Fossils in the Milky Way v2

This song is about a cool discovery that a good friend of mine, Dr. Doug Welch, and his scientific colleagues, made in the last year. The piece was written as a humourous birthday gift for him in November of 2008.

Although I like a lot of it, I know only a little about what's really going on in the music I hear my children listen to. Despite this I found I was drawn to a pastiche of this modern style plus a mish-mash of that plus all kinds of other influences that together were intended to form a kind of ridiculous and over-produced soup of sound.

I played with some of the wailing and backing vocal loops from Voices Jam Pack, wondered about what would happen if I brought out of retirement the sprechgesang (speaking/singing) style of Fred Schneider of the B-52s, and added a dead boring lead voice with an almost as boring backup to rap about Doug's scientific findings.

So this is meant to be silly and fun. I hope you get at least a grin from it!

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For those interested, here is a little about the discovery:
Massively exploding stars, called Supernovae, are a rare event. The biggest and brightest happened long before modern scientific instruments, meaning that the bright burst of light from the explosion passed the earth hundreds of years in the past. The scientific team discovered that light from some of these supernovae is actually reflecting off dust and gas more distant than where the explosions occurred, and that reflected light is reaching the earth now. The significance is that the light can be analysed and astronomers can learn more about what was happening in the star around the time of the explosion. So in a way these echoes of light are like fossils of plants or animals, providing clues about something that is now long dead.

If you have the right equipment at home you can loop for these light echoes yourself as outlined in this article from Sky and Telescope that talks about Dr. Welch's article on the topic in the June 2008 edition:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/skytel/beyondthepage/17810174.html

Here are some other references:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKR5wxgwTIs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MWSq_IcdnI

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080320-supernova.html

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=3837

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=7009

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Fossils in the Milky Way
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Now I have read a piece
That ain't 'bout no Jehovah
But tells us 'bout the gas
That reflects supernovas.

Some guy named Doctor W
which is too hard to rhyme
wrote 'bout the light echoes
that take us back in time.

Chorus:
Fossils in the Milky Way,
Fossils in the Milky Way,
Fossils in the Milky Way,
Fossils in the Milky Way!

Stop! Hammer time!

Some starts are no more shining
their life is stuff of dreams
at first they grew in brightness
then blew to smithereens.

So gear up for the hunt y'all
and dust off that ol' scope
get-a CCD that's chillin'
diff'rence pictures then just hope.

it's like only 20 degrees fool!

So mail your results to W
if you see some gas with bends
and if he thinks you've found an echo
then you're his next best friend!

Chorus and repeat to fade

c Doug Somers 2007

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Uploaded: Feb 20, 2009 - 11:34:15 PM
Last Updated: Feb 20, 2009 - 11:34:15 PM Last Played: Nov 19, 2009 - 12:08:30 PM

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