SOUNDS IN SPACE

It was the Russians! On October 4, 1957 the USSR successfully orbited Earth with an artificial satellite. The Space Age, which had been in gestation for decades, was born that night. There were no sounds in space before that. Everyone started looking up.

The album SOUNDS IN SPACE, while serving as a good graphic introduction, is actually a stereo test record with no space related material whatsoever. Turns out the space they are referring to is your living room. It does have some groovy narration by Ken Nordine though.

The 7" MERCURY SPACEFLIGHT record, which has been shown a couple times here recently, came with a Mercury Capsule toy. It brought sounds from space to the youth of the 1960s.

THE SPACE AGE, subtitled The Age of Reliability is an odd package on several levels. Essentially a sound effects record, it does have sounds from space starting with the beeping of Sputnik and Laika's heartbeat. The tracks are numerous, repetitive, and sometimes totally unrelated, and once you've heard one rocket engine test.... but then there are obscure gems like a GE scientist bouncing an echo off the moon or an interview with Mrs. Robert Goddard. This album was produced by Raybestos-Manhattan Corporation. It was likely some sort of internal corporate premium. The gatefold album jacket includes three two-sided affixed pages hinting at Raybestos-Manhattan participation in then secret space programs. There is no date on it but it surely dates from the early 1960s.

The Raybestos-Manhattan Corporation may have helped get us to the moon but their record here on Earth was a bit less glorious. Raybestos Corporation (it's pretty obvious by the name what material they were using) merged with Manhattan Rubber to become major manufacturers of brake linings and various gaskets. They left behind a cancerous history and a toxic mess in Connecticut that is on the Superfund clean-up list.