If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past month or two, you’re probably aware of all the recent excitement regarding the rare and brilliant celestial event where the moon eclipsed the sun.

“Have you bought your pair of ISO 2312-2 eclipse-viewing glasses, yet?” was a common conversation topic – especially up here in the northwest – during the weeks leading up to the big day. I spent this long-awaited moment up at Washington State University Vancouver, standing amidst a sea of people in the campus courtyard, all staring up at the sky and sporting our delightfully-ridiculous specks. While doing so, I couldn’t help but think about how we should be doing this kind of thing more often – gathering together and taking a moment to celebrate vast astronomical wonders. Even something as simple as stargazing in a field or on your roof with some close friends or a loved one on a warm summer night can be so relaxing and memorable. So… grab a warm blanket, a cup of coffee, and a good friend, and press play on this stargazing-themed playlist. We all know that we won’t have these quality, cloudless and rainless skies for too much longer!

Stargazing Playlist

This playlist includes – but is certainly not limited to – two David Bowie tunes (he is the original starman after all. How could I settle for just one?), and a groovy extraterrestrial ballad by a singer-songwriter named Jim Sullivan. Six years after releasing his debut album U.F.O. in 1969, the struggling musician decided to venture from Los Angeles to Nashville (NPR staff, para. 1). However, Sullivan’s deserted Volkswagen Bug – containing his guitar, wallet, and a box of his unsold records (Mastropolo, para. 14) – were later discovered in the middle of the New Mexico desert and he was never to be found (NPR staff, para. 1). Ironically, his vanishing reflects the mysteriousness reflected in “U.F.O.” itself – some even theorizing that Sullivan himself was abducted by aliens (NPR staff, para. 10).

Songs for Stargazing.

Works Cited

Mastropolo, Frank. “Rock’s Unsolved UFO Mystery: The Night Jim Sullivan Vanished Into Thin Air.” UltimateClassicRock. 2 July 2014. Web. Accessed 22 August 2017. http://ultimateclassicrock.com/missing-ufo-singer-songwriter/.

NPR Staff. “Jim Sullivan’s Mysterious Masterpiece: ‘U.F.O.’” NPR. 9 Dec. 2010. Web. Accessed 21 August 2017. http://www.npr.org/2010/12/09/131936448/jim-sullivan-s-mysterious-masterpiece-u-f-o.

by Veronica Whitney