Name that Tune
What aviation needs is a good song. Frank “The Chairman of The Board” Sinatra left us with a few good songs from the ‘50s visualizing, in lyric, the allure of air travel in the Jet Age. Since that time we haven’t had a decent tune. No, not one.
I discount songs such as “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as a song evoking the ecstasy of flying, since it only depresses me, and the same with “Daniel” who manages to cut and run on a jet, leaving poor Elton crying Hindenburg-sized tears. I guess you can regard the theme to “Top Gun” as a musical flight coup and the Navy owes Kenny Loggins an honorary Admiralship for all the flight school recruits that “Danger Zone” enticed to join during the ‘80s. No, my friends, what we need are some new hip-hop, popular songs that reaffirm the beauty of flight. I want a song that extols the flying experience in total and one that people tap their toes to, leaving folks feeling good about flying.
I know that this is a tall order. Popular music droning on in pre-set order via the top “40” stations does little to lift me up or catch my ear and that may be a sign of advancing age. Our patience for the new age becomes as taut as a thong on Rosanne. Rap is definitely OUT. Don’t get me wrong, a good portion of the populace loves this stuff, but I just don’t see it as a suitable vehicle for promotion of flying. The Image of “P” Diddy in a lavender flight suit, gold flight helmet, crotch thusting atop the wing of a Boeing 777 mumbling, “A Flip-Flop, A Flop Flip, little Black Pitts on a Rip - SAYY WHAATT - WORD to SEAN TUCKER.”
See what I mean, it just doesn’t make it, although the video would probably do quite well. Songs of flight from the 1940s seem to convey more than anything done in the past 50 years. Even a Big Band number about the macabre scenario of a battle-worn B-17 coming home with two turning and two burning – “A Wing and A Prayer” is a pretty catchy tune, and uplifting. What passes for “rock” (techno) is an agonizing litany of groans punctuated by an occasional “Yeoww” done in three chords. Picture a 20-something front man with beard stubble, wearing a pair of oily jeans replete with knee-high crotch, looking as if he had just rolled off a paddy wagon after a three-day drunk in Subic Bay.
Remember the tune must be sung as if you’re in the final terse moments of a bad episode with Ex-Lax, where the lyrics rise and crest in agonized fits of groaning. “I proppedddd’ her Cub, she looked at me (unintelligible mumbling), like I was some kinda’ infectious diseaseeee’ and then she flew away (more Bob Dylan), she left me in agonyyyy’, I think I’ll jump off the control tower and end this miseryyyyy’, YEOWWW.” Of course, Country music is probably more suitable to a good old-fashioned aviation ballad, and I do mean Country and not that crossover crap that is more Eastern than Western.
I could envision a mixture of Grandpa Jones and Ernest Tubb, decked out in a sequined flight jacket with bullion-sewn wings embroidered across the back, wearing a two-toned Stetson while strumming a National Steel guitar. Remember such a tune must be sung so fast that a mandatory 20 rewinds are necessary to understand just what the Hell he said. “Goin’ 85 or 95 down final just tother’ day – turned my squelch to the right and lika’ beam from a light I heard some cottonpicker say – breaker, breaker, who’s that low-down sunuvagun’ just cut me off on downwind for Zero One. I thought to ma’self that must be me so I hit the gun and decided to skedaddle back to the East (insert frantic steel guitar pickin’)”.
Or if you’re in to bluegrass, as many seem to be, just write a good old flying song rendered from the lips of a down-in-the-holler’ boy who still chews plug tobacco backed by a fiddle, mandolin, and banjo complete with tales of a misspent youth, kissin’ cousins, beloved Momma, wicked Feds, culminating in a fatal plane crash into a fog-shrouded mountain. Bluegrass works well if you’re half tanked in the midst of a second divorce, or out of a job, and may not lend itself to uplifting strains of flight. Operatic Aerial Arias with a bulbous, ziti-fed soprano stuffed into a XL flight suit will never cut it since the Italians invented it, the French love it and most reasonable Americans despise it. Opera is OUT.
This leaves music played on alternative stations where the DJ’s talk like they’ve watched too much Star Trek or X-Files, reveling in playing 45 minutes of nothing but a satellite in orbit or the babbling of a brook. Enya is big on these stations and might have some success in conveying the sheer joy of flight, although I think she’s probably stoned immaculate. She could likely pull off some type of melodic background tones that effectively mimic the rise and fall of air currents lifting a lonely sailplane up through the vaulted heights of towering cumulus, interspersed with a Celtic song of soaring souls and unfettered wings while not once, mentioning the Great Potato Famine of the 1800s.
Richard Bach wrote some truly beautiful words that intimated the flying experience so well, as did St. Exupery who came before. It’s a shame that some songwriter can’t put music to those words and create an aviation masterpiece, available on CD, or if you call today we’ll send you FREE, this obsolete Cheyenne sectional, but that’s not all! Call right now and you’ll also get this folding “plotter” capable of being reduced to the size of a standard credit card. Ahh, I guess I’ll have to retire to my hangar, sharpen up that old steel needle and lovingly place my “Captain of The Clouds” 78 on the old Crosley and dream of bold pilots in open cockpits and big brass bands ripping out like a cacophony of roaring double-row radials.
By Steve Bill Hanshew