attempt… Continue reading Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
It is not often I go along to see a musical, but Christmas season at home with the family meant a trip to London’s West End. We saw Wicked, playing at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. For those who have not seen it, Wicked: The Untold… Continue reading Wicked – The Duality of Human Nature
With the advent of space travel and huge leaps in audio technology, space age pop saw boundaries being pushed in music-making. By the mid-1960s, space-age pop’s star had waxed and waned, coinciding with the British Invasion and the invention of the Moog synthesiser. The scene had been set for the birth of space rock. Space… Continue reading The Birth of Space Rock
So that’s exactly what I did at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge last week! Retro Video Games Night is a regular fixture here so I dropped in for the Xmas Edition with my better half, to get my chance to play the video games of my childhood. Getting to the venue involved a dark… Continue reading # All I want for Christmas….Is a night playing retro video games #
Given the vastness and unrealised possibility of the Universe, it is no surprise that musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration, to create their own music based on their perceptions of the cosmos. It was the beginning of space-travel, marked by the launch of the Soviet Sputnik 1 in 1957, which sowed the seeds… Continue reading The Conception of Space Rock: The Glories of the Space Age
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to play a musical instrument in outer space? As a bass player, I think it would be awesome: having a weightless bass in zero gravity; zipping around with my feet above my head; playing blistering passages on the fingerboard with ease, like a true guitar hero!… Continue reading The Music Heroes of Zero Gravity
Per aspera ad astra – ‘through hardships to the stars!’ An inspirational message in Latin sent via Morse code on the Voyager Golden Record; and a message that, like most things in life, rings true for the huge task of putting music into outer space. Sending music into space represents a reaching out to the… Continue reading Music in the Milky Way
“I….can’t believe…I’m about to…kiss a comet!” Humorous sentiments expressed by Sarcastic Philae on Twitter, but a statement that could not be closer to the truth and echoed by space scientists and the world alike. The European Space Agency successfully landed the Philae probe on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12th November, achieving the breakthrough of the… Continue reading Songs Of The Stars
the marshmallow magpie 