“Countdown”
Todd writes:
Rush has a tune they wrote about the first
launch of Columbia on April
12, 1981, which they had the opportunity to witness from a VIP area. It’s
from the 1982 album Signals;
it’s called “Countdown”. Although it’s never been one of my favorite songs,
I’ve been listening to it
lately.You can find some background info about the song, written by the
lyricist, Neil Peart, here.
Search for the text “VIII Countdown”. (Note that they either got the
date wrong, or were referring to when the song was actually written.)Like some other songs on that album, it has parts I like and parts I
don’t like, the latter resulting from their continuing exploration of
synthesizers. So some of it sounds a bit dated.Nevertheless, I think it does a good job of capturing the wonder of that
day. They mixed in actual communications from the launch, and the
fadeout section is especially poignant — almost haunting (for me,
anyway). It’s a fitting tribute.