Much history was made last Thursday (February 22) when the Odysseus spacecraft landed on Earth's moon. Not only did it mark the first time a private lander made a lunar touchdown, it saw an American craft return to the Moon for the first time since 1972. Advertising sign can now reveal that the lunar rover also made musical history, bringing digitized recordings from some of the most iconic musicians of all time to an arts-focused time capsule currently sitting on the silent surface of the moon.
Director Michael P. Nash, whose acclaimed 2010 documentary; Climate Refugees put a human face on climate change and is included in this lunar capsule, he describes it as a kind of “future ancient cave” (his film is the only documentary on this lunar payload). “In case we get blown up with a nuclear weapon or hit by a meteorite or climate change wipes us out, there's a proof of our history on the moon,” he says.
This lunar art museum spans millennia, from Sumerian cuneiform musical notation to the modern beats of Timbaland. The digitized lunar archive includes footage from 20th century icons Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Sly & the Family Stone, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, The Who and more, plus photos of everything from Woodstock on the album cover (of course, a photo of him Pink Floyd's The dark side of the moon included) in a glass, nickel and NanoFiche structure built to last millions, if not billions, of years.
“This is music that stands the test of time,” says Dallas Santana, who came up with the idea of sending 222 artists to the moon and pitched it to the Arch Mission Foundation. In collaboration with Galactic Legacy Labs, Space Blue (Santana's company) edited the payload, which was placed on the craft built by Intuitive Machines (the company had no creative input into the contents of this payload, nor did SpaceX , which launched the craft). Space Blue formed a partnership with Nash's Beverly Hills Productions and Melody Trust – a company that owns the rights to certain masters from various classic rock artists – for the purpose of this venture, aptly titled Lunar Records.
The archive from the Melody Trust, which Santana says is about 25,000 songs deep, includes unreleased recordings by some of these musical legends, according to Santana. “Songs that were never released – they're on the moon now,” he says, referring to the supposedly unreleased Hendrix recordings captured before the creation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. As a huge Hendrix fan, he says he was “instantly skeptical” of them at first, but was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about them after months of “due diligence and analysis” by his advisers. “People will know about them,” he promises.
Ace Melody, LLC
As the curator of the Music Moon Museum, Santana says the music from 1969 and the artists who played Woodstock are the focus of this collection for several reasons. On July 20, 1969, humans set foot on the moon for the season. Just weeks later, the Summer of Love culminated when 460,000 people gathered at the Woodstock Music festival in a spirit of peaceful togetherness that he hopes this capsule will evoke. Santana admits there's a bit of historical irony here: Many musicians of that generation pushed the US government to stop spending money on moon landings in favor of solving problems on Earth, which was part of the reason NASA suspended missions to the moon in 1972. Now, some of these artists have been on the moon for up to a billion years.
While the Space Blue founder had previously teased an arts-focused payload in this mission, he specifically kept the names of the musicians known to a select few. “NASA doesn't know — SpaceX doesn't know yet,” he says. “Elon Musk is the greatest rocketeer of all time, we are grateful for his company. When we decided to talk about musicians last year, we thought it would be inappropriate to let him know what we were going to do. And the musicians were worried about it. They said, “Does Elon Musk have anything to do with deciding which musicians go up there?” And I said, “Absolutely not, that's a private payload.”
He hopes the lunar payload – which also includes several non-musical artistic achievements, including paintings by Rembrandt and Van Gogh – will “resurrect” the spirit of the Woodstock generation. “We need peace on earth right now. We brought to the moon the Summer of Love, the people and the artists and the messages that are needed on earth right now.”
The inclusion of Nash Climate Refugees The documentary on the Moon art museum acknowledges another pressing concern facing us Earthlings – climate change and the mass migration that is likely to follow. With an eye on what's next, Nash begins work on a sequel film called Chasing the truth. “My partners are Leonardo DiCaprio, his father, George DiCaprio and the VoLo Foundation. We go back around the world to update it,” he says.
“Both Leonardo and George are very clear that it has to be a solution-oriented film, more utopian than dystopian. This will provide solutions,” promises Nash. “We're past the point of changing light bulbs – but this is really important. There is strength in numbers. Be a part of something bigger than yourself. It's going to take everyone to get us through this tsunami headed our way.”
After this mission, Lunar Records intends to keep going up. They are eyeing other lunar payloads of a similar nature, and are even talking about putting an art museum on Mars if a Mars landing happens – meaning the igneous rocks of Mars may need to make room for a new kind of rock before long .
Space Blue and Michael Nash
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/moon-landing-2024-music-lunar-capsule-1235615080/