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Carl Sagan Sings
gijoel writes "Someone with too much time on their hands and access to Auto-Tune has taken clips from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series to make this fantastic song. Watch for the Stephen Hawking cameo."
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What episode of Cosmos is the section where Sagan begins "I'm not very good at singing" ?
I think about the time in which Sagan lived, and the hope and threat of a more glorious dawn awaiting. Someone once compared the light of a nuclear detonation to the light of a thousand suns. While the current nuclear stockpile wouldn't reach the light of 400 billion suns, I think it would be close enough for all intended purposes. The current poll on /. seems to be leaning heavily towards the expectation that we will have destroyed ourselves in 100 years; Hawking has repeatedly stated that if we are to survive long term as a species, we will have to inhabit other worlds or at least colonize space. It seems that, barring any of a thousand other extinction events, the current age of humanity, whatever span of time it may be, will in fact rest upon which more glorious dawn we, as a species, choose, or allow to be chosen for us.
He inspired a generation to be interested in science. How many actual scientists today can trace their choice of career back to Cosmos?
Oh, and read Demon-Haunted World.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I would even expect autotune in Skinny Puppy if it wasn't done in a hot-topic mall way. I'm probably in the minority but the big "electronic" acts in that day (Skinny Puppy, Ministry, and even Nine Inch Nails) all seemed to pretty much fall apart near the same time. After Last Rights ('91), The Downward Spiral ('94), and Psalm 69 ('92) everything from them has been pretty mediocre (sorry Fragile fans but the album would have been much better as a single CD without the crud).
His tune-up of MLK's I have a dream speech is pretty awesome. It's good enough to actually consider a mainstream artist doing a proper cover in the mode of the Obama "Yes we can" video.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Does anyone have any idea of how to get a hold of the very original Cosmos television series that aired on P.B.S. back in the early 80's ?
The Cosmos series was bought, remastered, and remade in the late 90's by Ted Turner, and that is the series that I own (the DVD set), however it is not what I watched as a child. I liked the original better. The original had much better ambient music, and in the transitions between scenes, worked much better I thought (more powerfully evoking). The remastered version may be more up to date scientifically, but the music has been replaced with mostly classical that doesn't fit the emotion, and is hacked up quite a bit.
I know the story is that Carl had a large disagreement with the way the original series was produced by KCET out of Los Angeles. Later the series was remade with the help of his wife, but some of the original music could not be relicensed (or was not even licensed correctly the first time) when the series was sold to Turner.
I have most of the episodes of the original 80's version on cassette, that I have now digitized. But the sound isn't that great since it was recorded by simply placing a microphone in front of the TV. There are other tape "abnormalities" as well, like the side A to side B change over.
I know there must be some remaining VHS or Beta tapes around of the original series somewhere, since they were sold as sets to schools and universities back in the 80's. I'd love to have a copy of those! Digital of course.
It was written specifically for the piece. The composer does some really beautiful piano work. I wouldn't be surprised if he sampled some of the synth themes from _Cosmos_ to do it.