I have done Scott Walker's song "Nite Flights." Bowie and Fatima Mansions have also done it. I hope somebody enjoys it. I know Alec and Orphan in Babylon might appreciate it. Orphan, I'll be doing the Krafwerk piece you suggested. Right now I'm doing a song/video by Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks called "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" with an old friend of mine for Christmas. We're doing it as a duet. I've given up on the Satch/Buckethead mutated monster song because the melody of Buckethead really couldn't stand any alterations and make it as effective as the original. It's just one of those things. The offer to work with Bill still stands, but I don't think he wants anything to do with me or the Tommy Bolin "Crazed Fandango" project. I respect that, but my star is rising, and I'm starting to trend. Anyway, here is "Nite Flights."
Watch for air turbulence.
Yeah, I had a mysterious experience coming home from Kelowna, BC earlier this month. We had just touched down in Hamilton and as I was getting into the car I heard the song "Nite Flights" coming out of my pants' pocket.
I reached in to see my cell phone on and playing that song. What are the odds that 1) my cell phone would turn on 2) that it would activate my music app 3) that it would play a song called "Nite Flights" just as I was leaving the airport to go to my car?
So is it God telling me something? Or is Google telling me that they know where I am, know that I just was on board a jet plane, know what songs I had on my cell phone, and decided to power on and play "Nite Flights" to spook me out?
And then I tried to shut my cell phone off and the song kept playing with a black screen. Too much. That really spooked me out. So I went back to the song and touched it up using some special effects to look like air turbulence, and the roundness of the face and balls to suggest the moon. The moon was worshiped as a god -- "we shall be gods on nite flights" -- and it goes up and crosses the night sky and comes down. It's a symbol for my flight from BC back to Ontario. The lyrics in the song are meaningless and Bowie managed to get through the video doing hand gestures. There is a crowd of people following him with search lights -- I think they represent looking for the meaning in the song. But Bowie just fakes it with his pantomime and hand gestures which makes it somewhat mysterious, but hollow too. No stretch for him. The high point of the song is the chorus suggesting that we are gods -- it's kind of heroic, epic and tragic all at the same time, almost like Bowie's Heroes. The tragic part is we fall -- "only one way to fall" -- and I show the moon falling on the Statue of Liberty. But the hopeful part is that I also show a runway landing strip at the end of the video which suggests that we have safely arrived at our destination... but try landing a moon on an airport runway (haha).
So this song mysteriously reappeared to me and I touched it up a bit and really thought about its meaning. It has turbulence but so does life and I have a lot to be grateful for. That's my takeaway from the song.