Musics below. Peter Schilling Major Tom (Coming Home) (Special Extended Version) Major Tom (Coming Home) (Instrumental Version) In the 70s and 80s Italian exploitation filmmakers had a habit of making unofficial sequels to established, popular films. Dawn Of The Dead (known as Zombi in Europe) begat Zombi 2 . The Australian film Patrick , inspired a completely unrelated piece of crap called Patrick Still Lives . The Italians also made rip-off wanna-be sequels to Evil Dead II ( La [...]
Gale Boetticher - Major Tom (Coming Home) The greatest cover video of all time. RIP Gale...
What disco hit should this bouncy Ottawa band cover? You tell them!

Ever have one of those songs that you've always liked but never knew who it was by or what it was called? That's the story behind this week's Saturday throwback, "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling . I was able to finally discover the origins of this song after a cover version by Shiny Toy Guns was used so well in a Lincoln MKZ commercial over the past few years. While that version is great, I'm still a little partial to the original. When I found out the name of the song [...]
If you've watched TV in the states over the past year or so there's a good to great chance that you've become familiar with this track on a Lincoln MKV commercial. I personally don't watch live TV (basically I don't watch commercials anymore) so it took me longer than most to figure out that Lincoln had chosen to go with Shiny Toy Guns to propagate the idea that their flagship car is more of a spaceship and less of a boring old sedan. I must give kudos to the ad wizards who came up with this one. Not only is [...]
Filed under: What's That Song? 'Major Tom (Coming Home),' by Shiny Toy Guns For its newest ad campaign, Lincoln boldly goes where no auto manufacturer has gone before -- into outer space. With starry backdrops and cars that seem to blast off into space as if they were rocket ships, it is no wonder the ad uses an ethereal, science-fiction song as its soundtrack.

Peter Schilling - Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst) label: WEA year: 1982 side a: Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst) side b: Ich Hab' Keine Lust www.peter-schilling.com I really like that "Völlig losgelöst" bit. It just means he's cut loose from the earth (I think) but it sounds so good. A bit like my former colleague William used to shout a couple of times a week, out of the blue and for no reason at all: "Völlig abgerockt!" It probably isn't even real German, or maybe it is, but [...]

Contest entry is closed! Thanks to all who entered, and special thanks to those who had kind words for the work on the blog. With shuttle Discovery scheduled for launch on 23 October and my pending assignment to be part of it all, I think it's best to go ahead and send our little torpedo skyward next Saturday instead of waiting until after that "other" launch(weather permitting of course-remember, this is Florida; "weather permitting" is a big part of everything you plan). Emails from all the entries will be written on identical pieces of paper and packed in the payload [...]
7 Means of Movement: Rocketing Tom Baker, Ode to Homo Sapiens. Elton John, Rocket Man. Sun Ra, We Travel the Spaceways. Television, The Rocket. Lee Harvey Oswald Band, Rocket 69. Destroyer, The Space Race. Jerry Engler, Sputnik (Satellite Girl). The Divine Comedy, Laika's Theme. The Five Du-Tones, The Chicken Astronaut. Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, Moonshot. David Bowie, Space Oddity (
I have...a LOT of German music. Dang! In the interests of preserving my sanity, let's break this up into genres! KRAUTROCK Kraftwerk - Die Roboter ( BUY ) Kraftwerk - Metal On Metal ( BUY ) Ah, our robotic overlords Kraftwerk! You have them to blame/thank for influencing many New Wave, electronic, and synth bands. These are two of my favorite songs. If you want an [...]
I thought, "oh, surely there are not many songs I have that fit this theme, because I usually don't care for songs that say a specific person's name a whole bunch!" but man, I was SO WRONG. I had to stop looking at itunes after about two minutes because I had already uploaded like 50000 songs. Uh. So here's what got up before I manually stopped FTP because it was getting truly out of hand. (Most of these are culled from my "5 stars" list, for what that's worth.) Ready? I'm about to BLOW [...]

NASA gave the okay for today's launch of Discovery, despite a crack in the foam that insulates the external tank. If the launch goes as scheduled, today at 2:38 P.M. EST, it will be the first U.S. manned launch on the 4th of July. So, here's my 4th of July mix for this year, great for listening to as you watch the shuttle lift off. Some Girls - Launch Pad Elton John - Rocket Man David Bowie - Space Oddity [...]