Hello to the Seattle of 1962. It's 2017, now... and three of my best friends began their sojourn across America yesterday morning... Charlotte to Seattle. Moving there for renewed life and an extreme change of scenery, and a much better career path for the missus. They arrive in the bejeweled recliner love seat of King County on July 1st, my birthday. While I am ridiculously happy for them, my sadness for their departure is quite real. All will smooth over when I visit them in a couple months, but damn.
So, it was a bittersweet delight to hear this record for the first time yesterday evening. This is a fine recording of midcentury space age wizardry. Well orchestrated dramatic strings and horns with early electronica. Obscure composer Attilio Mineo was commissioned by the 1962 Seattle World's Fair to realize what the near future may hold. Here we are fifty-five years later and our present reality isn't the personal jet-pack vision this slab of wax foretold. Otherwise, I would be a human drone flying off to cities like Seattle for day trips... but no, so I will simply occasionally sob into a hanky until I board that Greyhound Bus headed west.
Without a doubt, I enjoyed this recording a great deal. It's a fantastic time capsule that was given away to visitors of the 1962 World's Fair and was the soundtrack inside The Bubbleator.
"The Bubbleator was Washington State's official exhibit in the Coliseum, which housed a 'World of Tomorrow' exhibit. A 150-passenger spherical clear plastic elevator, the Bubbleator moved 2.5 million people through displays promising an easier life ahead. The operator wore a silver shiny space suit right out of a Buck Rogers comic strip and the music of Man in Space with Sounds was being played through the sound system."
Elvis Presley was there, too. He rocked the joint...
Freaky, huh?
Listening to Man in Space with Sounds reminded me of the Lost In Space TV show that I was obsessed with as a kid and historic space vessel exhibits at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. My family visited the 1964/65 World's Fair in NYC but I, unfortunately, don't remember much since I was only about 4-years old at the time.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting your comment and being the first person to do so on Busy Microbes! I was born in 1965. As a kid, I visited the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio and The U.S. Space and Rocket center in Huntsville, Alabama. Delightful memories! Thanks again and stay tuned!
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