The Songs - Mike Collins

This is another entry in my ongoing “songs that visited me and decided they wanted to stay” series. I hope you like these enough to become a paid subscriber, because I really need you to keep this project going.

Mike Collins - Big King Moose

Who’s gonna get you there
Who’s gonna take you home
Who’s gonna watch over you
When you’re all alone?

The Wright Brothers first flew in 1903. A mere 66 years later, men walked on the moon. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing songs together in 1958. Paul McCartney is still singing some of those songs today. Kevin Bacon and Alec Baldwin are 66 years old. It’s the age of the invention of instant noodles. It ain’t a long time.

Think about that. Mankind decided we were going to fly, and made it so. To me it remains our most extraordinary collective achievement. It is what is possible when you put the smartest people in a room, and leave them to it. There is no existing problem, from cancer to climate change, that we cannot solve if we simply gather the will to do so.

The will, alas, has been sorely lacking. Like it or not, gravity is a thing. Our ideas and our inspirations come from the top down. It takes vision, and a visionary. There hasn’t been much of either lately. One look at a social media comment section makes me wonder if we’re the same fucking species that sent Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the moon and brought them home safely.

“Mike Collins” is a local song from a local band. Find their home office by getting on the Joe Biden expressway, roll down the windows, and listen hard for the Framptone. They’ve been together for over 25 years, roughly as long as the period between the first moon landing and the first repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Joseph "Wiggy" Wegleski (guitars)
Lenny Mecca (bass / vocals)
Gary Samony (drums)

Always three. The same number that flew each of the Apollo missions. There’s a nice symmetry there. Each time they play, they explore a little bit more each barroom’s lunar surface.

They are friends of mine, and when they wrote the track they asked me to write the lyrics. They already knew what the song was about. It was Apollo 11, burned down to 4+ minutes. Everything was already there. The lift-off. The orbit. The descent. That giant leap off the last rung of the ladder. That footprint in the dust. The sheer wonder of the world watching it all on TV. The better angels of our nature, transported nearly a quarter of a million miles away. It was as fine a piece of music as I’d ever heard. It didn’t even need words. But I was honored to be asked. But pretty scared I was gonna fuck it up.

When Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon, their ride was waiting. Command module pilot Michael Collins was alone above them for 21 hours, with nothing on his mind but everything that could possibly go wrong. There was a real possibility that he’d be returning home without his friends. He noted that the spacecraft had 5,600,000 parts. Even if they functioned at 99.9%, that meant 5600 defects. It was perhaps the most awesome responsibility ever placed on the shoulders of a lone man, with 650 million people watching. “I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before”, he said.

Collins was one cool customer.

“Q: What were you thinking when your colleagues were out there making cosmic history?
A: I just kept reminding myself that every single component in this spacecraft was provided by the guy who submitted the cheapest tender.”

― Michael Collins

And funny as hell too.

He was the song. That was what we decided.

I never felt so alive
I never felt so free
I never felt so lonely
that’s what you did to me

Just about every serious musician I know is a NASA fan. It’s the little things you notice. Stickers on their guitar case. T-shirts. The logo on a cap. I noticed one doing a live-stream during Covid with a NASA logo on their laptop. NASA is one of the most remarkable government agencies in our history…..one that somehow maintains its composure despite being answerable to a group of ever more ignorant hacks who wouldn’t know Apollo 11 from the Flying Nun. There is no doubt in my mind that, given the funding, NASA will find a way to Mars. And even further. Why go? Because it’s there. Because it seems as impossible now as the moon did then. Because it will unlock mysteries. Because we’d have to come together to get there. What the world needs is a moment to collectively hold its breath again, as it watches something extraordinary. It needs to be reminded what it’s capable of.

The song “Mike Collins” is a reminder of what NEPA bands are capable of. You really need to check it out.

In a bit…

—tf

Songs That Visited Me and Decided They Wanted to Stay

Intro
In a Big Country
Found Out About You
Tutti Fruitti
Surrender
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Nightswimming
Fast Car
Take Five
Romeo and Juliet
Wichita Lineman
Waterfall
There She Goes
A Sort of Homecoming
Purple Rain
Nights On Broadway
Tough All Over
What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round
Inside Out
Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More
America
Thirteen
I Wish
Love is Alive
Back in the High Life Again
Volunteers
The Show Goes On