Kentucky is a state that’s been on a hot streak producing ground-breaking Americana/rock artists lately: Sturgill Simpson, possibly the best musician to make popular music in the second half of the 2010’s onward, Chris Stapleton, who is making some of the best traditional blues you’ll hear, Tyler Childers, whose work may be best described as traditional country that’s set in a contemporary world, and many others. Now comes Jeremy Pinnell.

All hail from the Bluegrass State.

All are exceptional.

Pinnell has previously released two honky tonk albums that were well-received, but here, he covers Concrete Blonde’s 1989 “Joey” with a lonesome, wrenching solo rendition. 2020 being 2020, he recorded it on his phone in his home and released the results on YouTube. I’d say he did a damn fine job and his version captured the tone and tenor of its time perfectly.And as I always say: there’s a lot of great new music out there, it’s just harder to find than ever.

This song is proof of just that.

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“Rogozin is at it again,” harked a post on Twitter today. Rogozin is of course Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, the Director General of Roscosmos, Russia’s state corporation for spaceflight activities and systems. “At it” meant that he had given a speech regarding the current state of the Russian space program, its future and its plans. I suppose “at it” was also meant that Rogozin had made sensational sort of statement, something he’s known for from time to time. He didn’t really do that this time, however, instead he gave a frank statement of how his program needs to improve and what his viewpoint of the American space program is.

Rogozin makes some good points, with a touch of the same sort of jingoism Americans were applauding as it came from the Cape and Houston just a couple of weeks ago as NASA and SpaceX sent two astronauts to orbit on the ISS. Write off the Russian space program at your own peril — they are the ones who have uninterrupted access to orbit for over forty years.

He called out NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz, who told Forbes magazine last week that “cosmonauts will fly on Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner and vice versa.” Aside from Schierholz’s statement, there’s no evidence that Russia is planning to fly on either craft — they have purchased no contracts, nor have they publicly submitted any RFP’s for one. Russia has no need to buy seats, as it has a reliable ride to space of its own.

Rogozin also offered a riposte to Elon Musk, when he said “on May 30 Elon Musk did not bring us down — he brought down his compatriots from Boeing passing them with the beginning of the flight tests. This war is theirs, but not ours. We have a long-standing and continuously working national transport system; we constantly refine it, at the same time building a new and more advanced spacecraft.”

What do you expect him to say? Should he fawn like a SpaceX fanboi on Twitter and suggest that the Russians shut down a program that has ~1900 successful launches, 173 crewed? That is absurd. Rogozin is correct, besides. The competition was not with them, it was Boeing vs. SpaceX. Yes, Russia charged NASA far more than SpaceX will, but the Russians were also charging what the market would bear, something that should be near and dear to a country to claims to love the free market and capitalism. The only possible competition would have come from China, a country that NASA is forbidden to work with in any international space effort. It was Russia or America would have had to abandon ISS entirely. Given that stark choice, Russia’s price was a bargain.

Much was also made in the about the vast superiority of Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 versus Soyuz. Certainly Crew Dragon is more modern, after all, its base design is a little more than a decade old. Its crewed flight capabilities are still being tested for the first time — while it is successfully in orbit, that was only one-third of its mission: go to orbit, stay there and test the long-term capabilities of the craft to stay functional and then return the crew safely home. Until it meets the latter two milestones, one underway, the other yet to come later in the summer, the mission cannot be called a success. On the other hand, Soyuz was and still is the most venerable human launch system in existence. It’s record speaks for itself.

“We have a unique record of 173 successful flights. Even the three emergencies caused by the carrier rocket failures in 1975, 1983 and 2018 occurring during various injection stages showed its unique survivability due to the launch escape system reliability. By the way, the Soyuz rocket of various configurations has performed over 1,900 launches,” said Rogozin.

True. Soyuz is, by far, the most experienced and iterated design of any spacecraft, ever. Is it dated? Yes. But it has continued from its maiden launch in the days of Gemini until now. The Soviets/Russians have not had the capability gaps that existed here between Apollo and STS, the delays after STS tragedies, and the last gap between STS and Commercial Crew.

And it will stay that way, because not all nations want to depend on America for access to space. That is why Rogozin mentioned “the time-honored spacecraft created and designed by Sergey Korolev to conquer the Moon, will serve for a while even after the new Oryol spacecraft becomes operational.” In other words, the Russians will continue to have access to space now and for as far as one can peer into the future.

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Personally, some of the best nights in my life were spent in the Village Subway, in Cameron Village, Raleigh, NC US of A. We were sure we were all almost famous, and funny thing, that’s exactly what some of us became. I personally didn’t, but I damn sure had a good time in my early 1920’s.

Imagine a 2,500 square foot club, hot and sweaty, packed to the gills; so tightly that dancing was basically jumping straight up and down. At any given times, there might be three, perhaps four other people pressing up against you, and undoubtedly you were doing the same to someone else. And, oh, the B-52’s playing on a tiny stage ten feet in front of you.

It was just another night at the Café Deja Vu, in beautiful Raleighwood North Carolina in the 1980’s.

I truly believe that The B-52’s have been underrated by a lot of rock historians. They were new, quirky, they were different, and they were silly a lot of the time, but they were also incredibly talented and incredibly fun. Seeing them once was enough to make someone be see them every time they came through town and listen to their records in between.

Without trying to sound like someone waxing about their lost youth, it was always a good time. So were the after-hours parties with Fred Schneider holding court, or maybe my roommate, Berklee graduate David Matos of The Snap showing off his ability to play anything by ear after hearing it once, and by play, I mean every single instrument.

I haven’t spoken to Fred or David in 30+ years now, and I doubt he remembers me, but I do enjoy knowing that my friend Neilan Tyree (whom I met through my wife Maggie) and Fred are good friends. For his part, David did a turn on Broadway as the lead guitarist in Motown The Musical, among many other things. He’s always had a solid career, and still does so far as I know They are all really good people, and it was fun knowing them, however slightly, before they got really famous.

For more, read Heather Leah’s fine piece on The Village Subway.

 

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Here’s a fun little thought experiment for the space enthusiast: suppose for a moment that NASA and the US had followed what the Soviets and later Roscosmos did with Soyuz: kept improving the existing system incrementally and kept the system flying while they did.

Instead of building a new booster stack for every new program – STS, now ISS, and later whatever we do with SLS when it finishes, we had kept the Saturn IB / Apollo CSM system in service and had iteratively improved it as technology improved? At least on the surface, the answer seems be a “yes.”

Soyuz launching the Soviet part of the ASTP mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 1975. Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov would later meet in space with Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton in orbit on the last spaceflight of the Saturn family.

photo: TASS, via NASA.

While it was hardly sexy, “Cluster’s Last Stand” had a great track record. Save for Apollo 13 (caused by human error) the same can be said for the CSM. I think the H-1 (later RS-27) engine would have evolved to something similar to the Merlin in performance terms (both are gas-generator engines) and the J2 engine on the S-IVB Saturn IB second stage had plenty of go (1,033.1 kN).

 A Saturn IB lifts off from Kennedy Space Center in the 1970’s. Seen below the rocket’s plume is the distinctive pedestal used to match the relatively diminutive IB to the launch tower.

photo: NASA

On the top, literally, an Apollo capsule with even the second generation Shuttle avionics much less CST-100 or Orion avionics would have been something to behold, plus whatever improvements to another 40 years of development and manufacturing would have brought. Would the Apollo CSM have evolved to something reusable? Maybe.

Did we quit flying every time we built a new kind of airplane? No. But that’s what the US has effectively done with its space program: nothing launched from US soil during the development of the next program. This happened in the 1970’s between Apollo and the Space Shuttle and it has been since 2011 and the end of the Shuttle program that US astronauts have gone to space on an American rocket. It seems illogical, but that’s what has happened.

Ironically, the US and NASA depend on the venerable Soyuz workhorse to ferry astronauts to ISS. Soyuz has been in service since 1967, and its replacement is only now in advanced development in Russia.

One thing is certain: the US would have never had the launch gap in the 1970’s between ASTP and STS, nor would we have one now. The Russians have never had a flight gap since Soyuz entered service in the late 1960’s, save for the short periods following incident investigations. And even today, they can continue to use the venerable Soyuz while RKK Energia works through the issues with their new Federation spacecraft (its maiden launch is expected to slip from 2022 to 2024.)

A breakdown of the Saturn IB flight stack. 

Source: NASA msfc-71-pm 1100-29

Meanwhile, our *three* human spaceflight programs all have their own issues. At the time of this writing in May, 2019, SpaceX is piecing together the data and the remains of its first Crew Dragon capsule after it exploded during a test, Boeing is working through its own issues with its onboard launch escape system engines on the CST-100 and SLS continues to plod through development and testing (and is years behind schedule.)

Perhaps we should have kept the old uprated Saturn I system. It would be interesting to have seen what we could have done in space had we kept the old bird flying.

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A quick story for y’all: for years I had this crazy memory, but one that really seemed like it really happened. Thing is, memories from that age seem more like dreams from long ago but still remembered than they do things that actually happened. This one actually did happen. My date with Morgan Fairchild? Well, no, that was definitely a dream. The other memory? It might have been even more far-fetched.

The memory is this: I vividly remembered my Dad, an astronaut and me riding around in Dad’s car in Cocoa Beach, and then Dad drove the car into the Indian River and took us for a ride on the water — still in the car — to look at a Saturn V off in the distance at the Cape. When we were done, Dad drove us all home in that same car.

Sunbeam Amphicar at Downtown Disney

Crazy. It bugged me for a long time — it just seemed so real but the whole idea of my Dad, some astronaut and me riding around in a car is just too crazy to be true.

A few years before he passed on, my Dad and I were sharing a drink and not really watching the game on TV so I asked Dad about it, and also asked him not to laugh if it was something I’d dreamt up: was I just remembering something that I imagined, or did it possibly really happen?

Dad looked at me, grinned and launched excitedly into a story about this car he had “before I met your mother and for a while after” and how this car was also a boat, and that yes, positively that had happened, in his Sunbeam Amphicar.

The astronaut was Wally Schirra (Apollo 7), he was there to see the pad procedures that were being developed for the coming Apollo launches. He didn’t say much to other than a kind hello, because I was pretty young in 1966: I didn’t turn five until Thanksgiving week. It was pretty easy to ignore me while I was strapped down in the back seat. I was just along for the ride. No worries, I still had fun.

Dad added that later on when he got married to Mom and “had us kids” that Mom told him he had to sell it to get a station wagon for all of us. He always added immediately, and laughed, “I already knew the secret to a happy marriage: just say ‘Yes, Dear’ and get it over with.”

Unfortunately, my Dad passed away on March 18, 2010, after a sudden illness. He never emphasized his contribution to the space program—he said he was a tiny cog in a huge machine and left that to be that, except the times he said, “Mongo only pawn in game of NASA” with a roaring laugh that told you he found that as funny in 2005 as he did in the 1970s after he saw “Blazing Saddles” for the first time. He did say he enjoyed what he did and that he’d never trade the experience.

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Siouxsie Sioux in the 1980’s.

The times are gone, but Siouxsie Sioux is not a forgotten siren of the 1980’s.

Madonna tried to cop her style, but failed, because there was only one Siouxsie. Madonna may be more famous, but Siouxsie was legit and an absolute original.  Madonna, for all her success, was never did one truly original anything. So, to me, she’s never been legit.  Siouxsie always will be.

The London Markets, 1980s. Photographer: unknown

I’m by no means a retired goth from 35 years ago, but I always loved that era in the pantheon of 1980’s music.

It was dark, heavy and brooding music, often times with thudding melancholic beats that were like a bone-chilling winter fog…and it was good dance music.  Bands like Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie, Love and Rockets, The Mission (UK) and others led this distinctly British sound that was incredibly diverse in its tone and delivery.  You had to be there, to feel what England was like to feel the release of the early Goth sound.  I loved it.

Anyway, Siouxsie and the Banshees came into my thoughts tonight as I was listening to a Rey Pila cover of “Israel” — and one well, well done. There’s is a rare tribute song that captures the spirit and soul of the original, and instead of trying to copy Siouxsie, the song is sung in a male voice, and that helps Rey Pila’s version stand on its own.

Take a listen:

That’s a good song.

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Western music is the nearly forgotten half of “country and western” and this song is one of the best examples of it. Western was (and is) the cowboy side of things; songs about gunfights, the desert, cattle calls and the like, something that is a persistent part of American self-identity.

Marty Robbins may have been western’s most well-known artist, but there were others, fellows like Eddy Arnold, Bob Nolan, Foy Willing and bands like Sons of the Pioneers and Otto Gray and his Oklahoma Cowboys were all popular and well-regarded in their time.

 

Sometimes, traditional country stars like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams dabbled in western as well. And I am sure you all remember Slim Whitman, who actually was more than a novelty in his day.

In the early 1970’s, western waned and “country and western” just became “country.” It was modern times, we’d been to the moon and there were other concerns to consider. Cowboy songs were gone.

Time passes and what was once old becomes new again: western music is making a bit of a return. Maybe that’s because a lot of artists that are revisiting the old styles, and updating them into something new. Western music is no exception and musicians are again tapping into its rich vein.

You’ll find no better example of “modern” western and a paean to its past than Marty Stuart’s last album “Way Out West.” The title track is something that could have been recorded in 1965, but it a 21st-century sensibility that could only be made in modern times. Also on that record is “Old Mexico” – a pure western song that will make you think Stuart is channeling the late Marty Robbins.

Another artist to check out for modern western is Gil Landry’s solo work, especially with songs like “Fennario” or “Denver Girls.” Landry will take you out under the infinite Colorado skies and tell you a story or two in the blowing winds.

It’s a great form of American music, and one that really sets a technicolor vision of a mythical place.

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