This astronaut is alive with soul. Taken from the front cover of the
Afghan Whigs' 1965, he is an emblem of the unbridled passion
and joy to be found on that album; moreover, he is up there in
space swinging to the collective sound of free love in the American
'60s. Many miles above the Earth, he's feeling the groove. What's he doing
up there? He's twisting the wires, fixing the cables, setting up the
interstellar transmission to send the sweet sounds of Motown all across
the stars and beyond. He'll get the job done. And what's up next for our
spaceman friend? Well, he's going to step back into his rocketship and
freak his astronaut ladyfriend until the break of dawn - which, floating
in orbit, could be an awful long time.This, I think, is the kind of astronaut we want to have up there in case aliens come by.
What the hell is the matter with this astronaut? The soul is not only not
alive in him, the soul is fossilized and on display at the Museum of
Natural History next to that Tyrannosaurus Rex everyone's talking
about. Look at this guy: stiff as a board. The joints on that suit have
never followed a groove. They wouldn't know how. He'd need a guidebook to
follow People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Where
is he going with that big orange ball? What is he going to do with
it? What creature anywhere in this entire universe is hoping to see this
jerk with his big heavy orange ball? Shit, if it was brown, I could see
that. Brown is funky. Maybe he's decorating his space station. But
orange?