1) 1972 or therabouts, not 1932. CD listing info is from Amazon, and it may be a re-release from a few years back, or it may be that the original is out of print.

2) At about four minutes for this song, that means for 21 out of every 25 minutes, your local oldies station is NOT playing "Space Oddity." This would in turn mean that, at a very generous average of 20 minutes per hour of commercial traffic, a 25-minute block breaks down into music 16:40 and ads 8:20. If Bowie claims 4 minutes of that 16:40, that leaves only 12:40 for everything else, which is clearly NOT enough time to play "Stairway to Heaven" and "In-a-gadda-a-vida." At a wild-guess average of three minutes per oldie (songs were shorter in the past), the 12:40 block, which includes inane DJ patter and station bumpers, allows room for only about three other songs in that 25-minute block, or about eight per hour.

Where did you do your undergraduate work in Physics?

physicsgenius wrote:

Danny_G wrote:


agree. agree
Oscar

Wonderful song to hear on RP. I've not heard it here before. Gald we don't hear it more than once in a while. Overplayed on commercial broadcast radio. Nice to see that it still has legs after all these years.

redeyespy wrote:
I was wondering whether to whinge about this song's overextended overexposure or rave about its extraordinary sturdiness as an enduring pop/rock classic..... then I saw this quote and I completely broke down.

RichardPrins wrote:
Yeh, what a sunny, uplifting song...

RichardPrins wrote:

What he said.

moshevelvul wrote:

The work exists with or without exposure. If the Mona Lisa were taken down and not exhibited for a century, would she be any more special?

great song, murdered by radio.

HELP US ,, MAJOR TOM!!!

Next play Major Tom by the Travoltas!

physicsgenius wrote:

1. date of cd release.
2. are you admitting publicly that you listen to an oldies station? that's courageous! there are groups for people in your situation ... 'my name is buddy, and i'm a oldies addict' 'hi, buddy!'

RichardPrins wrote:

What he said.

If this isn't god-like I don't know what is. Note the lush mellotron courtesy of Yes keyboard god Rick Wakeman.

Sorry, from the opening note until the final bleep bleep I can't wait for this song to be over.

1) Why are all the CDs listed here from no earlier than 1999 even when the song came out in like 1932? I would think it would be more helpful to the discussion to know when the song was originally recorded, not most recently.

2) My local oldies station plays this song every 25 minutes, so it's a good thing we have a valuable resource like RP to double that for us.

Someone must have stirred something into Bill's coffee when he was putting this set together.

blissful - lovely, lovely melody and double-tracked harmonies

always think of the ray bradbury short story in illustrated man when I hear this

Yeah. What more can I say...

It wasn't until his 'Ashes to Ashes' came out saying "we all know Major Tom's a junkie' that I discovered that this song is about drug addiction. Or perhaps it's about fame. Or maybe the similarity of the two? Great song all around.

The poignant, drifting classic A 10!

jberko wrote:

And a-floatin' in a most-a-peculiar way!

A masterpiece by any standard. Great lyrics, great story, great music, great singing. Sitting in a tin-can. Wow.

Just too damn cool

classic... what else is there to say?

Truly one of a kind - what a perfect melding of music and lyric... and lots of fun to play and sing along.