Around the time Voyager 2 left Earth, Carl Sagan and the Golden Record team took part in a chaotic press launch at a Florida motel, hampered by sound pollution from a Polish wedding. Afterwards, Timothy Ferris, the record’s producer, remembers receiving flak from a NASA staffer, angry there was no Irish music on the record. Let’s right the wrong here and now with The Dubliners’ 1976 performance of ‘The Auld Triangle‘ on German TV show Liedercircus.
Category: THE GOLDEN PLAYLIST
My favourite songs. The ones I’d have put on the Golden Record if I hadn’t been two years old at the time.
Coldest Night of the Year
We know it’s cold in space. We know Vashti Bunyan is fabulous. Put those two facts together, and it points to the very obvious conclusion that any GOLDEN PLAYLIST should include ‘Coldest Night of the Year‘.
Torn Screen Door
The Voyager Golden Record was packed off to space with plenty of a cappella, not least this lovely sounding polyphony performed by the Mbuti of the Ituri Rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, circa 1951. I wanted to choose something made solely by human vocal cords, so I picked this minute-and-a-half of goose-bump raising awesome from David Francey.
Let’s Do It Again
Aliens basking beneath twin suns on some distant shore will need something to kick back to. I propose we give them ‘Let’s Do It Again’ by The Staple Singers.
Il Miserere
Artist Jon Lomberg, one of the Voyager Golden Record’s design/image team, suggested that they include some Mozart on the record. He met resistance from Carl Sagan who apparently thought it too ‘lightweight’. In the end they chose ‘Hell’s Vengeance Boils in my Heart‘ from The Magic Flute as it ticked the Mozart and opera boxes, demonstrated the range of the human soprano, and all in a very short space of time. My opera category is satisfied by the twin-attack of Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones performing ‘Il Miserere’ at the climax of A Night at the Opera.
Jonathan Scott 