Halloween Countdown: October 4 – red dawn crazy crazy

It might seem odd to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch in a Halloween countdown, but, hey, if it's good enough for Stephen King...

In the opening chapter of Danse Macabre, King's ruminations on the history and mechanics of the horror genre, he recounts his childhood memories of the announcement that the Soviets had placed the first artificial satellite in orbit. From his perspective, it was an event as momentous and harrowing as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Kennedy assassination, which may seem a hyperbolic reaction to a polished sphere containing a simple radio transmitter, but historical context is key here.


The terror wasn't about the crude device lofted into orbit as much as the delivery system that put it there. The Soviets had proven they had the means to successfully launch a ballistic missile, and so quite literally seized the tactical high ground in the Cold War arms race. Jet bombers had limited range and could theoretically be intercepted. (There was a Nike anti-aircraft missile site not too far from my grandmother's childhood home on the Woburn/Burlington line at the time.) An ICBM, on the other hand, could hit Muncie, Indiana just as easily as it could hit Seattle, with a next to zero chance of being knocked from the sky en route.

(This hasn't stopped the military-industrial complex from pissing away billions in trying to create a "missile shield", even though anything short of a 100% success rate would be fundamentally pointless. A successful interception would be poor consolation to the residents Hartford if both the Boston/Route 128 region and New York City had been transformed into fallout-belching radioactive craters.)

The Sputnik launch did mark the crossing into a new frontier, but intertwined with the visions of jet cars and lunar vacation excusions was the notion that Cold War geopolitics and the associated anxieties thereof had extended their reach across the entire planet -- an additional sense of dread in an era rife with panics, moral and otherwise.


Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Rockit Miss USA (from Flaunt It! 1986) - The launching of Sigue Sigue Sputnik caused much dread in those concerned about CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer.

Skip Stanley - Satellite Baby (from a 1956 single; collected on The Ultimate 50's Rockin' Sci-Fi Disc, 2003) - SHAKE YOUR ASTEROID!

...and just so no one accuses me of straying from the musical aspect of the Halloween theme month:

dok-u-ment - Live in Fear (from New Wave Complex, Vol. 9) - Nearly ten minutes worth of oppressive and dark synth. Googling turned up next to nothing on dok-u-ment, except that they were probably from Germany or thereabouts and that this track came from a cassette release, which would explain the why it sounds so muddy. (Personally, I think it just adds to its claustrophobic atmosphere.)