Well maybe not completely different, as I do post about music now and then, but kinda different … So I recently somehow became aware* that one of my favorite songs, “Space Song” by Beach House, had been used in the recent miniseries of Stephen King’s The Stand, apparently in a scene involving abandoned cars on a bridge or something. I don’t know for sure because said miniseries is only available on Paramount+, apparently, and I have no plans to subscribe to another streaming service, certainly not just to see one scene in yet another miniseries** based on a book I read some thirty-odd years ago. Instead, I went looking to see if I could find a clip of the scene on YouTube. I could not. But I did find a ton of other “Space Song” videos, including this very interesting one, by a cellist who performed all the parts herself and put them together into a Hollywood Squares-style video. Check it out:
Now, the reader who has been around here for a while may recall that my wife, in general, hates covers, so of course I had to call her in to subject her to this one. Spoiler alert: She didn’t hate it.
Wife: “I think I might like this better than the original.”
The cellist, Helen Newby, has any number of other videos of this nature, including another Beach House song called “Myth“, the Toto song “Africa“***, the Steely Dan song “Peg“(!), the My Chemical Romance song “Welcome to the Black Parade“(!!), and even the TLC song “No Scrubs“(!!!).
Wife: “‘No Scrubs’ on the cello is better than I would’ve thought.”
Me: “Yeah, it is, but with no lyrics, it can’t explain what a ‘scrub’ is**** like the original does.”
As I mentioned previously, there were a ton of other “Space Song” videos floating around out there. None of them involved the bridge scene from The Stand, but a lot of them did involve, well, space. For instance, there was this one, composed of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey:
And this one, with scenes from Interstellar:
And this one, with … uh … a lady flying around in space in a Winnebago and then landing somewhere and riding a bike, I guess?
So the upshot is, “Space Song” seems to be a pretty popular song to make videos for. But I still don’t know what they did with it in The Stand.
* Don’t ask me how because I don’t remember.
** I already saw the first one, which, famously, made good use of the Crowded House song “Don’t Dream It’s Over”.
*** Then again, who hasn’t covered “Africa” by this point?
**** A scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from TLC, in case you were wondering, on account of he thinks he’s fly but really he just sits around on his broke ass. Or something like that.
Viscosity 
I didn’t even know The Stand had been made into a mini-series. I don’t know if Paramount+ is a thing in the UK but I’ve just Googled the series… I’m going to have to find a way to watch this now because what you failed to mention was that it features Alexander Skarsgård. Alexander, in case you don’t know, is my one true love (or one of a few of my one true loves). Especially if he’s got his shirt off like he did for Tarzan. If/when I hunt down a way to watch The Stand, I’ll let you know what they do with the song.
That cellist is incredible. I love the idea of covering songs you’d never picture being done on cello, like MCR and TLC. Brilliant!!
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You can always count on me to leave out important information such as the presence of Alexander Skarsgård! 😁 I hope you are able to track down the show and spend some time with him!
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Wow, cellos are so spooky and beautiful. I love it.
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